Meow Wolf’s Extended Universe

The Meow Wolf art collective births an extended universe of immersive art and interactive storytelling across New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado with more to come.
The Meow Wolf art collective births an extended universe of immersive art and interactive storytelling across New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado with more to come.
For all the craft of Hollywood, the ingenuity of Silicon Valley, the eloquence of authors painting the images of alien terrains in our mind's eye, we have not been able to touch these bizarre and fantastical worlds of imagination. And yet, in an industrial corner of Las Vegas, a collective of artists have created a captivating dystopian parallel universe known as Omega Mart. And we can poke and prod every corner of it. In fact, that's the point.
Out in the remote California desert, a debate between art, graffiti, and history rages in slow motion at the Fish Rocks (aka "Whale Rocks" or "Fish Head Rocks,"). These painted rocks off highway 178 trace their origins back to the 1930s. Since then, the question of art vs. graffiti has swirled long enough around this rock outcropping. In the 1970s, the fish faces along with other graffiti that had accumulated over the decades were painted over to restore the natural look of the rocks. Yet, the fish faces prevail as various visitors have restored the fish faces through the years.
I remember visiting the Getty Center around 2004 and being blown away by the gardens. Certainly, the collection of art works inside the Getty represent noteworthy landmarks in art history. Yet, the garden was such a beautiful and deliberate journey that I couldn't help but be drawn outside.
It is a maze of twilight truths. Darkened, mysterious rooms hold strange oddities that might have been picked out of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford or have been designed by an artist inspired by history and the occult. Rooms delve into ancient medical traditions, a tragic actress, trailer parks, early space travel, and a monk's studies into magnetism to explain the divine's intangible but powerful influence in the world.
Most people go to museums to experience professionally curated art. We rely on the road and serendipity to guide our experiences. Such was the case when we had an hour to kill in Colorado Springs and a general heading—one that took us near the house of the kinetic artist, Starr Kempf. While Kempf may be constructing etherial whirligigs beyond this mortal coil, several of his striking structures still grace the front yard of his former home.
When one talks about "found art," I always thought of it as an action by the artist, not the observer.