Steadman and Moon Trax artist Tiger Tateishi. He focuses on th incongruent feelings of beauty and chaos that are present in eac artists’ work. “(Tateishi) makes these paintings that are laid out like a page of a comic. A sequence unfolds in panels arranged on the page (or canvas) and it feels like a story is being told, or science is being explained, but at the same time the imagery is so weird that it is too alien to fully understand. It gives the same feeling that I get whe looking through Codex Seraphinianus. It’s almost a sickening feeling Like seasickness. Like my feet are on the ground of a real place, but can't quite get my bearings. TBH I can onl in small doses. But I marvel at it. I vel at how it works. How eff ective it is. I marvel at how something can be both beautiful and unnerving at the same time. “An early infl uence of mine is Ralph Steadman. He has a book called America that I saw when I was a id. I loved the energy and freedom d emotion depicted in his splashy scratchy technique; grotesque and fun. But specifi cally there were some drawings in that book depicting Disneyland that changed me. Having grown up in LA, I had gone to Disneyland several times and in my young mind it was indisputably the best place in the world. Then I saw his images of Mickey and friends as looming monsters, and kids and parents looking dirty and ugly and miserable, and it felt like he pulled back the veil. He showed me that the way Disney presents itself is not necessarily the reality of the situation. If Disneyland is not, in fact, the happiest place on earth, what other truths are out there waiting to be uncovered?” OLIVIA BROWN Olivia Brown is a senior artist at Meow Wolf. She is an art director and fabricator for massive projects in Convergence Station, including the Transit Station and Numina. She is the lead artist on several projects within Omega Mart and one of the designers of the Charter Offi ce experience in House of Eternal Return. She is inspired by artists who use sensation, movement and tension to take viewers out of the material world. “I look to Yoko Ono. Her Fluxus works helped develop the idea of sensation as art and to de-emphasize the material. She’s very experimental and isn’t afraid to depict her discomfort. “I’m also drawn to Terence Nance. Nance makes fi lm that feels both fractured and whole. He uses surrealism to identify and free tension. That’s something I’m attracted to and strive for. “Finally, musicians Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s most recent album Topical Dancer is fun and challenging in the best ways possible. I love how they use humor and a really honed craft to move bodies and pivot minds in the right directions.” CAITY KENNEDY Meow Wolf co-founder and senior creative director Caity Kennedy hardly needs an introduction. Her keystone projects include the Forest in House of Eternal Return and the wondrous, sylvan Numina anchor space in Convergence Station. One of Caity’s major inspirations is the unparalleled Mattress Factory museum in Pittsburgh. d Mattress Factory a number of times a kid, even a small kid, and was always ery excited to go back. Whether the work in a room is gorgeous, aweinspiring, confusing, intellectually challenging, physically challenging or simply surprising, it enveloped you in itself, in those qualities, in a way that made it impossible to look y, impossible to dismiss and move Dreamlike in that way; inescapable unfamiliarity. And out front, the outdoor pieces that were dug down into the ground were so captivatingly mysterious! That is immersion, but it is especially powerful when all that immersive work is all collected together. The building becomes legendary, the boundaries become questionable. Is the elevator an installation? Oh there is another building around the corner that used to be a house? Is there art along the way? It's so easy to get lost. “The nearby house has student and emerging artists work. I went back on my way home after college and saw the nearby house full of installations for the fi rst time. It wasn't just a house with art in it — the house was transformed. It was the medium to react to and with. I was already an installation artist and an immersive muralist, loving most to completely cover the interior of a room in murals, creating an illusory secondary space over the architectural details of the fi rst. So this playful, but often also high concept art house was right up my alley. I was charmed and inspired and hungry for more!” CHAZ JOHN Last but not least, Chaz John is an artist and fabricator who led the factory mural project in Omega Mart and applies his considerable talents to projects like OM’s whale hearts and the vacuformed trash bags and tra sculptures in Convergence Station. “I like things that spark joy, you know? Like Ozzy Osbourne, Professor Honeydew (from the Muppets) and miniature trains.” MW: Honeydew is an interesting choice for joy because he discovers something fantastic, which immediately causes a horrible disaster for Beaker. “Yeah, that’s life, dude. The dan wheel of chance, as they say.” Thanks to all Meow Wolf artists who shared their time for this piece about the grand (and strange) things that inspire us. We collected far more leads than we can use in this single article so stay tuned for an update with even more Meow Wolfers sharing the people, places and things that drive them as creatives. BILLIAM IS A NARRATIVE LEAD AT MEOW WOLF. HE’S INSPIRED BY TECHNO, THE WORKING CLASS AND PITTSBURGH REGIONALISMS LIKE “YINZ” AND “N’AT.” GET TICKETS TO MEOW WOLF’S HOUSE OF ETERNAL RETURN IN SANTA FE, NM, CONVERGENCE STATION IN DENVER, CO AND OMEGA MART IN LAS VEGAS, NV: MEOWWOLF.COM/VISIT 27
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