Art City, Here We Come

Just off Historic Route 66, a fantastically immersive sculpture park and glamping destination heralds a new era of possibilities in Tucumcari.

DAWN LIGHT BATHES ART CITY in pastels. Mauves and pinks unfurl over the desert plains, lending a gauzy morning majesty to the giant sculpture of a poppy-red mouth that sits outside my trailer. I open the door to watch the sun slide over the chrome lips. It’s like seeing an ’80s commercial for the Amtrak Southwest Chief mashed up with a scene from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Lips Sculpture, one of the first artworks installed at the new 40-acre Art City sculpture park, glamping resort, and large-scale art gallery outside Tucumcari, is a fitting ambassador for the place. It’s a familiar piece of pop art, invitingly colored with automotive paint and recalling both Rocky Horror and the Rolling Stones: 2,000 pounds of stainless steel monkey bars fusing two paintings of crimson lips into a boatlike structure that gently rocks when it’s climbed upon.

Much like the family-friendly parade of neon art that arose during the midcentury boom of local motel-and-diner tourism, Lips is a beacon. In the same way “Tucumcari Tonite!” billboards once coaxed Route 66 travelers to stop, the playful work of art promises an especially interesting time for anyone who takes the five-mile drive off the Mother Road to Art City.

Builders Matty Mo, Nadine Reppert, Ian Warner, Kevin Losani, and Nate Uyeda with fnnch’s "Lips Sculpture." On this mid-October morning, temporary residents and guests shuffle through the large communal outdoor kitchen for coffee, exchanging greetings under the intersecting shadows of tall cottonwoods. Some of them found the place via its current 100 percent thumbs-up rating on Hipcamp. On the campsite-finding website, Art City’s whimsically surreal landscape of 13 large-scale sculptures that light up at night is described as “an immersive art experience in the heart of nature.” Around the campfire last night were a family of five who stopped for an overnight stay and a dip in the hot tub; a young woman on the first day of a solo road trip; Nadine Reppert and Ian Warner, who have been artists in residence for two months, building new infrastructure; and Matty Mo (short for Matt Monahan), Art City’s proprietor, who is also known as the Most Famous Artist.

Around the long kitchen table, a handful of local business owners and residents settle in to sip coffee and review the previous evening. Some have slept over, having come out for a campfire party to celebrate the new all-ages neon carnival that might help to turn the fortunes of Tucumcari for the better—and for good. Under the kaleidoscopic LEDs that illuminate the installations at night, the group marked the successful first season of a venue Mo has described as “Storm King meets Meow Wolf meets Marfa."

Matt McConnell’s "Evolution Field." During their revelry, they convinced the road-tripping guest, who said she was traveling around playing guitar, to give an impromptu concert in a freshly built performance space. “It was kind of cool,” Monahan says of the troubadour, who got back on the road early this morning. “People are showing up and then showing us their talents.”

“I see Art City as the foundation to bring a different demographic to Tucumcari than we normally see,” adds Roadrunner Lodge Motel owner David Brenner.

Art City’s website says, “When your town has a declining population and dormant infrastructure, art becomes a magnet, not a displacement force.” As the people around the table talk about the transformative power of art, it occurs to me that we’re sitting smack in the “They will come” phase of “If you build it, they will come.”

Tigre Mashaal-Lively’s "Facing the Fear Beast." “TUCUMCARI GETS IN YOUR BLOOD, AND YOU’RE JUST DRAWN HERE. It’s a magic place,” says Toni Wilson, a lifelong resident who remembers the heyday of Route 66, which tapered off after the I-40 bypass was built in 1981. That’s one explanation for what led Monahan to settle there during the pandemic and begin his largest project yet. Last winter, he broke ground on a vision of a fully functional artists’ gathering space, large-scale sculpture gallery, and family-friendly glamping destination that would also help invigorate the local tourism economy.

The other reason for Art City is that Monahan’s mother already lived in Tucumcari, and he was tired of the art scene in Los Angeles. A former Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur turned art provocateur and impresario, Monahan claimed the title of the Most Famous Artist in 2013, when he saw via Google that the moniker hadn’t been taken, at least not in the internet sense.

