DREAMSCAPES LOUNGE ZERO

Convergence Station, Meow Wolf Denver, C Street, Floor 4 RM #432 

I began closely observing and documenting my dreams in 2016. This led me down a path of studying Toltec dream practices. I completed a poetry collection titled Harvest of the Dreamer (unpublished) in 2018. I then curated an immersive event at the Denver Art Museum also titled Harvest of the Dreamer in September 2019. That year, I began working on an album titled Dreams Life and Times of MO SPKX. That musical project took many years to complete. The Dreamscapes Lounge concept came to me in the meantime, while envisioning a collaboration with Chicano elder artist Stevon Lucero. 

Stevon and I had begun establishing a relationship at CHAC Denver (Chicano Humanities and Arts Council). I would pop in on First Fridays on Santa Fe Drive, and we would talk music, poetry, art, and dreams. Amidst this swirl of dreams, Meow Wolf gave me an opportunity to create a room at Meow Wolf Denver. All I could see when I closed my eyes was Stevon’s art. Then other visions of music and motion art swirled through my mind: cascades of dreamscapes that folded in on themselves, looping and expanding like galaxies. 

Stevon and I shared a love of art, poetry, and mysticism. We share common roots in Wyoming. We also shared a commitment to radical imagination rooted in the future. Stevon had spent the greater part of his life tracing back the indigenous roots of Chicano people, encoding Mexica/Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec symbolism into his visual art. His mission was to put God back into art. It appears that putting the indigenous spirit back into the Chicana/o was also part of that heavenly mission. As a fellow futurist, it was evident to me that Stevon’s ancient art was light years ahead of its time. We say that a lot that this or that is ahead of its time. In Stevon’s case, this is an absolute understatement. It will be generations (still) before the symbology and messages in his art are truly understood in the collective consciousness. 

In honor of his indigenous art, his philosophy and spirit, I pitched the Meow Wolf room to Stevon—a collaboration to honor his life and legacy. I offered up the name Indigenous Futurist Dreamscapes Lounge. He smiled a little. That smile then became colossal, followed by joyous laughter. It was like the humor of gods thundering out of him. He was nearly 70 at the time. He told me that this had already come in a dream in 1975, and that he had been waiting his entire adult life to complete this large-scale masterpiece. He asked me how much control I wanted or needed regarding the visual art design. I said none, that this entire room was a dedication to him, and that I would be his assistant and apprentice. I told him that new skool technology needed to meet old skool oil painting, and that I would be building and integrating music, video, poetry and design elements. He said, oh, that’s all you. I just need creative control of the walls to bring my dream to life.

I left his North Denver home that evening, wondering how many more conversations may be necessary before the collaboration was firm. I was curious about his perceptions of Meow Wolf and their intersections of punk rock, street art, corporate money, and mainstream appeal. Was it the right fit for an elder like Stevon? Were there too many culture clashes? Confusion or tension with respect to generations and intentions? Would he see the authentic opportunity in it that I did? Or would he perceive the Meow Wolf project as simply another catalyst for gentrification and exploitation? All of these questions…

Little did I know that Stevon had immediately begun drawing up the visual art blueprints for the room. He called me a few days later, and requested that I come over and see his progress. Within 72 hours he had mapped out the visuals for the entire room, based on the information and dimensions that I had provided. Dozens of sheets of butcher paper were filled with mathematics, and he presented me with a small fully-painted canvas model of the art that would go up in the room. There were no questions. The elder was ready to manifest his dream. The first Dreamscapes Lounge was ready to be born. 

Stevon almost passed away several times during the installation process. He was older in health and wisdom than his age in numbers. He had some health scares early in 2020. People close to him shared a sensibility that he was hanging on to finish this work. Then the global pandemic hit, and that further delayed the actual work inside of the colossal building at the intersection of Interstate 25 and Colfax. In the meantime, Stevon worked on masonite spheres that I had cut for him. He created little replicas of some of his favorite masterpieces, his dreamscapes. These masonite sphere paintings were filled warriors, spiritual figures and muses from other dimensions and landscapes. I worked with fellow musicians and poets on the soundtrack, and videographers on the visuals. I designed furniture brought to life by local carpenters, and painted these pieces in my garage. I worked with a screen printer to bring my Aztec/Mexica designs to life on fireproof fabric. We labored on all the elements, piece by piece. Stevon survived. 

