Meow Wolf Omega Mart is the Cat’s Meow

Posted on by Diversions LA

For once, what happened in Vegas shouldn’t stay in Las Vegas. Meow Wolf, the art collective that has successfully merged critical acclaim, creative force, and financial success, has done it again with Omega Mart, an interdimensional grocery store.

When I first viewed the original Meow Wolf installation in Santa Fe a number of years ago, I was wowed by the completely unimagined complexity of it. The House of Eternal Return presented a combination of immersive art and supernatural haunted house that was mind-bending.

Approaching the Omega Mart concept in Las Vegas was different going in: I knew the kind of artist-realized amusement-park-for-the-senses that I’d experience there.

The Las Vegas iteration is enormous – some 50,000-square-feet located at Las Vegas’ Area 15, and the location’s star.

It seems trivial to say it is enormously clever and humorous, but it is that. Encouraging visitors to uncover a mystery involving aliens, corporate greed, and a take-over by AI, visitors enter through a surreal version of a mega grocery store, explore an alien farming world, a series of corporate offices and mind-alteration areas, a factory, and even enjoy a ride down a fast slide (below) over the course of three floors.

Both cautionary fairytale and pure American success story gone mad, Omega Mart is brilliantly subversive and witty.

My favorite section is the large scale grocery section, with its frightening alien meat counter, strange cat foods, dice-rather-than-pit bearing avocados, zippered avocados (I mean, why not?), and strategically placed video monitors that provide visitors with an introduction to the founder of Omega Mart and his disappearance.

I could’ve spent hours exploring each hilarious food item and laundry product, and there is so much visual stimulation and color that it would be easy for any visitor to do so. But onward, and inward.

Slipping into the back of the store, from one entrance portal or another, the next space is the alien farming community, in which people are disappearing, and a seemingly idyllic existence with surreal flowers and swirling colors. Continue on into the ominous factory space, or travel upstairs to the employee break room and take in a few training videos that will help you find clues as to just exactly what’s going on with the company behind Omega Mart’s products.

The corporate area of Omega Mart includes an interactive AI robot, more clue-filled video portals, and employee cubicles and offices in which attendees can search through computers and files to uncover more mysteries. Branching off from this area are research labs and conference rooms, areas that I thought of as pure interactive art, including a musical room, tunnels of lights, mirrored experiences that seem to defy reality.

All in all there are over 250 art works created by more than 325 artists. The adventure of Omega Mart is to some extent a customized experience, much like the best of video gaming. Linger in one section or another, follow whatever plotline or discovery portal you wish. The basic premise is that the grocery store’s success and its products, as well as the disappearance of its founder and other individuals, are all connected to something called “The Source,” harvested and used by the corporation behind Omega Mart.

There is a resistance, the disappeared, the store staff – follow the story arc you wish. The only aspect you truly must follow is the art. Digital and in constant liquid motion or brightly rooted as the strange flowers growing on one entrance portal’s wall, there is something new to “not miss” around every corner.

Approximately 7 times larger than Meow Wolf’s original Santa Fe installation, and with a more layered and contextual storyline, Omega Mart is both brilliantly entertaining and glittering; over the top and even a bit overwhelming – at least when wearing a pandemic-safe KN-95. It is the ultimate in Las Vegas showmanship seamlessly merged with accessible, stimulating, and often dazzlingly original art.

If you’d like a souvenir, you can purchase one before you leave the Omega Mart store – perhaps you’d like a can of “Camel’s Dream of Mushroom Soup” for dinner, or a pair of lettuce sandals. And while you’re there, pick up a few cans of pigeon mousse for your kitty.

Viva Las Vegas.

Omega Mart is located at 3215 S. Rancho Dr., Las Vegas, NV 89102

  • Genie Davis; photos: Genie Davis & provided by Meow Wolf

Sya Warfield Creates Pulp Idols

Posted on by Diversions LA

Working in mixed media on wood, artist Sya Warfield has created a new series, Pulp Idols. Completed throughout the last year, seven of these layered works will open this weekend in a new Santa Clarita gallery space.