The Most Famous Artist became an anonymous conceptual art collective as Monahan gathered collaborators to stage social-media-savvy stunts that poked fun at the art world’s topsy-turvy commercial values. Much of the artwork was for sale on Instagram, including the One Hundred Thousand Dollars series in 2016, in which Monahan created 10 works, each one resembling a stack of a thousand $100 bills, though only the top and bottom bills were visible. Cash thus became art. (“Let’s not focus on the value of the money,” Monahan said at the time.) In 2020, the collective made headlines for taking credit for the mysterious monolith that appeared in the Utah desert, then selling replicas of it for $45,000.

Art City is priced for the masses: A day pass is $11.11 plus tax per person, free for kids under five, and includes access to walk the entire campus and use the restrooms. A spa pass is $25 plus tax, granting you unlimited dips in the cedar hot tub, sauna, and outdoor showers from sunrise to sunset. And an evening spent under the stars among the hyperstimulating LED-light installations will run you anywhere from $33 for a tent campsite to $135 for a cabin.

“We were both at Stanford together at the same time,” says the artist known as fnnch, who created Lips Sculpture . “Matty Mo was sort of notorious then, as he is to this day.” While fnnch, who is based in the Bay Area, began building large-scale sculptures to show at annual Burning Man gatherings, Monahan was becoming interested in the afterlife of the festival-driven movement known as Big Art, which temporarily adorns outdoor spaces at Coachella and the Electric Daisy Carnival.

“When people go to Burning Man and they see sculpture, it’s larger, it’s more approachable, maybe it’s climbable,” fnnch explains. “And yet because the traditional art world doesn’t necessarily embrace that art movement, there ends up being a lot of art of this kind that has nowhere to go.” Too expensive for most entities to mount and maintain, let alone to compensate an artist for creating, these giant, often fantastical sculptures are meant to be interacted with—a function that doesn’t align with most formal art parks or civic art programs. “Nobody has come up with an answer for Big Art that has worked,” fnnch adds.

Monahan and I take a golf cart for a spin on the interconnected trails that make up Art City. Our path leads through a network of sculptures to empty tent campsites and stand-up, zip-close camping pods, along with cabins, trailers, and other little respites for creative interludes on the property, including hammocks and small gazebos. The installation artists come from all over the world, so the wildly separate context of each artwork stands out under the vast eastern New Mexico sky. The ever-shifting light seems to suggest new narratives for the pieces depending on the time of day.

“This was shipped to Miami for Art Basel in 2021, and then it was sitting in storage out there,” Monahan says as we stop in front of The Bodies Left Behind, a sculptural critique of coastline pollution in Ghana that’s been repurposed from a traditional Ghanaian fishing boat by artist Serge Attukwei Clottey. Somehow it reminds me that the dusty ground I’m standing on was once underneath its own ancient ocean.

The 36-foot-long Facing the Fear Beast by Tigre Mashaal-Lively was made possible by a grant from Burning Man, where it was shown shortly before the Santa Fe–based artist passed away in 2022. The massive multimedia sculpture stalks a corner of Art City now, featuring an imposing multieyed reptilian monster that faces down a small child.

“This was sitting in a lot at Stark Raven Fabrication for almost two years,” says Monahan of the sculpture. When the popular work was activated at Burning Man, subjects needed to stand near the child in order to quiet the negative messages of the beast. Mashaal-Lively wrote in an artist statement that the sculpture shows the power in “stand[ing] alongside each other in true love and siblingship.” Children who come to Art City especially love Fear Beast , often referring to it as “the Dinosaur.”

Part of the unconventional experience of Art City is in the art’s lack of details—there are no museum placards here to explain the figures and formations that have been set down upon the land, although information on the works and artists can be accessed on the website. Nearly every piece, which would likely otherwise be sitting inside a storage warehouse, is for sale. The diverse nature of the works leads to visual colonies of Art City like Paradisium Forest, a Swiss Family Robinson- esque, climbable collection of 50-foot hexagonal “tree” towers made with repurposed lumber, created by Irish artist Dave Keane for Burning Man in 2022.

Farther down the path, Eric Coolidge’s brassy Autumn Spire resembles a delicate gilded cage with insect legs, a seeming partner in the ecosystem of the Forest . In the dappled sunlight that filters down through the autumn leaves that frame the two works, I imagine I’ve drifted into a Guillermo del Toro dreamscape, made more glittery by mirrors and solar lights stationed around the path that catch and refract light throughout the property. The art lives and breathes depending on your perspective. Wherever you stand, the picture you see is slightly different, and it’s fun to imagine the past and future environments of each giant artwork.

