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JULY | PAGE 36 | 2015 were installed above the garage. "You could smell spaghetti cooking when you were in the gallery," she says. Her cadre of artists was unknown in Houston at the time, but they were destined for acclaim. "Daniel Buren painted stripes on my windows," she recalls, noting that the French conceptual artist went on to have a prestigious one-man show at the Guggenheim, as did Andre, whose early word-based works now fill a warehouse at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa. LeWitt, considered a founder of the conceptual and minimalist movements, became a prolific artist with hundreds of exhibitions in museums and galleries across the world. Mangold's large circular canvases, which went for only a few thousand dollars at her gallery, now fetch hundreds of thousands at auction, she says. "It was high energy, but not many people in Houston got it at the time," Hill says. "The only person who bought from me was Mrs. de Menil." The gallery closed in 1974. Afterwards, she moved to Rio de Janeiro for four years, later marrying a commercial deep-sea diver. "I decorated our apartment there on a shoestring — it was fabulous," she remembers. When they moved back to Houston, she entered the townhouse where they were living into a contest sponsored by the now-defunct Metropolitan Home. She won, and the magazine published her work. Later, when they sold their house in Santa Fe's historical district, along with a backyard casita converted from an old shepherd's shack, the new owners purchased all of the furniture, too. People were willing to pay to get her look, and it was the start of Hill's career as an interior designer for hire. "The people who bought one of my houses in Marfa also bought it furnished, down to the smallest accessories and details," she says, noting that the house has exchanged hands again and the new owners have kept everything. "People seem to like to leave the spaces I design just as they were. I do feel the character of the space, and that has a lot of influence on what I do with it in terms of the design." She decorates and lives life on her own terms, and people gravitate to her unique brand of eccentricity. A punk rocker pushing 80 — she looks to be in her 50s — Hill's hair was ash blonde before she dyed it, 25 years ago, an Italian red tint that imparts a slight halo of purple around her head. While entertaining at home these days is more about having her grown children and seven grandchildren over, Hill's expansive farmhouse table frequently brims with tapas and wine for a diverse group of friends. "It comes in waves, depending on how busy I am with work," she says. "The people who come over are artists [daughter Claire Cusack is a well- known artist in Houston], but a lot of times, it'll be people from the building. There's a pretty cool group who live here, with a lawyer thrown in every now and then." She reads voraciously. "I have four times as many books at my Marfa house as I do here," she says. "Fiction, biographies … I read a lot of the Japanese authors, the great Russian and Latin American writers. I just finished All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It was delicious — a blind girl's description of the natural world. So beautifully written." A mid-century chair that needed a bit of oomph launched Hill in a new direction a few years ago — one that fuses her love of writing with art and design. "I had these two Lucite chairs in the dance hall in Marfa," she says. "I got the idea to write a quick thing on the backs. Then I bought other mid-century chairs and wrote on them." The endeavor has turned into a cottage industry. Hill's compositions, which are now typeset and silkscreened onto cotton canvas and upholstered onto chairs or made into pillows, read like passages from a pulp fiction novella. A chair in her Houston condo pays homage to the Texas cowboy: "He rode in on a dust storm — from somewhere on the Rio Grande — spurs jingling — hell in his holster." Another from her collection of stories pokes fun at the New York art cognoscenti occasionally seen on the streets of Marfa: "He flew in from somewhere on the east coast — a black leather clad art collector — cool and crisp as a dry martini." She's currently busy working on site- specific stories for the W Hotel, which has asked her to create custom pillows for some of their properties outside of Texas, she says. Her word- works on fabric — as unserious as she attempts to make them — take us back to the early days of conceptualism, when the graphic beauty of words lined up on a page was as much a part of the art as what was said. Art, interior design, writing … In many ways, Hill has come full circle. "I'm not an artist, but I work more like an artist," she says. "I create as I go. I don't have a plan; things just evolve, and one thing leads to another. Sometimes I go back and make changes, or get a great idea right in the middle of things. Each project has a personality that starts to come through when you open it up." The bath includes a Zuma tub, which Hill has left unfinished, and a Philippe Starck-designed toilet for Duravit. Part of Hill's extensive book collection. In the living area, a Ligne Roset sofa keeps company with a vintage Eames lounge chair. In Hill's bedroom, a rack holds clothes and shoes. Rolled woven mat set on its side serves as a space divider between the bath area. Sugar pillows from Urban Outfitters. Like the entire apartment, even the bath area doesn't have a door. The walls, ceiling and floor have been left in raw concrete. Bamboo-sticks screen from Kuhl-Linscomb. Zuma tub. Ingo Maurer chandelier. Metalwork in the bath and throughout the house is custom-made by George Sacaris Studio. Detail of custom Bertoia chairs from Cast + Crew in Marfa.