Consisting of seven, immediately recognizable images, Warfield used photographic pulp transfer, combined with water-based pigment inks, acrylic ink, crackle paste medium, metal leaf, vintage newsprint and spray paint.

Warfield’s work is quite alive in her depiction of iconic and well-known figures and the ideas associated with them. Elevating these images into fresh focus, the artist has shaped entirely original portraits, centering them in a way in which each individual’s character, cultural importance, and era, are also a part of each artwork.

Warfield says she chose to create “portraits of key figures who have effected change within our societies and cultural lives… [such as] controversial 1980s-era artist Keith Haring, pictured with one of his own designs on his t-shirt; and Andy Warhol, [with] heavy bangs across his eyes and a constellation of stars applied to his shoulders.”

Other images include those of Frida Kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Nelson Mandela, and Malala Yousafzai. A direct and intensive gaze is the dominant feature of the artist’s evocation of Kahlo; her works featuring Monroe and Madonna exude a hypnotic sense of both power and sexuality that pull the viewer into these popular stars’ worlds.

She also includes a kindly smiling Mandela and a serene yet watchful image of Yousafzai. While the latter two images are inextricably bound to global politics and just causes, and Kahlo is a passionate icon for art and women’s issues, Warhol, Haring, Monroe, and Madonna are true pop – or pulp – idols.

According to Warfield, “The series invites viewers to reflect on the complexity of life, the passing of time and the ongoing ripples of influence we experience and can exert positively in the world.”

The work also includes a message rooted in “elements of the Japanese notion of Wabi Sabi, deliberate imperfection. There are spiritual elements to this series which include the energies that surround [these] people supported by colors and textures,” Warfield says.

Each image seems to emerge from the wood it is created upon, as if rising from underwater, or the passage of time. It has a resonance that builds upon the featured image, transforming and elevating it. The viewer might consider not only each subject as an icon in society, but due to the image Warfield creates from it, as an updated and secular evocation of a worshipped religious icon.

Her images have layered, gilded quality reminiscent of the Byzantine images that decorated churches from the 4th century on. In a way, the viewer can see Warfield’s idols as just as venerated in our modern culture as the figures of early saints.

Pulp Idols represents just one aspect of Warfield’s work. The artist has created images using photography, video, and mixed media, including the process used in her current work utilizing the “photographic pulp transfer process combined with water-based pigment inks and acrylic inks,” along with a variety of other elements.

“My work has definitely evolved over the years,” Warfield asserts, explaining that she is always seeking new challenges. She’s specifically looking forward “to working bigger and creating installations. I want viewers to be curious, inspired, and hopeful.”

To that end, Warfield has also recently completed a public art commission of 2 utility boxes in Del Rey.

Her current Pulp Idols exhibition is on view starting this weekend in Santa Clarita’s new Canyon Country Community Center. The show opens October 30 at 10 a.m. and runs until December 16th.

Santa Clarita’s new cultural hub, the community center is located at 18410 Sierra Highway, Canyon Country, CA, 91387.

The exhibition is also on view virtually on artsteps.com.

  • Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist

Fear Grounds at the Fair Grounds – Ventura Nights

Posted on by Diversions LA

If you’re ready for some Halloween fun by the sea – and don’t mind a bit of a drive from Los Angeles, Fear Grounds at Surfer’s Point Live on the Ventura Fair Grounds should fit the bill. Open Friday-Saturday for the next three weekends, and from Tuesday, October 26th through Sunday October 31st, this lower key, three-maze haunting event is a nice alternative to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal or Knott’s Scary Farm this year.

Produced by haunt-creating pro Edward Marks, the event features the Terror Trail, The Fright Train, and The Cage. There is also a beer garden with other alcoholic beverages called The Dead End, a food stand, and copious picnic tables decorated with oversize pumpkins. Scareactors and other entertainers, such as a stilt walker or two, and spooky femme fatales twirling colorful hula hoops, traverse the area.

