Meet SF’s wonderfully weird Vincent Kadlubek
Vincent Kadlubek is wonderfully weird. But that’s to be expected from the CEO and co-founder of the unique, interactive art installation Meow Wolf’s “The House of Eternal Return” in Santa Fe. Kadlubek was born and raised in Santa Fe and is driven by an overwhelming desire to make his mark on the city he loves.
His story is the stuff of movies: A young artist, living out of his car and Dumpster-diving for meals, rises to CEO and co-founder of one of the most popular attractions in the state.
Meow Wolf has seen 400,000 visitors in its first year.
In many ways, Kadlubek still feels like that “punk kid,” searching for a place in the world. But underneath is a savvy businessman who is resourceful and self-taught, and who knows absolutely what his priorities are: friends, art, Santa Fe.
So I graduated high school and I was, it was an awkward time for me. I was pretty anti-authority, anti-establishment. I was just like, recently out, like coming out of the closet, gay male and trying to find my way in the world. (But) I fell back on rent, I had a lot of credit card debt that piled up on me really quickly. I lived out of my car for four months. It was summer, so it wasn’t too bad. And my parents were still in town and they would happily have me at their house, but at that age I felt pretty embarrassed by it all.
(I had) no money, no job. Stealing a lot of bread and stuff. A lot of Dumpster diving. And during that period, I was writing a lot.
I wrote one (play) called ‘I’m So Santa Fe.’ It kind of went viral. People loved it.
When did you begin putting together Meow Wolf?
So, 2006 I was working at Warehouse 21 (a Santa Fe art and entertainment center). I got a job as … a program coordinator for them. But I was fiery and anti-authority, and in a lot of ways I was a little
punk. So I didn’t handle myself very well through the struggles of trying to direct Warehouse 21. But, anyway, I lost my job and it was devastating for me.
And I remember, and this is really cheesy, but it’s the truth, I was by myself in my car and I just started crying because the Warehouse 21 job was everything to me. And I looked up, and through the passenger side window there is a building that said “For Lease.” So I called and talked to the building owner. She told me $900 a month. So I did the math real quick and thought, ‘wait, this is totally doable.’ That’s not that much when you consider 10 or 20 people pitching on it. So it moved pretty fast.
A lot came together there that produced the first meeting for Meow Wolf. There were 12 of us sitting in a room saying, “You guys want to do this?” I knew we had to have a name for the venue. And that name ended up being Meow Wolf. We all put words into two hats, and we pulled “meow” out of one and “wolf” out of the other, and that’s how we got our name.
So the original concept was to have a place to hang out and have shows?
Yeah, the original thought was that we are going to have shows here and decorate it all crazy. Then (Quinn Fincher and Matt King) wanted to open their art show (at Meow Wolf). During their process of that art show is when the idea of the immersive multimedia installation concept came out. So we then as a group worked on our first collaborative show, and we worked on (it) from March until May of 2008. Biome — that was the last show at that space. (Then Meow Wolf moved to) an aluminum warehouse from summer 2008 to summer 2010. In that two years, I left Meow Wolf and was not part of the team, and it was weird.
What where you doing during those two years?
Well, I got really freaked out by shouldering a lot of the responsibility. (And) there kind of was created this internal rebellion against me, and it all sort of culminated in me stepping away. I floated around. It honestly was not a good situation for me.
Sounds like a pretty depressing time.
Yeah. It was horrible. And in the midst of that, I was suicidal. I was shoplifting. Got caught shoplifting. I ended up doing this self-help weekend. It was called Landmark (a personal development program) and it was pretty effective. (It) put me in the driver’s seat. I started working on a play. That was my two years. What (Meow Wolf was) doing during those two years was building up the team. They did a few really gorgeous shows.
Then I came in with this script and I had the support of a couple of core people. The play was called ‘The Moon is to Live On,’ this huge, crazy, psychedelic epic with rotating stages and crazy costumes and a big story. We did six shows and it was a big step up for us. We were selling tickets and had an audience. We sold out six shows and 150 tickets for each. It was the first time that we had a budget. It cost $5,000 to make this play. That was the first time that we thought about things in a business sense.
It culminated with meeting David (Loughridge). And he was coming from this place of more coordination and planning, and also money. One of the first things that I did (after returning to Meow Wolf) was close down the warehouse. I was like, we need to think bigger. So that led to this project at the CCA (Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe), which was called The Due Return, which was a giant boat. And that was the first real, true prototype.
How long was the boat there?
About 100 people worked on it for a year. It was open for three months. And, I mean it was crazy how much money we were bringing in, we were bringing in like $10,000 a week. By the end, we had brought in $120,000 for the boat. There was no formal entity. Meow Wolf was just a name that we gave to a collective. So taxes were weird. We just didn’t know what the hell we were doing at all … .
What did you do after the boat?
So, yeah, after the boat we got a lot more attention. We got a show down in Las Cruces (along with San Antonio, Chicago, Miami and New York). We were sort of hopping around. We did a big public education project called Omega-Mart here in Santa Fe. We worked with 1,000 public school students to create a fake grocery store and we opened it for a summer.
And were these cities contacting you or were you pitching ideas to them?
The venues were contacting us. So the writing was on the wall for me that there is no way we can continue this art world, piecemeal thing. We had to come up with something that was going to be long-lasting and continual revenue, and stabilize from a financial side. So while all these little things were happening, (we) were working on a business plan for what a permanent exhibition would look like. By the end of 2013, basically nothing existed with Meow Wolf. Then, in 2014, at the lowest point of our activity, David passed away and that was the huge traumatic thing for the group.
When he died, I spent a lot of time dealing with that. He was my closest friend, like a brother to me. And so it was during that (time) that we all came up with this idea for ‘The House (of Eternal Return)’. And of course there was no road to that. There was no money. And so I contacted (author) George R.R. Martin ... and then the rest is history.
What’s the future of Meow Wolf?
We want to support weird creations as much as we possibly can. Which means doing multiple exhibits across the world. It means working with as many artists as possible.
Are you planning on adapting ‘The House of Eternal Return’?
We will continue to add to it, change it around, expand. Maybe go on top of the roof.