It sounds like a dream, but it isn't. Everything at Novo Ita: Propagation, Spectra Art Space's latest iteration of its annual summer installation, evokes the fantastical, fairy-tale qualities of Alice in Wonderland. Visitors are immersed in a peaceful, psychedelic realm of luminescent butterflies and delicate plants, caught up inside a captivating narrative.
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Robots symbolize the Novo Ita citizens' harmonious relationship with technology, as well as the earth.
Julianna Photography
Novo Ita: Propagation expands on the storyline of past installations, which Young crafted with Caelan Donovan, a friend and Dungeons & Dragons master. In the land of Novo Ita, after the "great event" that ended "the oil age," citizens are rediscovering ancient ways of working with the earth and finding an enlightened community as they connect with each other. In doing so, they witness the growth of the Spectral Tree, an entity that projects the same good energy that helps it grow.
"Novo Ita is all based off the science-fiction genre of solar punk, which is typically like post-apocalyptic but really hopeful. It's supposed to be a hopeful vision into the future, where people are better to each other and to the planet," says Young, who notes that "novo ita" means "new way" in Latin.
"The more damage they undid from the oil age, the more the tree grows," she continues. "So the tree was showing them they're doing the right thing. We did the Festival of Spirit, where everyone was celebrating the tree getting big, and this year, we're calling it Propagation. Because in the story, the tree's making seeds, but at the same time, it's sending out a pulse of energy to attract people from other colonies to come to Nova Ita to share ideas and technology and to get their own seed. The scheme of it is that the better people are to the earth, the more plants return, the more different kinds of animals are starting to return, the little nature spirits came back."
That earthy, bucolic fantasy is rendered beautifully throughout Propagation, which covers two indoor spaces and Spectra's entire backyard. A cushy cave from Spookadelia has been transformed into a dreamy lagoon, wrapped in deep blues and teals, with lullabies softly filling the space. A central installation is bursting with bright butterflies, symbols and rainbows. Plants of all sorts abound, flourishing on vertical gardens and filling up a greenhouse that is also home to little spirits.
"We invest a lot of time and resources into truly bringing the botanical element into it," Young says. "There's probably $10,000 worth of plants in that yard."
And the Spectra team takes good care of them, even using an "orchid expert" to tend to the rare orchids in the greenhouse. "We work with Echter's [Nursery], and we've also been collecting plants throughout the years, so we have rare plants. We have one-of-a-kind plants; we have really unique plants. Of course, some are picked, because they'll grow fast or we want like color in certain areas," Young explains. "We also want to appeal to all of your senses. We want it to look pretty, and we want things to be in bloom for people whenever they come in the season, but we also want to have smells associated with it, or some of them have a different feel than others."
That makes the upkeep of Novo Ita: Propagation far more labor-intensive than it was for Spookadelia, but the effort is worth it, Young says. And while Novo Ita is just as engaging as Spookadelia, with puzzles, augmented reality and storylines to investigate, it's also less high-energy. "There are areas of high intensity and high interactivity and just fun and play, but then it's followed by something like that hobbit house, where you can just go decompress and just sit and enjoy it, reflect or just relax," she notes. "So it's designed in a way to have those moments of highs and chills."
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The symbol painted on the floor of the central installation is the autism symbol.
Julianna Photography
Although Haley Jo Barker had crafted small pieces for past installations, she took over the entire cave area to build the tranquil lagoon. Hannah Bish, who creates under the moniker Deep Space Violet, was showing her prints at Spectra when Young asked her to take on a space across from Barker's, which Bish transformed to emulate an underwater rainbow. Kari Tamblyn, aka KariNotSorry, painted the mural on the floor of the central installation, whose ceiling is covered in butterflies, with a rainbow swing hanging in the middle. The mural is meant to symbolize the queer, neurodivergent and disabled communities, as well as how ecology fits into those areas.
Throughout Propagation, Young concentrated on "representing as many people from as many walks of life as possible," she says.
Other artists include regulars in the Denver scene, such as Corrina Espinosa and David Hanan of the Denver Digital Landgrab collective, who used augmented reality to place Novo Ita spirits throughout the installation that can be accessed through sneakily placed QR codes. When unlocked, the spirits share tales of their land and launch visitors further into the story.
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Denver artist Cal Duran's installation at Spectra Art Space's Novo Ita: Propagation.
Julianna Photography
Duran created a room covered with masks, small circular mirrors and woven ojos de Dios. An altar holds a goddess as well as a journal that Duran wrote in using different colors of ink. The journal lays out the prophecy of the Rainbow People, "legendary beings" who "will return on a day of awakening when all people will unite and create a new world of justice, peace and freedom."
Other messages in the journal — "Don't you see that you are magic / Use your joy as magic" and "We are never alone, we are everything! All inter-connected in a cosmic weave of so many ones before us" — ignite the self-reflection that influenced the entire show. Young came up with the storyline during COVID, a time in need of hope and other virtues she wants to inspire through all the Novo Ita installations.
"Not just hope in the way of the planet, but hope in people," Young concludes. "It's like treating humanity as an ecosystem, where everyone has to work together for humanity to work, just like you see ecosystems work in the rainforest. That's one of the virtues people can discover...learning how to be better humans from plants and the environment. Because it all works together, and if we all work together in that same way, those are the key parts that I want people to leave with. And if people just leave relaxed, that's okay, too."
Novo Ita: Propagation, through September 17, Spectra Art Space, 1842 South Broadway. Tickets are $22.