Antique

The Cartoon Kitchen, by Dylan Pommer.

Lindsey Kennedy/Courtesy of Meow Wolf



The Parlor, by Matt King.

Lindsey Kennedy/Courtesy of Meow Wolf



An interior view of the fictional Seligs' house, which was a collaboration of many artists. Here, in the kitchen, a portal — one of many — leads out of the house into the otherworldly beyond (aka Portals Bermuda, a future travel agency).

Lindsey Kennedy/Courtesy of Meow Wolf



Fancy Town, by Matt King.

When you step into the House of Eternal Return, it feels a bit like walking into your family home — and finding yourself lost in a PeeWee's Playhouse on steroids. Or amphetamines. Or better yet, some undiscovered alien narcotic.
Set up in the industrial district of Santa Fe, N.M., the new permanent art exhibition is a far cry from the fine arts galleries and museums for which Santa Fe is known. Think of it instead as a kind of art amusement park, built by an arts collective called Meow Wolf and largely funded by a surprising benefactor: George R.R. Martin.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let's start with the tour: When I arrive around 10 the night before the exhibition opens, dozens of Meow Wolf's 135 artists are scrambling to put the finishing touches on their meticulously crafted installations.

One of those installations, a two-story Victorian house built from scratch, marks the entrance to the exhibition. All around it are uncanny reminders of the Seligs — the fictional family ostensibly lived here. I'm told the family has curiously disappeared after a break in the space-time continuum, and like all visitors, I'm set loose by the artists to explore the interdimensional mystery.

"It's not art that you stand back from and look at," says Chadney Everett, the painter and former film prop-maker who designed the house. "It's art that you interact with and you experience in a very visceral way."



The Aquarium, by Matt King — with fish sculpted by Sarah Bradley.

Like most of the people I meet here, he's got a cultlike dedication to Meow Wolf's vision of immersive, interactive art — and to making it accessible to everyone. Despite suffering from a herniated disk, he's been putting in 14 hours a day to finish.

"It's been really hard, but it's so worth it. We're gonna be open in a couple days, and then I'll rest and fix my spine," he laughs.

I opt to crawl through the family fireplace into a series of prehistoric caves, with a glowing, 12-foot mastodon skeleton at their center. Sculptor Matt Crimmins turned its rib cage into a radiant makeshift marimba.
"We're still trying to work out the kinks, but it's getting there," he says.
The same could be said of Meow Wolf as a whole. Founding member Vince Kadlubek explains that when the collective started eight years ago, it was just a small band of creative 20-somethings who felt out of place in Santa Fe's high-brow art establishment.
"We kind of always felt like we were on the outside looking in."
So, they started their own DIY venue in a defunct barbershop. As the collective grew in size and popularity, Kadlubek says, their immersive shows grew more elaborate.
But they still didn't have a large space of their own.
"We all knew that it could work, but we just didn't have the heavy hitter," Kadlubek says. "We needed somebody to take a risk on us."

We needed somebody to take a risk on us.

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