I spent the first days of 2021 priming and applying gesso to the walls. I loaded up on supplies from home depot and Meininger local fine art supply. I rented a scaffold for two months, and a delivery van to haul the scaffold across the city. I cleared my schedule through early March and began putting all of my living expenses on my credit card. Installation time had arrived, and everything felt iffy. Covid-19 health and safety measures compounded the construction site safety protocols. The 90,000 square foot complex that was to become a masterpiece called Convergence Station…was just a steel shell, filled with unfinished drywall, construction equipment, half-built structures, and exposed wiring. I was becoming accustomed to hard hats, safety goggles, work boots, and N95 masks from 8AM to 6PM. 

Stevon and I began our installation work together on January 6th, 2021, the day of insurrection. It was a fitting start. Fear gripped the nation. Assumed norms were under attack. Historical institutions taken for granted could fall that very day. And the elder and I were at the beginning of a eight-week journey to bring a masterpiece to life. We painted every square inch of this Dreamscapes Lounge by hand. I thought I was doing something grand for this elder, paying tribute to a great one. Yet, he was also doing the unexpected for me. I gained a friend and a mentor, filled with knowledge and stories for the ages. The wise, loving, humorous abuelo figure I had always dreamed of, in this ancestry of fractured homes and broken wings. I held vigils for the elder, extending new platforms to his final dreams. In exchange, he blessed me with the future. He blessed me with honesty, friendship, and belief. Together, we pulled off a masterpiece. 

What delighted me most about this Meow Wolf win is that Stevon got to witness and experience his final parade. He walked through the VIP events, media interviews, and grand opening celebrations like a humble king. He toasted champagne with me, his first drink in decades. Traditional Mexica danzantes danced and performed ceremony in the Dreamscapes Lounge on opening night. His final public act…he went out the way any artist would want to go, leaving a permanent installation in the heart of his city. 

Stevon went on a final bull run in the days following the completion of his Indigenous Futurist Dreamscapes Lounge. He painted like a madman, completing medium and large canvas works in flurries, sometimes within a single late night sitting. Close to the end, I visited him in the hospital. He told me stories of the gods that visited him in the form rabbits, and the conversations they had about the exchanges and the choices that he was making as he prepared to exit the planet. I can’t say more about these visions. They are too intimate, and not my stories to tell. What I can share is that he affirmed that the machine had not taken everything from him. His mind, and his spirit, they remained indigenous. For him, as for me, this notion went beyond any particular race or culture. Our mission in that Room, within this global technological evolution, was to remind the masses of our ancient roots, to pay wide respect to culture, and to pose the question: What would it mean to re-indigenize ourselves to the planet, and to each other?

At the hospital, I took my sterling chain off from around my neck. It had a double-sided Aztec calendar pendant at its end. I put it around Stevon’s neck. I told him to hold strong. I knew that would be our final moment together. He knew why I gave him my necklace. 

Stevon passed in November, 2021, our shared birth month. He was 73 years old. He was buried with that necklace, along with yellow gold and purple fabric prayer flags holding my illustrations: Quetzalcoatl, for the long journey home, and to whatever is next. And Ometeotl—a symbol of divine masculine and feminine energy—the supreme universal force of the creative. I did not attend his Catholic mass or burial. Our ceremony was in the art we created together. On the day he died, I cried like a newborn child, multiple times and throughout the day, the most I can ever remember crying. The next day, my daughter and I created solar stone garden plots in his memory in our backyard. The sun garden now holds an autumn brilliance serviceberry tree. The moon garden holds a prairie fire crab apple tree. My heart holds all of these memories. The heart, we determined, is the sixth sun.