ANGEL ELOC A DIVINE PEEK INTO ONE OF THE BIGGEST INSTALLATIONS AT THE UPCOMING MEOW WOLF HOUSTON BY ERIN BARNES | CHARACTERS BY COLE BEE WILSON | PHOTOS BY KATE RUSSELL The iconography of cowboy culture unfolds into vast vistas of possibility and freedom … Plus some pretty excellent boots. Western style and its corresponding hats, spurs and chaps are experiencing a moment in pop culture: Beyoncé released her wildly popular Cowboy Carter album, and artists like Orville Peck have been breathing new life into the classic Western archetype for some years. Being a lonesome cowboy can come with a lot of heartbreak, and not just the kind when your woman leaves you and your truck dies. It’s the kind of heartbreak of growing up in a culture that you love that doesn’t love you back. Maybe you’re artistic, indoorsy, sensitive, neurodivergent, queer, or just plain strange. Meow Wolf senior artist Cole Bee Wilson understands this push and pull. A fifth generation Texan, he grew up between San Antonio and Bandera, TX doing idyllic cowboy things on his grandparents’ cattle ranch: driving trucks, riding horses and working side-by-side with his grandpa. He now regularly volunteers on a cattle ranch in the Galisteo Basin outside Santa Fe, NM and still loves everything that comes with the lifestyle, including its culture and music. I met with him at Citizens Of Montrose, a welcoming coffee spot in Houston’s hip, artistic, queer neighborhood to learn more about the installation. Over breakfast Wilson told me, “Country music is one of the only types of music where you can be poetic and corny and tragic and funny all at the same time in the span of two minutes and 30 seconds.” The mythos of the honky tonk watering hole is like an oasis in the desert of the soul … and Wilson wants to create one where everyone No. 129 is welcome. That’s where Cowboix Hevvven, “a liminal, afterlife, purgatory, honky tonk, dive bar for angels, demons, aliens, space/time travelers and various other weirdos of the cowboix variety,” comes in (pulled from a concept statement by the artist). Wilson is Lead Artist and Creative Director on this immersive and interactive art installation, which will feature a functioning bar and restaurant in the upcoming Houston Meow Wolf exhibition. Wilson continued in the statement, “Cowboix Hevvven is an interdimensional pocket where the divine and profane coexist and fluctuate with ease. Cowboix Hevvven is an ACTUAL FUNCTIONING bar that serves tasty dive bar food and beverages, based on the hole-in-thewall honky tonk dives and dance halls of Central Texas such as Sam’s Town Point, Longhorn Tavern, The Lonesome Rose, and Lola’s Depot. Batsy is the owner of this notable pitstop for queer weirdo free ramblin’ rodeo heads of the afterlife and beyond. Each colorful character has a rich, long and sometimes lonesome tale to tell: devilish days of glitz and glamour, and the dizzying heights of honky tonk angels. There’s a seat at the bar for all y’all here in Cowboix Hevvven.” “Cowboix” is spelled as such so that anyone can be a cowboix. And everyone, I mean every type of being in every type of existence, is here. The colorful cast of interdimensional angels and demons each have involved backstories revealing trysts, gambling debts and polycules. Batsy, an ancient and powerful demi-god, has transitioned from being worshiped as one of the most powerful beings in the universe to a relaxed bar owner. Together with her partner, Angel, they’ve turned a
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