Art WWOOFing

A while back, I blew a year wandering around Europe, and ended up spending a large portion of my time WWOOFing. World Wide Opportunites on Organic Farms is a loose networking platform helping small, family-run organic farms connect with potential volunteers who exchange their unskilled labor for a temporary place to stay and three square meals, along with the opportunity to learn what goes into living sustainably on a small parcel of land.

I did my fair share of couch-surfing and staying in hostels, but while there were plenty of good times to be had, in no other situation did I develop almost familial bonds of friendship with those around me as readily and quickly as I did when WWOOFing. You could spend a week in a hostel without really getting to know anyone, but spend six hours in the sun, digging a trench with some English kid, in an Eastern European village with no running water, and that dude will inevitably be like a brother to you before the trench is finished. I hadn't experienced anything similar since. Until recently.

The last week or two, I've spent a few hours almost every day over at one of the two prefabrication warehouses for Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return, a multimedia art installation set to open in the old Silva Lanes building later this year. I initially went over looking for a story. I had heard a lot of gossip, before my first visit, about what the art collective is up to, how it's run, and who it's made up of, describing them as everything from "the creative force that will reinvent our city's image in the contemporary art world" to "the poster children for hipsterism in Santa Fe," but the only people with opinions seemed to be those who were in no way involved.

For all I know, those could both be accurate descriptions, in their own way. I'm a philistine when it comes to all things visual. When I refer to the tenants of Canyon Road as "overstuffed hacks," I'm not qualified to judge their artistic abilities or creative vision, it's just a comment on the personality they exude as a community. It could be totally accurate that some of the people I've met in the past weeks are hipsters, or aloof, or any of the impressions on which I based my preconceived notions of Meow Wolf as a group. What I do know is that, the first day I showed up, I learned how to make an 8-foot-tall tree trunk out of scrap lumber. And every day since, I've helped a guy build a life-sized mastodon skeleton out of moldable plastic. And the people I have met and helped so far are all supremely grateful for the assistance, engaging with their ideas and totally open to outside input and creative chaos contributing to the execution of their vision.

I can't quite verbalize yet what Meow Wolf is about. Many of the artists are older than I expected, but I was also surprised to discover just how large a proportion of the creative people in Santa Fe my age and younger are involved in the project. I can say that the people at its core seem to be the ones that showed up. They showed up today and yesterday. They'll show up tomorrow. They showed up eight years ago, before there was any hype. I can't yet say for sure why, but it's interesting to me that the only part of tomorrow I'm really looking forward to is going and making a thing out of stuff with my hands for a few hours in the afternoon.

The point is often the least interesting part of the conversation. Have one with the author: miljen@sfreporter.com


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