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Friday the 13th art opening: banana pajamas better than valentines

February 11, by Kristin Carlson, Albuquerque International Travel Examiner

Valentine’s Day is a silly and ridiculous holiday according to some.  Perhaps you are looking for an alternative.  On Friday the 13th, Meow Wolf art collective in Santa Fe offers up a striking or disturbing array of “Indoor Winter Activities.”  Visitors will be engulfed in a full-immersion creative installation as well as live music by DJs Dirtgirl and Bodyslut (actual titles). This weekend marks the opening of the combination art experience and party, and the one year anniversary of its hosts.  Approximately twenty minds aged 19 to 39 have contributed time and work to the second show in the group’s enormous space on Second Street.    

      

“It truly seems limitless, filling the space in the new building,” said member Quinn Tincher, 25.  For this event, Quinn spent two months filling a sizeable corner with drawings and wooden cutouts from the floor up and across part of the ceiling.  Fellow artist Matt has painted the adjacent corner with interlocking figures and hung the rafters with webs of multi-colored yarn.

      

“The idea was to get everyone in the space doing something they’re interested in, and then let a narrative emerge out of the projects. The title has had a strange unintended impact on us thinking about the seasons.  A lot of the exhibit has to do with spring; there are growing plants, vegetables, and lots of colors,” said member Sean Di Ianni, 24. Nearby, member Amanda’s swinging bits of honeycomb and bodies of dead bees on string recall a young and perchance troubled Matthew Barney.  A long film splice by another artist reels around jettisoned bike rims overhead.  

      

 Although each artist is free to make their own work, an evident theme involves found items and recycled materials, in most cases discarded by their original owners and subjected to various forms of reuse and reappropriation.  Sean has built indoor ladders of old rebar to the roof in several locations, and covered them in pen-and-ink xeroxes.  Sprouting potatoes, plastic dogs, and miniature creches perch somewhat precariously on the rungs.   Friday won’t be your gallery type opening with wine and price tags.  Expect more of a loud, late night ball surrounded by innumerable odd items- including a number of eerily suspended Saran wrap and packing tape full body casts- and eclectic personalities.   “We hope people will walk around and get lost in here.  There are lots of small pieces hiding within the overall line and flow to be discovered,” said Quinn.  

        

“It’s always revealing, exciting, and unpredictable when other people come into the space and we get to watch what happens,” said Sean. In the vein of a really gritty PS1 (like if there was PS1 back in the days when New York was still a crack town full of hookers), the group is sometimes argued to fill a hole in the Santa Fe art scene: a largely commercial market for nationally and internationally acclaimed artists from other cities.  Meow Wolf started as an extension of friends who “liked making things,” and has continued to develop as a community of people from various backgrounds with different motivations.  “We’re often referred to as ‘a bunch of enabled eight-year olds,’” Quinn said of the pursuit.  The members are comprised of men and women who live in Santa Fe fulltime and resultingly have residential connections to the place.  Many grew up here. The members also share a commitment to production in a social setting, and slightly romantic view of a working community where people take the time to talk, share, and develop in the process. The organization is managed as a group as much as possible; the name “Meow Wolf” was democratically pulled out of a hat.  Isn’t that a nice thought on Valentine’s Day?  

      

Meow Wolf’s interest in creating community as well as art applies not only to themselves, but also their prospective audience: Q: Your flyer asks people to show up in costume.  Any guesses what they’ll wear?  A: “Color!  Bring some bright colors into this dark and dismal season.” A: “Banana pajamas.  That’s what I’d wear.”