Courtesy Shakti Howeth
A&C
How did it end up like this? A fist.
Or a hand, anyway—a series of sculpted hands emblazoned with tattoos made from Sculpey, polymer and/or epoxy from artist Shakti Howeth. I discovered these glorious hands some months back when Howeth, a Meow Wolf employee, launched her first website, relocated temporarily to Las Vegas and Denver to help open the arts corporation’s Omega Mart and Convergence Station installations and continued to realize what she calls “baby steps” toward a more rounded practice. The website was one of the first steps, and the next thing in the lineup is continuing her painterly escapades, a possible children’s book (or children’s book for adults—which, she says she realizes, sounds like a graphic novel, but isn’t necessarily) and more work for Meow Wolf.
But this isn’t a story about Meow Wolf so much as it’s about the path Howeth took to get here. She grew up in Southern California, but when Howeth was roughly 5, a traveling guru helped her parents realize life made more sense on a yoga ashram near Charlottesville, Virginia. Don’t think of it like a cult. Or maybe I just put that idea into your head? Either way, it’s not a cult, and they were free to leave; Howeth attended school on the ashram until seventh grade, whereupon the family moved into Charlottesville proper and our heroine attended mainstream school, falling in love with the performing arts. After high school, the family would move back to the ashram and Howeth would pursue that love all the way through college at San Francisco State University.
“I was just really into being with a group of people who can make life more fun or interesting,” she tells SFR. “I found a community of cool weirdos and felt more accepted and good than I ever had. I stuck with that vibe.”
That vibe was especially helpful when, in 2015, Howeth escaped an abusive relationship while attending a wedding in Santa Fe. Wanting to leave that life behind, she stayed permanently and worked for Whole Foods, meeting Meow Wolfers on the regular and eventually securing a job there shortly before The House of Eternal Return opened in 2016. She started as a docent, but as she’d observed her father painting her whole life and had indulged in her own practice as far back as she could remember, Howeth created a portfolio that impressed some higher up at Meow Wolf. She climbed the ladder and today works in the Artistic Design & Production department.
When I meet Howeth at her secluded Upper Canyon Road home/studio space, she’s set out a number of in-progress paintings: an alien, some small figurative semi-nudes, a new series based on positive father figures and their children.
Alex De Vore
“The models are my friends,” she points out. “I got this idea about the representation of masculine, fatherly love with young people; that sweet father love that impresses me. But I’m going to limit my palette for these paintings.”
Previously, Howeth says, her practice revolved around bolt-of-lightning moments of sudden inspiration. Now, in an effort to evolve, she’s trying to plan more—in the long run, a way of challenging routines and shaking up habits. Still, she says, “My dad has been a public school teacher, and his painting has always happened in his free time and in his shed; he’s a soul painter, and he helps me remember you can be free if you do your own thing and not listen to people who don’t feel good to listen to.”
Howeth then points out her collection of children’s books. Something about the illustrations in the books she’s kept transport her to other dimensions, she says shyly.
“I love to create that same magic through a visual medium, but imbued with a story,” she explains. “I’m interested in taking that to the next level with something darker. Kids are smarter than they seem.”
The idea behind all of it is comfort through expression and a sense of possibility. “Like aliens,” she says. “I say that jokingly, but I’m seriously obsessed with the paranormal and strange experiences—even just as a metaphor. The thought that there’s a whole other group of beings we could interact with, whether that’s ultra-dimensional or whatever, gives me hope.”
That idea could result in any number of mediums and projects, she notes. Fantasy and sci-fi art, she continues, are borderline obsessions. But still someplace in all of that beats the heart of a sincere creator more interested in the work than the endgame. Howeth hasn’t shown in galleries because “it feels a little cold and inaccessible,” though she does say she’d be interested if it were the right place. Even so, she’s quick to point out how a certain arts vernacular can leave would-be art lovers and collectors feeling left out or intimidated.
“I feel like art is a conversation,” she tells SFR, “and I don’t have the typical art school background to discuss it in the ways people might expect, but I think it can be stifled when you’re looking at things through specific academic lenses as opposed to having your own unique experiences; the idea that only artists can or should talk about art, only people who went to art school can understand it—that whole notion is off-putting to me.”
She cites the skaters she grew up with, drawing in their sketch pads, the statues of Hindu deities from the Virginia ashram of her youth; a sincere interest in extra-terrestrial life, far-fetched though it may be.
“Truth is one, but paths are many,” Howeth posits. “You can do anything you want.”
