Joya: AiR / Phoebe Marmura / CAN
photo Simon Beckmann
“I’m looking forward to watching the sun come up behind the mountains today. It’s nearly 8 am and still dark outside. Looking out the tiny window from my bed the sky is slate blue and the mountains are a black, blurred, bumpy mass that border the valley. I can't yet see the ground, just that it is very still, unmoving, like a stagnant lake or pond. Even as the rain falls, and the mountains surrounding the valley are laced in fog, at Joya: AiR there is a wildness and beauty in the landscape that is ever-present. The earth is sandy white clay, like walking on pure holy ground. Past barrancos of clear water tiny mountain peaks of brush and prickly bushes envelope us.
It is easy to invent and then be whisked away into a magical, make believe world of your own at Joya: AiR. There is so much space to explore, and I found myself being fed by the land and the home. Daily walks evoke visions of wild cowgirls riding down the hills at dawn, and the calm shallow barrancos become rushing rivers”.
photo Phoebe Marmura
~Goldie left home to travel the Wild West due to a severe case of ennui~
Goldie didn’t remember much when she awoke that morning. Yawning into early August air, her eyes opened slowly. Like a fresh baby, Goldie felt as if she was experiencing each sense for the first time. She was wrapped tightly in something soft, and cream coloured.. muslin, and laying on a mattress of feathers. Goldie smelled talcum powder, bacon fat, and musky desert marigolds, which were showing off their deep rust colored buds in a vase on the bedside. The world was sideways, she could see the edge of the brass bed she lay on, and a floor to ceiling bay window which was widely opened and barely covered by a starched, white, cotton curtain fluttering lightly about.
“I found myself, away from all of life's petty distractions, roused into a fictitious world of calm, ease, and excitement. At Joya: AiR I focused on writing and taking photographs, the beauty of the desert scape drove my characters. My desire is to create a book combining my love for writing, design, photography, touch, and smell. Something that is precious, tangible, and beautiful—something that will be treasured, much like the land and feeling at Joya AiR”.