Houston’s New Meow Wolf Wants to Take You to Cowboy Purgatory — A Longtime Artist Gives a Sneak Peek at What to Expect

On its own, the idea of a honky-tonk dive bar set in the afterlife might seem a bit bizarre. But in Cole Wilson’s line of work, it fits right in. And it soon will be part of the new Meow Wolf Houston.

Wilson — a 39-year-old artist, musician and self-proclaimed “fifth-generation Texan cowboy weirdo” — has spent the last 11 years working for Meow Wolf, the Santa Fe, New Mexico based arts and entertainment company known for its surreal, immersive art experiences. Think Disney World meets a giant escape room meets psychedelics. 

The four Meow Wolf worlds currently open — The House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, Convergence Station in Denver, Omega Mart in Las Vegas, and The Real Unreal in Grapevine — bring visitors into multisensory, bizarre universes, each with a different storyline and loosely joined by a larger Meow Wolf megaverse. Each location’s nonlinear, maze-like map of maximalist environments — joined by hidden doors, portals and secret passageways — means that no two Meow Wolfs are the same.

Having been involved in the creation of all four immersive art lands, Wilson knows Meow Wolf well. He spoke on Zoom from his car, parked outside of the 32,000-square-foot warehouse in the Bayou City’s Fifth Ward that will soon become Meow Wolf Houston, the newest location. He will be in town for several more months to work on the site, and in particular, on his brainchild — a purgatorial dive bar dubbed Cowboix Hevvven. 

Meow Wolf Houston’s Honky Tonk and Restaurant Firsts

As the first full working bar and restaurant situated within a Meow Wolf, it will be a major anchor space in this new Houston art world. The bar’s unusual name, Wilson says, is about spectrums and gray areas — ”cowboix” is a gender neutral term for cowboy, and the three V’s in “hevvven” paradoxically evoke arrows pointing down to Hell. 

This project is four years in the making. The idea came to Wilson during the winter of 2020, while in Nevada working on the installation of Meow Wolf Las Vegas. Wilson was sipping wine in a hot tub with his friend when he says the idea hit him “like a bolt of lightning.” 

“I know what I’m going to do next,” Wilson recalls telling his friend, fellow Meow Wolf artist Matt King. “It’s going to be a honky tonk for cowboy angels and cowboy demons. It’s going to be purgatory.

“It’s going to be beautiful and it’s going to be disgusting. It’s going to be shiny and slimy. It’s going to be heinous and righteous.” 

Now, as creative director and lead artist of Cowboix Hevvven, Wilson makes sure his personal touch is felt throughout the space. An interactive jukebox in the bar plays music written by Wilson under 30 pseudonymous band names. In another part of the room, a sculpture of a demon stands outside a phone booth, crying mineral oil tears into a beer bottle. Wilson shaped the head and hands of this creature, whose name is Eloc — Cole spelled backward. A sculptural tribute to Wilson’s friend King, who passed away in 2022, radiates light in the room. 

“I’m illustrating things, I’m drawing things, I’m sculpting things, I’m painting things,” Cole says.  “I’m fucking shit up intentionally.”

Cowboys and creating are entwined in Cole Wilson’s DNA. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Wilson bounced around several cities before landing in his family’s hometown of San Antonio at age four. He grew up spending weekends on his grandparents’ cattle ranch.

“I don’t have a memory of a time I couldn’t ride a horse,” he says.

Becoming a Meow Wolf Artist

Wilson’s interest in the arts began at an early age. He was forced to repeat the first grade after drawing turtles all over his homework assignments instead of completing them. For a childhood birthday gift, he asked his mother for a beanbag chair and a keyboard, which he and his brother would use to compose music. (Both are now professional musicians.)

After graduating from a magnet arts high school, Wilson moved to New Mexico to attend the College of Santa Fe, where he studied art, music and political science. It was during these college years that The Apple Miner Colony, Wilson’s band at the time, was invited by a friend to play at an opening for an arts collective. That friend was Vince Kadlubek, one of the founders of Meow Wolf. 

For several years, Cole Wilson functioned as a satellite member of Meow Wolf, participating in various installations between his band’s gigs. In 2013, he was hired as a sound engineer and then part of the art and fabrication team, Now, he is a senior artist.

Wilson only gives himself partial credit for the conception of Cowboix Hevvven. The rest, he says, is a result of the universe trying to “speak its truth” through him and his work. 

“Our goal is to act as loyal, graceful, diligent, loving portals to allow that truth to speak itself,” Cole Wilson tells PaperCity. “I’m just trying to stay out of the universe’s way — and listen. And do the best I can to do its will.”

It makes sense that a Meow Wolf career would be marked by the serendipitous and surreal. In March of 2013, Wilson spent 10 days in San Antonio installing Nimbus, a show created by Meow Wolf for the Luminaria Festival in Hemisfair Park. The schedule coincided with his 28th birthday. That day, while standing atop a ladder a dozen feet in the air, Wilson began to feel lightheaded.

He barely had time to scramble to the ground and rest his head on the concrete floor before beginning to pass out. While in this state, Wilson experienced something that brought tears to his face.

“I started thinking about everybody that I love and all of the people that they love, and all of the people that those people love,” Wilson recalls. “And I felt this staticky, conscious-unconscious moment of touching a massive web of people who show up for each other with total love.

“And I looked up, and the buzz faded away, and I saw this room of dedicated, beautiful dreamers just kicking so much ass and making all this beautiful art. And I was like, ‘I fucking love this.’ ” 

That collaborative spirit still inspires him. The night before the Zoom, Wilson stayed late at the new Meow Wolf Houston site, as he often does, to “Sit in a space and listen for it to tell (him) what it wants.” Wilson won’t reveal details about this specific room yet, but the effect it had on him was palpable. 

“I was just absolutely slack jawed, blown away, moved to the brink,” he says. “I could see all of these different artists’ styles and touch, and they’re all weirdly, sculpturally water-colored together in this communal Zeitgeist moment. It’s a weird Venn Diagram of consciousnesses that creates this gorgeous tapestry of creativity.” 

Wilson feels incredibly lucky to be surrounded by the “wizards and geniuses” of the Meow Wolf Houston team — a group of more than 500 people, including 45-plus Houston-based artists and an Art Team Task Force largely from Santa Fe, spanning disciplines from sculpture, painting and puppeteering to installation, lighting design and tech fabrication.

Cowboix Hevvven, as with every other Meow Wolf space, is a testament to what is possible when everyone gets to leave a stamp of creativity.

“I may be the consciousness that was the portal for the universe to speak this weird idea,” Wilson says. “But it was a team of hundreds of people who put all of their heart into this that makes it what you see.”

Meow Wolf Houston, named Radio Tave, will open Thursday, October 31, 2024. It is located at 2103 Lyons Avenue. More than 45 Houston artists are involved, including Trenton Doyle Hancock, Kill Joy, El Franco Lee II, DUAL, Input/Output, Jasmine Zelaya, Fat Tony and Afsaneh Aayani. Learn more here.