Wandering under the cottonwood bosque in the afternoon, I meet daytime visitor Jessyka Cooksey, born and raised in Tucumcari, who’s here on her second visit with her three-year-old daughter. “This place is just peaceful,” she says of the surroundings. “This is supposed to be an art town, you know? When I heard about this place being built, I was really excited. I would drive by all the time, just pull over and watch the lights. It’s what the town needs.”

I think about something Matty Mo said earlier. “Another way to look at the Big Art here is as billionaire lawn decorations. But while they’re in purgatory here, they’re objects to inspire people who have never seen anything like this.”

Monahan has a lot of other ideas about what both Art City and Tucumcari need, having carefully studied art towns like Marfa, Texas, and Arcosanti, Arizona. “I had ambitions to do something like this somewhere,” he says, “and it worked out here largely because there’s three major airports within roughly three hours.”

He begins to rattle off the other locational advantages. “There are 20,000 cars that pass by every day, and they just need a reason to stop. Something like 150 to 300 hotel rooms are booked in town every single night, and people have very few options for entertainment. There’s good water here with Conchas Lake and Ute Lake, so the recreation is great. It’s a relatively moderate temperature. It’s climate resilient. And if you look at a town like Marfa, it’s really far out of the way. People still make a pilgrimage to go there.”

He continues stacking the advantages of Tucumcari, which include Mesalands Community College’s strong programs in renewable energy and Western arts, not to mention the annual Iron Pour that draws visitors to the foundry at Mesalands. “That infrastructure is dramatically underutilized,” he adds.

The town itself already bears signs that Art City has arrived, if you know where to look. A stenciled sign points the way on a building just off the Route 66 strip. Near the Tucumcari Railroad Museum downtown, a satellite installation signals that more art mischief is afoot just a few miles away. Erewhon Tucumcari is a Prada Marfa– inspired replica of a popular LA health food mecca, a repurposed vacant building dressed up as a bougie market where celebrities are often photographed. Monahan calls it “an ironic juxtaposition in a town distinctly void of the affluent influencer culture that the brand typically attracts.” The back of the building directs people to Art City.

Approaching the first anniversary of its groundbreaking, Art City is looking to attract that culture’s attention along with travelers. “Art City is designed to be a platform, a space for connection and creativity,” says Monahan. Their full and new moon gatherings each month aim for visitors and locals to come together over “dance, fire, food, reflection, and ritual.” Events called “Burning Man regional re/decompressions” are satellite gatherings for the greater Burner artist community, whether they’re on their way to or from the annual event in Nevada or just happen to be in New Mexico. Workshops on sculpture, ceramics, and plein-air painting are set for later this spring, as well as seminars with staff on pond building, trailer remodeling, and permaculture gardening.

Kevin Losani, who has served as videographer for Monahan’s projects for nearly a decade now, says welcoming the first wave of visitors has changed his perspective from the tunnel vision he often gets while making art. “Every time I see a guest come through and their eyes light up, I get to live through them vicariously and realize again that this is special.”

I think about that feeling while watching the sunset through Launa Eddy’s towering surrealist The Mind’s Eye, a hand-formed steel sculpture that now stands sentinel over the plains beyond Art City. “I thought that was a great spot for it to have beautiful sunsets and sunrises,” Eddy tells me later of the sculpture’s placement, “for people to see it and be drawn in, then to come and explore it.”

“It’s not just about that piece,” she adds. “It’s about its interaction. It’s collaborating with its environment now.”

Read more: Renee Gutierrez has spent more than 30 years dishing out hospitality at the iconic Tucumcari restaurant.

Managing Editor Molly Boyle loves any excuse to eat at Del’s Restaurant in Tucumcari.

ART CITY

10134 NM 104, Tucumcari; @artcity_inc

Tickets and lodging are available at visitartcity.com .

Check out these happenings at Art City.

FULL MOON GATHERINGS:

February 12; March 14; April 12

NEW MOON GATHERINGS:

February 27; March 29; April 27

WORKSHOPS:

March: Pond Building with Staff, Upcycled Sculpture with Kate Rusek; April: Ceramics with Austyn Taylor, Upcycled Sculpture with Kate Rusek, Upcycled Paintings with Matty Mo

Art City, Here We Come

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