Sunday, July 29, 2012
Artist Kevin Bate works on a mural of Martin Luther King Jr. at Blue Boy Barber Shop on MLK Boulevard on Sunday, July 29, 2012, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Bate, who is noted throughout Chattanooga for his murals and art installations, is being funded by the UnFoundation, a group that gives out monthly grants for projects to improve the city, to create a mural to honor the late civil rights activist.“I’ve never seen anything like this before. Ever. Maybe in dreams.”
“It’s like a Salvador Dali painting.”
“Like a really trippy video game in real life.”
Those are some visitors’ descriptions of the House of Eternal Return, a 20,000-square-foot “immersive” art exhibit in Santa Fe, N.M.
“There are dozens of rooms, secret passages and interactive light and musical objects with which guests can play for hours or investigate the mystery of the Selig family, who disappeared one night after conducting a forbidden experiment inside their Victorian mansion,” is how the Meow Wolf art collective describes its attraction in a former bowling alley.
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Learn more online at www.facebook.com/flamingmonkeyflyingcircus and www.generosity.com/fundraising/the-flaming-monkey-flying-circus-art-collective
With that example, and others like it, in mind, well-known Chattanooga muralist Kevin Bate and about a dozen other Chattanooga artists in the Flaming Monkey Flying Circus Art Collective want to create an interactive art experience here – and set it up as a business that would pay local artists a living wage.
“This is a business. This is a whole new method of compensation and reimbursement for artists,” he said. “Build something that people are going to flock to see, and we’re going to pay [artists] a percentage.”
“Artists don’t have to starve,” Bate added.
Bate and Raquel Mullins pitched the concept recently at “Will This Float?” – an annual startup business competition put on by Chattanooga’s Co.Lab business incubator.
Flaming Monkey Flying Circus was offered space in some of the passenger train cars at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel.
“We want to take things that you’ve never seen before and put them in those trains,” Bate told the crowd that night.
He declined to be specific – since that would ruin visitors’ surprise.
The duo hoped to launch the train car exhibit in November and capitalize on the 40,000, or so, people who visit the Choo Choo when an ice skating rink is set up there.
During the first two months, if 10 percent of the Choo Choo’s visitors paid $5 each to visit the exhibit, that would generate $40,000, they figured.
Bate and Mullins sought $21,000 in funding that night.
They created a Facebook page and one on the crowd-funding website, generosity.com, that offers gifts in return for donations of $25, $100, $500 and $1,000. Larger donations would be treated as investments, and donors would get a cut of the gate.
Fundraising hasn’t taken off, so they’re looking for another venue for their venture.
“It can be some other space; [the Choo Choo] was just one that was offered,” said Bate, who’d like to set up in a warehouse with space for a 100-room exhibit.
“This would be a permanent thing. This would be ever-changing,” he said. “If you come and visit, say three times a year, we’d like to make sure there’s something new and different to blow your mind.”
Jon Kinsey, the former mayor who’s one of the owners of the Choo Choo, said the hotel is looking for other uses for some train cars.
“We’re definitely re-purposing some of them,” Kinsey said.
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/MeetsForBusiness or on Twitter @meetforbusiness or 423-757-6651