And yet, and yet. For those many who might have thought that Santa Fe had become a depressing strip mall for the 1%, they were wrong.  Spring has sprung for our ice-bound art scene in the form of Caldera Gallery, 926 Baca Street #6, the most innovative and dangerous gallery cauldron to open in the past year, possibly the decade.

Caldera is part performance art hub, part talent incubator, and part people-powered culture machine. It’s one of the only galleries around that embraces the avant memes of our time: unhorse expectations, embrace ‘authenticity’, and divorce money from art.  Caldera is our local anti-Damien Hirst (“Spots and Sharks and Maggots and Money”) outpost.

THOSE RESPONSIBLE

Sandra Wang and native son Crockett Bodelson, collectively known as SCUBA, along with compatriot Chris Brodsky, are to blame.  Exhausted by the limitations of San Francisco, they came to Saint Assisi’s other namesake, Santa Fe.  Post Due Return, it became clear that artistic opportunities and fresh blood were flowing not just into town, but in town, via some local energies.  “We felt like we could do projects [in Santa Fe] that were on another scale, and do what we really want with people’s art, including our own,” says Bodelson.

THE BIG IDEA

A self-described “artist-run play space”, Caldera’s focus is outreach and experimentation on a “multi-dimensional level”.   The mission is to show art with a strong emphasis on community, to actively engage that community, and to challenge the mainstream.   Bodelson elaborates on this:  “We want people who don’t necessarily paint, who doodle, who think what they’re making is not even art… and put them next to professional artists.  If you get people to be a part of it, all of sudden they’ll want to come back.  Engage people, then people will engage with you.”  An art gallery without an established demographic?  Practice the thought.

ACTION, CROCKETT

Caldera has test-driven these ideas with two very popular shows: Hide and Seek and PS, I Love You.  Hide and Seek entailed a display of maps and tools in the gallery which audiences used, on a location-driven treasure hunt, to seek and find the artwork.  “It came out of the idea: ‘how can we have an art show without the art?’  The first thing that came to mind was treasure hunt-hiding the art, though much (of it) was in plain sight.  It lets the audience take a step back from: ‘This is the art, look at it’.  The adventure, not knowing where it was going, drew them in.”

The most recent show, PS, I Love You, (roughly centered on Valentine’s Day), continued the theme.  For this show, Caldera invited a wide range of artist to create hundreds of envelopes. “Buyers” put a personal message into each envelope.  Then the artists, dressed in hot pink jumpsuits, hand-delivered the work.  Delivery destinations included SITE Santa Fe, local restaurants, a hospital, a house party, and living rooms.  It was a wild success. The presentation “fooled everyone into thinking it was just a singing telegram, but that’s also part of the art piece.”

WHAT’S NEXT

So far the response has been “very, very positive.”  Drawing on this momentum, Caldera is planning a wide range of shows. On February 29^th, Caldera will present Skip’s Day, a dinner-theater event at Counter Culture Café (bonus: part of the proceeds go to support Fine Art for Children and Teens).  Each audience member will get a hand-painted ceramic from Caldera.

Beyond this, ideas for future shows include an annual Hide & Seek, a ‘food as art’ show, and a ‘Survivor’ show, in which artists make what their version of a survival kit.  All will be open to a broad range of creators. “You don’t have to be an artist to make a survival kit.”

Most of all, Caldera wants to bring in new audiences and spread the word.  “We’re trying to run [Caldera] in a way that opens up the demographic that goes to an art gallery.”

Any visit to Caldera will be an adventure, but what’s life without a bit of risk?  And what is art without fresh ideas?

Huffington Post has pics of the famous folks, who came out to celebrate by parading in costume—including Will Ferrell, Harry Connick Jr., Hilary Swank and Cyndi Lauper.

Photo by Skip Bolen/Getty Images

The New York Times reveals other sweet (and salty) treats beyond King Cake, which are also overindulged in today, Fat Tuesday.

Tulane University also got involved on an artistic level, they currently have an art exhibition of Mardi Gras themed work on display. More information here. On exhibit are drawings of the first parade designs.

A float design from the 1886 Krewe of Proteus parade by Carlotta Bonnecaze, from the Tulane Carnival Collection.

And, although the party is dead at the moment, NoLa.com has a live parade cam up and running—live video feeds are set-up in other parts of the city as well. So, for all the interested voyeurs out there—have at it; it could be the closest you’ll get to real thing.

DJ Dirt Girl, polka-dotted with enormous eyeballs on her tights, keeps time with a deep rhythmic beat. Her electronic pulse will zone in and out for the next two hours, summoning a womb experience.  Christopher appears at the podium and stands alongside a projected image of Jacob Ruisdael’s drawing Jewish Cemetery (c.1660).  Reading his own analysis, he recites like an archaic professor boring his students: “On time we rest all things.”  I’m not sure how to contextualize this but it seems profound; perhaps I just learned something I already knew.

On the opposite wall are George Melies’ super-imposed hyper humans cavorting on the moon in Trip to the Moon.  Not part of Meow Wolf’s imaginative enterprise, it nonetheless aligns with a general frenzy and displacement of time’s plodding. Three black cat-suited women sit cross-legged at a bench, working an assembly line.

The first intently cuts white yarn to six inches.  She places the skeins in a neat pile. The second ties these intervals together, uniting a whole into what I interpret as a timeline. The third woman unties the knot that her predecessor just made, while the fourth interrupts occasionally.  A simulated past, present, and future, these black cat-suits institute time only to untie it.

Enclosed by an indefinite audience, the flickerings of Melies’ dated film, the voice of adolescent  pontificators, and the actions of female timekeepers, I conclude that throughout time, no great mind — including Meow Wolf’s collective — has grasped this tricky conceptual nexus.

