For its upcoming Los Angeles location, experiential art firm Meow Wolf will focus on the art of storytelling, with special attention to threading the cinematic magic of our city. To help make that vision a reality, Meow Wolf has entered into a creative partnership with Titmouse, one of Los Angeles' most renowned independent animation houses.
The Hollywood-based studio behind popular series like “Big Mouth” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will create animation to be shown throughout the West Los Angeles venue, scheduled to premiere in late 2026 at the Howard Hughes Entertainment Complex.
It's a move that represents a change for Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Meow Wolf. Over the past decade-plus, the art collective has grown beyond its anything-goes, punk, and psychedelic roots into an organization with large-scale maximalist installations in its hometown of Denver, Las Vegas, Houston, and the Dallas suburbs. In the past, Meow Wolf kept most of its media in-house.
As part of its massive participatory art installations, Meow Wolf LA will feature a mix of live action and animation, the first filmed by Meow Wolf at its Santa Fe studio. Meow Wolf's James Stephenson, the company's senior vice president and creative director of emerging media, said the degree to which the Los Angeles exhibition will lean toward various styles of animation required an outside partner. Titmouse's work, developed by several directors with contrasting tones, will be projected in a variety of formats, ranging from cinema screens to full-room screenings.
“I really believe in animation as an art form, and I know the people at Titmouse do too,” Stephenson says. “Animation is made by artists. It is made by artists with their own hands. It is something that is still very much rooted in craftsmanship.”
Meow Wolf's Los Angeles space is located in a former movie theater complex and will defend its location, taking guests on a journey through a converted movie theater and beyond, to a sci-fi-inspired fantasy land with sentient spaceships and a 30-foot-tall mushroom tower. The creatives at Meow Wolf have talked about the fantastic movie theater as one that will feature animated, self-aware candy before attendees enter the main exhibition space, making Titmouse's work one of the first artists guests will encounter. Titmouse co-founder Chris Prynoski has said that the studio has selected at least six directors for the exhibition.
An art installation in progress destined for Meow Wolf LA at the art collective's headquarters in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Los Angeles exhibit will feature animation by Titmouse.
(Gabriela Campos / For The Times)
Titmouse, Stephenson says, is the right partner because “they're known less for the style of the house and more for the feel of the house.” Over the years, Titmouse has been behind shows as diverse as “Scavengers Reign,” with a Jean Giraud influence rooted in French and Spanish surrealism, the animated “Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld,” with a unique color palette that was inspired by anime and Chinese mythology, the over-the-top comic book feel of Adult Swim’s “Metalocalypse” and the accessible yet expressive tone of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”
“Meow Wolf's vibe is similar to Titmouse's vibe,” Stephenson says. “It's artist first, artist-driven, independent and a little bit avant-garde. They're always trying to find the edge of what's possible. They're trying to see how far they can go, and they do it for fun and in the spirit of taking risks.”
Prynoski says working with Meow Wolf will give Titmouse a sense of artistic freedom that it doesn't always have when delivering content for more traditional Hollywood partners. He says the multi-director approach is a throwback to the early days of Warner Bros. Animation, when individual creators put their own stamp on Looney Tunes material.
“I use Bugs Bunny as an example,” Prynoski says. “You've got a Friz Freleng Bugs Bunny short. You've got a Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short. You've got a Tex Avery Bugs Bunny short. They're all different versions of Bugs Bunny, and people who are really paying attention can tell which director directed which one. Although to the layman, these are all Bugs Bunny, but if you line them up, they're based on different styles and sensibilities and techniques.”
Prynoski says that was a centerpiece of his proposal for Meow Wolf, noting that the characters will reappear in multiple installations, each handled by a different artist. Meow Wolf LA, in fact, will be the firm's most character-focused exhibition, as guests will follow the stories of three main protagonists throughout the space.
Announcing the partnership, Meow Wolf and Titmouse posted an image of an animated play directed by Luca Vitale. It features a key character having a moment with a hummingbird and is done in a stylish, slightly anime-influenced style. It is an image full of movement, reflecting a character in transition with attractive pastels and bold scripts.
“I like that image because I think it captures some of the sense of wonder that we want people to feel,” Stephenson says. “The character is having an encounter with the elusive nature of creativity and reality in a way that causes them to have a different perspective on what is possible.”
Other animation directors contributing to Meow Wolf LA include Space Dawg, Felix Colgrave, Alexander Vanderplank and Philémon Martin, and Jun Ioneda.
Titmouse's partnership with Meow Wolf will extend beyond the Los Angeles exhibition. The two will work on the development of Meow Wolf New York, which is scheduled to premiere some time after Los Angeles, and are collaborating on a planned animated series, which Prynoski is spearheading.
Meow Wolf exhibitions are the result of sometimes hundreds of disparate artists coming together in a shared space. Boiling that down into a singular, signature style for a series could be a challenge. Stephenson points out some guiding principles.
“You really need to feel the hand of the artist,” he says. “You need to feel the DIY aesthetic. You need to feel the materiality. That's very specific to who we are.”
