Our version of Banksy — the faceless graffiti and street artist known for art-bombing the world with his/her/their spray-painted wall art and elaborate prank installations that show up without warning — made their presence known at the end of last week when they turned an abandoned telephone line station in a West Texas desert into a little, tiny, teeny, itty, bitty, weeny Buc-ee's store.
Artist Matt Tumlinson found the mystery art installation off U.S. 90 while on the way to Marathon to visit a friend the day after April Fools' Day.
"You don't really see much out there other than the sunset and the brush," Tumlinson says. "It's super dry now. It feels more desolate. It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, which I think is kind of part of it. You're not really looking at any manmade structures out there. So anything out there stands out there."
Buc-ee's, of course, is a Texas institution known for things like its beef jerky bar, "Beaver Nuggets" snacks and immaculate large bathrooms. It's also known for just being huge, the kind of huge that people think of when they think of Texas.
"You can do anything out there and it makes waves ... That's a pretty cool feature of it." – Artist Matt Tumlinson
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The building that became the unofficial Buc-ee's between Marathon and Sanderson was also once turned into a little, tiny, teeny, itty, bitty, weeny Target store that came down in 2020, according to Texas Monthly.
The Target store came about because of a permanent (sort of) art installation in the nearby town of Valentine featuring a tiny Prada store. According to Atlas Obscura, the "Prada Marfa" installation was built in 2005 by the German artistic team of Elmgreen and Dragset. The building is made of biodegradable materials that wear will away over time as a standing commentary of Western materialism.
Tumlinson was one of the first people to post a photo of the tiny Buc-ee's on his Instagram page. He denies being the artist who built the tiny Buc-ee's but notes that "there's a couple of people out there who it might be."
"There's a lot of artsy types," Tumlinson says. "I assumed it was someone like that who was part of that."
He says whoever built the installation knows it's an eye-catching sight for such a dry and desolate place.
"You can do anything out there and it makes waves," Tumlinson says. "That's a pretty cool feature of it."