Once inside the main gates, The Terror Trail is the most elaborate and satisfying scare, an approximately mile-long journey past a variety of set pieces and talented scareactors as witches, evil clowns, demented killers, ghosts and the like. From bloody wrecks to covens and monsters, there’s something new popping out of the dark around every corner.

The Fright Train is a smaller attraction in which guests ride the dusty backroads of the fairgrounds in a tram, heading past a variety of scares, lit-up Halloween decor, and best of all, passing through a bevy of chain-saw wielding evil doers and into a warehouse from which suspended cocoons containing dismembered bodies hang.

The Cage leads guests through a contained series of metal fencing winding inward, as dark monsters prowl through the chain links and bars, waiting to rattle nerves and torment the unwary.

All three are completely outdoors, well distanced, and thoughtfully laid out for pandemic times.

Marks says “Growing up in California, Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays…guests [will] test their fears at this one-of-a-kind beachside journey…”

Fear Grounds at the fairgrounds is located at 10 W. Harbor Blvd. in Ventura; for tickets and more info visit https://www.surferspointlive.com/fear-grounds.

  • Genie Davis, photos by Genie Davis and Jack Burke

LACP 6th Annual Fundraising Gala Comes to You

Posted on by Diversions LA

Coming to you live, and available globally, the Los Angeles Center of Photography’s Fundraising Gala and Auction will open October 2nd at 5 p.m. – virtually. 

Mona Kuhn

The event will honor photographic artist Mona Kuhn with receipt of the Stieglitz Award; the event will be hosted by Ben Giroux and include a number of special guest appearances including photographer and actor Norman Reedus, co-star of The Walking Dead. The Stieglitz Award will be presented by LACMA’s Curator of Photography, Rebecca Morse.

The event is an important one: for 22 years, LACP has worked to build a community of photographers and to support photography as an art form.

LACP offers classes, workshops, exhibitions, portfolio reviews, mentorships, lectures and events for photographers of all ages, interests and skills. Prior to the pandemic, LACP also provided ongoing weekly after-school classes focused on underserved youth through Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Los Angeles. 

The annual benefit is an essential element of LACP’s mission and work, as programming covers only 50% of the LACP’s operational costs.

But you can help support the organization’s mission by bidding now on works by acclaimed photographers as well as a variety of experiences, and bring this gala fundraiser to a true photo-finish.

As to the auction itself, works are viewable now through October 4th on Artsy at https://www.artsy.net/auction/los-angeles-center-of-photography-benefit-auction-2021. They include donations from a wide range of collectors and artists, such as Sam Abell, Jeff Bridges, Alejandro Cartagena, Ann Cutting, Keith Carter, Greg Gorman, Lois Greenfield, Pamela Hanson, Michael Kenna, Gerd Ludwig, Joe McNally, Sheila Metzner, Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Ruth Orkin Foundation, Herb Ritts Foundation, Rose Gallery, Josephine Sacabo, Susan and Eugene Spiritus and the Susan Spiritus Gallery, Aline Smithson, Art Streiber, Ami Vitale, Ellen Von Unwerth, among others.

In addition to the photographic art work, LACP is also auctioning a variety of experiences such as a four-hour portrait sitting with honoree Mona Kuhn, a personal tour in LA with artist Matthew Rolston, and more, all viewable now at https://www.charitybuzz.com/support/5549. 

As the gala’s honoree for the 2021 Stieglitz Award, Kuhn is renowned for her large-scale photographs of the human form, which reflects upon themes of spiritual connection and solidarity. 

To view an exhibition of Kuhn’s work and a selection of auction photographs in person, LACP’s Culver City Gallery, is offering viewings through October 7th, Tuesday-Saturday, 10-5. The gallery is located at 5566 West Washington Blvd.

And don’t miss the gala – coming right to your living room. Get a front row seat:

Virtual Event platform: https://directorscut.productions/hosting/los-angeles-center-of-photographys-6th-annual-fundraising-gala/

To purchase tickets: https://lacphoto.org/events/6th-annual-fundraising-gala-and-auction-2021/

  • Genie Davis, photos provided by LACP