Created for the TAILGATE event at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, just a totally normal tailgate utilized the language of cinema, sports, art theft, and theater to create an immersive experience for participants.

A thin veil of a badly organized sports tailgate functioned as a facade to obscure an internal workshop focused on inviting visitors to join an exclusive art heist crew.

Upon arrival, visitors saw a large white cargo van with a hastily applied sign reading "just a regular sport van" and mannequins standing around a small barbecue grill full of wooden food and a fog machine.

Just inside the veil, an open van door revealed surveillance equipment, live audio from a museum security team, a typewriter for making fake employee badges, blueprints of the building, and looping movies of TNT's Monstervision program.

Hundreds of comically oversized fake employee badges (the prototypes were deemed "too real looking") were created for the duration of the event with visitors developing alter egos, telling me which artwork they would be stealing and why, and deciding which area of the museum they would claim to work in as they prepared to pass a security checkpoint.

It reached 110° F and I made over 300 badges in 12 hours. It was a ton of fun.