“I graduated and I moved. I was gone. Then I came back, and then left again and came back. Started a family and doing all that,” Davis said. “Then I started working at a job that traumatized me severely to the point that I could no longer ignore that I was creative. It became such a regulatory coping skill it reminded me of the identity from my childhood. Art was my salvation. You’re allowed to lose yourself in the art where you aren’t allowed to be publicly crazy.”

Davis has channeled his creativity into an evolving sequence of immersive art installation experiences dubbed Candy Clown. The first Candy Clown was exhibited in 2023, funded in part through a $5,000 grant from the Minot Area Council of the Arts. When the offer of a free venue materialized, Davis saw an opportunity to use the extra funds to include other artists in the project.

“I started just reaching out to other artists. I sent them a very vague or ambiguous text saying, ‘Are you in or out?’, and most didn’t respond, but I had seven visual artists and four musicians,” Davis said. “That first one was definitely that learning experience. You learn so much by clipping your head on every branch.”

After another run at the Taube Art Museum for Candy Clown 2.0, Davis was approached by Atypical Brewery to do an installation which he said allowed him to “stretch my legs like the gazelle I am.” All told, Davis said it took around seven weeks to build out Candy Clown 3.0, titled “Nothing Doesn’t Exist – Only Cruelty – Unethically Sourced.”

CHARLES CRANE/MDN A large teddy bear rests on a pile of destroyed stuffed animals and piles of fluff as a part of the latest immersive Candy Clown experience. A video walkthrough of the experience can be viewed online.

“That was seven weeks. Have you ever put your foot on the gas and never taken it off? I was working 16 hour days for seven weeks straight. I lost weight. It’s just time, you’re trying to build the puzzle. I was bouncing around all over,” Davis said.

While such notable immersive art installations such as Meow Wolf are major draws throughout the country, Davis has embraced a more DIY, intimate and ephemeral approach to leave the public and even his collaborators in the dark as to what exactly they’ll be participating in. Davis said the experience exploits observable human behavior, while walking the tightrope to avoid making the audience cry.

“If you do a good job, the next time you put out the call for something, no matter what it is, if I need 500 toilet paper tubes, I’m pretty sure somebody will be able to get them for me,” Davis said. “But letting people know what exactly they’re getting, where’s the fun in that? I wish I could experience the unknown. I treat these immersive experiences like one of my paintings, but you can walk into them. It’s a journey, with the idea that this is more or less a religious practice of being crazy with yourself, and then having to turn the corner and actually look at who you are and making that conscious choice to keep walking into it.”

Davis reached out to the public for stuffed animal donations. The bigger, the better. Though Davis concedes if some people had known what he planned for the assortment of 90 plus plushies and life size Teddy bears they provided, they may not have. The main room of the experience is a forest made from sculpted cardboard, with nearly every inch covered in mutilated stuffed animals and mountains of their fluffy innards, all while constant strobing red lights and music sourced from local musicians overwhelm the senses.

“There’ve been a few people who told me they’d never give me a stuffed animal again. I don’t like touching fuzz. I think I spent probably 21 days touching it so I can touch fuzz no problem without wanting to vomit,” Davis said.

CHARLES CRANE/MDN Artist Arvin Davis, the driving force behind the collaborative immersive art installation series Candy Clown, discussed the philosophy and process behind its latest iteration before it concludes its run on Feb. 28.

For Davis, Candy Clown also serves as a kind of social experiment for the audience, who may have wildly different reactions and inclinations to the tidal wave of sensory chaos inflicted upon them. While some will grab and interact with the displays, Davis said others will simply leave after taking it in for several minutes.

“Usually they go in thinking it’s a haunted house, even though I keep saying it isn’t one. No one’s going to grab you, unless it’s someone in your group. They go in; they come out feeling at ease. I pushed it to the point where I was uncomfortable if I was in it for an extended period of time. I didn’t want to give anyone a panic attack,” Davis said. “After you find out what it is, it is so stimulating with so much to look at, and the only comforting piece is this wall with a bunch of mirrors which isn’t symmetrical; everything in there is supposed to make people feel unhappy. I’m not telling you that I’m making you uncomfortable. How do you get people to be comfortable being uncomfortable? Because that’s where the growth sits.”

The final dates to experience Davis’ latest creation are Feb. 27-28, after which the experience will be torn down and destroyed, to reset the canvas for the next iteration. It’s a process he said he is looking forward to with great relish.

“These are installations that I push way too hard. But each time I do it I learn. How can I do it more sustainably or adjust? The next one will be something else and ever shifting. That’s more fun for the people involved,” Davis said.