TMA does Colorado

When The Mothership touched down earlier this year we had one goal: World Domination. That, and taking our art to new people and places. We believe having new experiences is key to growth as both an artist and a person. We've been shown nothing but love and support from our local scene and lately we've been scheming on bringing TMA out of town. Last weekend Crystal Mod, Dice 51, Acr1dApple, and Max Schwaber did just that.

We headed out Friday morning to meetup with some friends with a home studio in Leadville, Colorado a former silver mining town and the highest city in the United States at 10,200 feet above sea level. We took the scenic route, driving all afternoon stopping only to fill up the tank and slap some stickers up.

The sun was setting the last hour before getting into town letting us enjoy the gorgeous river and mountain views before arriving at Tommy's house. Dice had met Tommy at a music festival in Colorado a few years back. Friday night was spent resting from the drive, catching up with old friends, getting acquainted with new ones, and making sure everyone had enough stickers. We met Fish, a guitarist, and Cam, a drummer at Tommy's house.

Coincidentally Cam was also from St. Louis and was one of the original builders of a DIY skatepark located under a bridge where I had befriended a skate crew called the St. Louis Suspects and filmed a skate video at this same before the park was demolished to rebuild the bridge. Small world after all! TMA since it's inception has been a conduit for building relationships with like-minded creative individuals and sharing in experiences and it's times like that really prove we're all meant to be working together towards building something great.

We woke up early the next day to make bacon, eggs and coffee while Tommy went and picked up the homies. After a few sound checks and warm ups we made some music.

After recording we said farewell to the new and old fam and got on the road to Denver.

Our first stop after the drive was Pablo's Coffee near the art district in Denver. We filled up on caffeine while meeting another of Dice's old friends. I took this time to put up some free art, slap some stickers up, draw in the coffee shop's communal black book, and pilfered some drawings for the TMA zine.

After we had our coffee and food we headed for Santa Fe Drive, one of Colorado's designated Creative Districts with over 60 art galleries and studios in the neighborhood. We put up some more free art and stickers and started hitting up the different galleries to try and find a place to possibly throw a TMA show at.

Now granted we didn't have a whole lot of time to check out every gallery and bar on the street but I found the majority of the galleries to be pretty stale. My favorite art was outside in the streets and alleyways.

I couldn't find a venue dedicated to fresh new art that screamed new ideas and thought patterns like I'm used to seeing at our shows in Albuquerque. There were some cool places and people like the fellas at Tribe Tattoo who told us about the street's First Friday art walks they have during the summer. They said how our stuff would probably sell at one of those events if we can make it out next summer.

Before long it started to get dark, we had ran out of stickers, and we just weren't able to find that perfect spot for a show.

We decided to go to a comedy club later that night so we went down to the mainstreet to find a bar to chill at for a while. Our search brought us to Three Kings Tavern.

It was spacious, had pinball machines, pool tables, cheap drinks, stage with sound and lighting, thousands of posters, stickers, and tags, and it even had a gallery in the basement! We had stumbled on the perfect spot for a TMA show!

We kicked back for a little bit and enjoyed ourselves and the dope venue before the comedy show that night.

Sunday morning we had the dankest breakfast imaginable at The Denver Biscuit Company before hitting the road. Since three out of four of us were photographers we wanted to seize the opportunity to go take photos somewhere on the way back to New Mexcio that wasn't too far off the path. We researched for a bit before we found a place named Graffiti Falls about 15 minutes off the highway in Colorado Springs, sounded like a good fit!

After a short drive and a short hike we came upon the spot.

It was a great place to recharge our creative energies at the end of a great trip. So grateful to have been able to experience so much of Colorado's art scene and meet some solid leads for bringing The Mothership out of state sometime in 2017.

Stay tuned folks!