In the sixteen years since its Santa Fe, New Mexico, founding, Meow Wolf, the immersive arts and entertainment company, has taken for its mission the all-encompassing task of creating whole worlds out of boxy warehouse spaces. These colorful, maximalist realms exist in their own universe, often with no reference to the worldly places—Las Vegas, Denver, Santa Fe, Grapevine—whence they came. To step into a Meow Wolf installation is to suspend any concept of geography: You could be in an art exhibit in Nevada or a cave on Mars.
But with the opening of its Houston location, the fifth in the larger Meow Wolf multiverse, it seems the company could not resist a few nods to another enterprise invested in its own myth-making and paracosm: the Lone Star State. Designed by more than a hundred artists, including fifty local creators, and featuring a honky-tonk–themed dive bar, Meow Wolf Houston is the company’s most destination-inspired edition yet.
Below are my favorite (read: most Texan) elements of the new Meow Wolf, which opens today:
The Storyline
As with each of Meow Wolf’s permanent shows, the Houston exhibition, titled “Radio Tave,” features a dizzying labyrinth of otherworldly rooms, nooks, and hallways that unfold along a loose storyline set in another dimension. Here, the narrative and the maze begin in the Piney Woods of East Texas at ETNL, a fictional community radio station that has been sucked into another world. With seventies-style wood paneling, a Texas flag, and a multitude of sponsorship plaques for local football teams and festivals, the station feels—at first—like any longtime business you might find in any small town around the state.
As visitors explore ETNL, privy to clues that help reveal the happenstance of the station’s extraterrestrial travel, they’ll find several doors that lead farther into the next dimension and farther into Meow Wolf’s rabbit hole of color, light, and sound.
The Location
The homage to Texas begins with the real-life location of “Radio Tave,” an industrial section of Houston’s historic Fifth Ward that’s known as the home of great Houston artists such as the Geto Boys and Joe Sample and the Crusaders.
Early on in the exhibit, a mural by El Franco Lee II references that history, with depictions of a winged DJ Screw, who grew up spending time in Fifth Ward, manning the turntable near an inscription bearing the names of the neighborhood’s streets—Lyons Avenue (the site of the exhibit), Lee Street, Hirsch Road. The hallway mural continues with paintings of Houston Rockets players, a NASA spaceship, and an oil rig. (An oil rig is also featured prominently in a stained glass piece looming over the exhibit’s lobby.) Speakers in the vicinity broadcast a syrupy, syncopated remix of the chopped and screwed sound DJ Screw created.
Lee, the artist, is himself a Fifth Ward native; his grandmother once owned a bar off Lyons Avenue.
The Soundtrack
As the DJ Screw mural and the exhibit’s theme imply, sound is an integral part of the “Radio Tave” experience. In the lobby, where visitors can buy “Yeehaw to My Haters” bumper stickers and Nudie-inspired pearl-snaps, a house playlist rotates fifty songs written by local artists. Likewise, the jukebox in the exhibit’s honky-tonk bar features thirty selections by Houston musicians, as well as original songs by Meow Wolf employee and Texpat Cole Bee Wilson. Houston rapper Fat Tony contributed tracks to an arcade installation in the exhibition.
The Artists
In each location, Meow Wolf employs local artists to bring its exhibition to fruition. “Radio Tave” is no exception, featuring creators who are not only Houston natives but also crucial members of the city’s art and culture scene.
For example, Gonzo247, a pioneer of Houston’s graffiti and street art movement who was born in the East End in the seventies, served as Meow Wolf’s artist liaison, connecting the Santa Fe company with Texas makers. Thomas Tran, whose murals can be seen throughout the city’s Chinatown and Asiatown, brought his vision of make-believe worlds to a Meow Wolf Houston installation he calls “Bubba Stories.” And puppeteer Afsaneh Aayani, a contributor to the Houston Grand Opera, has created a Persian-inspired room featuring interactive, colorful cubbies holding her sculpture work for “Radio Tave.”
Cowboix Hevvven
As visitors make their way toward the end of the “Radio Tave” maze, they’ll encounter Cowboix Hevvven, an otherworldly honky-tonk that will operate as Meow Wolf’s first-ever food and drink experience within an exhibit.
Designed entirely by Wilson, a fifth-generation Texan who now lives in Santa Fe, the dive is conceived of as purgatory—a place where souls hang out interminably while they await their sentence and a place where every night is Friday night, as the installation’s motto goes.
From the jukebox and run-down pool table to a sign advertising air-conditioning and gravity (in a nod to the unearthly vibe of the whole setting), the installation captures the essence of a true Texas dive bar while also retaining the quirkiness of the Meow Wolf brand. There is, for example, a literal pool shark (a shark dressed up in Western wear) presiding over the billiards area and, of course, a country and western band of extraterrestrial creatures (including one made up of a disco ball) in cute little cowboy hats.
Even the menu is on theme. Visitors can try Frito pie (or “Hot Slop”; “Healthy Hot Slop,” if you’re vegan) and “Malarkey,” also known as a fried bologna sandwich. The Greyhound Special, which includes a Lone Star and a hot dog, is in allegiance to dive-bar pricing ($6).
At the end of my tour of “Radio Tave,” after the overstimulation of the larger experience, I moseyed into Cowboix Hevvven for some Hot Slop (it did indeed taste like Frito Pie) and, my favorite, an especially mustardy Malarkey sandwich that left a tart impression. Sitting in the dim honky-tonk—a setting familiar to me but made bizarre here by Meow Wolf’s quirky touch—I still could have been on Mars, but I also felt a comforting Texas charm thanks to the neon lights and country twang pouring out of the jukebox. I wouldn’t mind spending a few Fridays there, if not eternity.
