Meow Wolf, a Santa Fe creative secret

(http://www.examiner.com/x-3104-Albuquerque-International-Travel-Examiner~y2009m2d15-Meow-Wolf-a-Santa-Fe-creative-secret)

February 15, 4:44 PM
by Kristin Carlson,
Albuquerque International Travel Examiner


Indoor Winter Activities: Meow Wolf opened their most recent exhibit Friday the 13th.


Tucked into an unmarked warehouse on a rather deserted corner of Second Street in Santa Fe, a community of artists is busily drawing, painting, pounding nails, growing plants, and following other creative pursuits.  The only sign of life when seen from the outside is perhaps a discarded couch near a dead tree, sometimes containing a couple of paint splattered twenty-somethings with dirty fingernails smoking a cigarette.  It comes as a surprise to open the door and feel like you’ve stepped inside something akin to a day-glo Grateful Dead Nintendo game, slash comic book, slash fantasy garden world.

I visited the Meow Wolf space about three days ago to write a preview piece on their current show, “Indoor Winter Activities.”  If you're wondering, "What the hell is Meow Wolf?," please click there.

When I returned for the opening Friday night, I was shocked at how much additional work they had accomplished in that short amount of time.  Textures and colors covered absolutely every surface in multiple layers, and hung throughout the air between.

All signs of bare floor in the building had been intricately painted with swirling patterns in numerous colors; wooden stumps and a sand box lined the wall at the base of some hand-drawn trees;  colossal rainbow dragonfly bugs hung semi-hidden throughout the other projects; a tinfoil skull jutted from a wall of astroturf. New drawings had been added to the walls; new curiosities hung from the ceiling; a clod of daffodils grew beneath a heat lamp.  The space, which had looked generally full already on Wednesday, had changed completely by Friday- it was now truly brimming with oddities.

Meow Wolf’s first anti-theme show- offered simply as a chance for all of the art collective’s members to produce whatever sorts of projects they wanted in, on, and around the space- seemed to my eye to gel more than previous attempts at following a particular theme (Halloween’s “Horror,” or last summer’s “Biome Neuro Norbe,” for instance).  

Perhaps the members are beginning to come increasingly together as a community of workers, playing off each others’ ideas, feedback, and aesthetics.  There were literal and conceptual threads to be found in the work, and a sort of blossoming of previous beginnings- the sort which only happen when a group has spent many, many hours together.  The impression was one of team work, long work, and hard work rather than ad-hoc.

The group of young locals has charged themselves with the high purpose of filling a perceived gap in the Santa Fe art community, often a more polished and commercialized market targeted for older professionals from other states. Unlike your typical art venue, there is nothing for sale here. This recent exhibit is not to say that the gritty, youthful edge has been lost, either.  On the contrary, I think the edge and the purpose have become a bit more clear to us the audience with the group’s new larger space, and the apparent confluence of thoughts within a looser, non-themed framework.  

Meow Wolf attendees are invited to appear in costume. I saw several, including a man in a large yellow chicken suit, a cartoonish cowboy, a mermaid, and a number of mis-matched multi-colored thrift store concoctions.  This added to the general atmosphere of irony and controlled confusion.  The “Indoor Winter Activities” event is presented as an ongoing a late-night party from 6-10pm on Fridays and Saturdays, complete with donation box, cheap beer, and pineapple rinds for snacking.