When artists get their spooky ya-yas out

Halloween appeals to so many of us because it’s an opportunity to get our spooky ya-yas out. There’s costumes, scary stories, even scarier color combinations -- like black and orange (unless you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Taos Tiger stripped sock wearer -- then you’re fashion freak every game night).

Each year we indulge our year-long desires for white and green face makeup, bad wigs, leisure suits, and spray-painted foam rubber. Did I mention cat ears? Pirate eye patches? Meat-clever chapeaus? To paraphrase Stephen King, Halloween is the perfect opportunity to feed the gators.

When we were kids, we’d pour over spooky comics like Marvel’s “Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts” or maybe stumble across Grandpa’s cache of “Weird Tales” magazine. Remember how tempting those advertisements for “real mummy wraps” and “real live sea monkeys” in the last few pages were?

Storz and another artist, Jared Kohn, are putting on “Scary Art Horrors: A Halloween Emporium” at the Wired Glass Gallery, 926 Baca Street, Suite 5, in Santa Fe. The show opens Friday, Oct. 21, with a reception Friday, Oct. 21, from 5- 8 p.m. It will hang until Oct. 29.

This spooky “art emporium” and show features Storz and Kohn’s sculpture and a line of “funky Halloween-related packaged items for sale.” These are items you might find at home right alongside Mainway Toy’s “Bag ‘O’ Glass” and “Pretty Peggy Ear Piercing Set,” (peddled by Dan Akroyd’s character on “Consumer Probe” a memorable Saturday Night Live skit with Candice Bergen).

Steve Storz recalls how he used to order weird things from those comic book advertisements -- like a “life-like ghost” when he was a young teen. After the painful six to eight weeks it took for delivery, the ghost would have achieved epic proportions in a young man’s imagination.

“The ghost would turn out to be something like a square white sheet of plastic with simple instructions on how to make it look like a ghost. This is along that line but we’ve played up the cheesiness of it!” Storz said.

Storz and Kohn have packaged items like the incredible “Horrible Eye,” and nasty looking “Shrunken Heads,” “Dart N’ Ghost,” and “Mummy.”

Storz describes himself as a 25-year “veteran of avant garde sculpture, performance art theater, film, and haunted houses.”

Kohn said he liked the idea for the show so much when he heard about it that he wanted to be a part of it. “We’re making all the art and the packaging that it goes into as well,” Kohn said.

Mitch Berg, who owns Wired Glass in Santa Fe, offered his space when he heard about the idea. Berg works in rusted scrap steel and slumped and fused glass which he fires in his own kiln.

“I was looking for another event at this venue besides my own work,” he said adding that this idea sounded just off-beat enough to work.

For more information, visit www.storzart.com, or, contact Steve Storz, 505-751-0642, and Jared Kohn, 505-770-8099.