An interruption of tonight’s scheduled programming:

Evoking Big Brother, Meow Wolf takes over the big screen with a neo-punk futuristic video. Benji speaks in high-pitched tones, voice-altered, about cultural identity and feeling “post-geographic.”  Meow Wolf just coined a hyper-chic term.

An IM conversation plays on screen:

”Yo”

“Wut”

“I’m concerned time is dead”

“I’m skyping u”

With this amendment to Nietzsche, the film continues in a hyperreal aesthetic that I thought only the Japanese could envision.

As the climax of Meow Wolf’s rogue evening, a couple of friends are hanging out on 12/21/12, celebrating the Mayan prophecy. The first scene plays like a broken record, about two minutes on repeat. Just when I think that’s the point, the scene changes and repeats its new sequence several times.  Then again and again, each for shorter intervals until the actors become so self-aware, that they think time is actually lapsing.  It’s the repetition that makes the pretty brunette maniacally scream, “Is this death?”   Another girl stomps her foot and announces, “I refuse to die!” After the of cacophony of anxious hipsters disassociate time from time, their crashing plane ceases and the actors calmly walk out of the cushioned Time Capsule Lounge.

On time we rest, and SITE Santa Fe is closing for the night.

Huffington Post has SNL videos up, and according to the Chicago Tribune‘s music critic Greg Kot, “‘Comeback Kid’ is the closest approximation [on the new album, "Reign of Terror"] of the ultra-catchy singles that peppered “Treats,” but the production is more refined, the claustrophobic aggression of the debut replaced by sweet, wobbly vocals, and a more spacious arrangement.”

But we might not imagine a mural which touts an anti-American slogan like, “Down with U.S.A.,” or depictions of the statue of liberty as a skeleton, which the Associated Press reported February 2, 2012 represents several murals throughout Tehran, Iran—as “Government-sponsored murals became a centerpiece of the Islamic establishment’s image-building machine,” writes the publication in “Revolutionary art: Iran murals gallery of defiance.”

Politically-oriented art offers a context within which to examine American politics. Further, with the media largely controlling American access to information, and our obliviousness to foreign relations clouded by ethnocentricities, it starts to seem that we are more America the Blind, than the free.

Akin to this, Time Magazine’s cover art differs greatly in the United States versus other countries, often subverting overtly controversial topics in favor of more prosaic messages.

Although the streets are an ideal place to splay political art, Tom Molloy chooses to contain his more subtly subversive work inside the white box on the occasion of his show New World. Currently in exhibition at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin through April 14, 2012—Molloy’s sentiments are aimed at the U.S., and interpret the deal-making of politics, the irony of American patriotism, and the error of our democratic ways.

Political art such as Molloy’s calls attention to our ethnocentricities, pushing us to seek alternative news sources, and become active. It’s patriotism in the truest sense of the word, and it’s here in one of our U.S. capital cities.

Molloy includes a c-print, large-format photograph, titled Flag, which depicts an American flag wrapped in plastic with a price sticker, $9.59, and a label which reads, made in China.

Tom Molloy, Flag

Feature image: Tom Molloy, Shake (detail Mubarak/Bush), 2011

Friley has built an impressively dedicated fan base like so many lo-fi indie bands from the 1990s, with a constant onslaught of seven-inchreleases, various compilation tracks and cassingles. Yes, cassingles — and what is most amazing about this is that he is only 23-years-old, so he grew up in the post-cassette world. Of course he also has also toured a lot… From what I have heard and read, Friley recreates Idiot Glee’s songs onstage with just a keyboard and a synthesizer, looping his voice through various effects boxes. After being so perplexed and amazed by Paddywhack over the last few months, I am really curious how well Idiot Glee’s songs will translate live. And, well… I will find out soon enough! Idiot Glee will be performing in Austin on February 17th at St. David‘s Episcopal Church. He will be opening for Islands.

E.A.S.T, or East Austin Studio Tour, has been a cornerstone of the Austin art scene since 2001, and constitutes the coming together of usually 100+ artists with a big opening celebration, often combining efforts with Pump Projects (an art gallery which contains studio space) in—you guessed it—East Austin. EAST was introduced by a few artists living/working in Austin, also involved in Big Medium, a sort of unofficial gallery/official artist collective that has made quite a splash with EAST, a small initiative that has grown exponentially with Shea Little, as Director.

In fact, I was talking to Hannah Roberts, Austinite helping with EAST, last year, and they have expanded to include exhibitions in Dallas on the tour, and it’s a sort-of peche-kucha effect with all the satellite events taking place throughout Texas, during the tour, plus exhibitions and discussions. The EAST folks have done an amazing job of collaborating with numerous venues in Austin to make the event grow, including the Arthouse, which is a huge supporter—just showing how powerful DIY truly is.

So, it’s not surprising that they are expanding their vision, which includes going West. Although the highest concentration of artist is surely in Austin’s East side, Big Medium would like to include artists in other areas of the city as well.

If you are interested in participating, visit: www.westaustinstudiotour.com.

Below, video from EAST:

research, reset, 2012

Begy, who recently began a local artist salon in Santa Fe, received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She splits her time between New York and New Mexico.

Although the artist’s drawings will be on display during this exhibition, her work extends to the sculptural medium as well. Begy carves lifelike objects such as guns from salt blocks, which slowly become less refined and ultimately dissolve.

solicitation1, 2009, carved salt block, 6 x 10 x 2 inches initially

Begy writes of her sculptures and drawings that her work “begins with a narrative that takes place within a given structure and explore triadic relationships and concepts. Sensual/ Scientific/Spiritual. Nurturance/Governance/Destruction.”