Lewis Neeff
Lewis Mitchell Neeff, known professionally as NEEFF, is an American artist, author, and oracle maker born in Superior, Wyoming, and based in Colorado. Neeff makes work that carries a coherent message and is finished by the people who take part in it: decks that are drawn, diaries that are read, paintings taken apart and rebuilt, and festivals, plays, and guilds brought to life by their audiences. Neeff calls the practice Mercurian, after the messenger god. Westword has described Neeff as an artist who invites people "to participate in the process of telling a complete story, all in living color."[1]
Neeff's projects include the Diary Library, a crowd-sourced archive of private diaries shown beside portraits of their authors;[2] Temple Tantrum, a Meow Wolf–sponsored DIY festival in Denver;[3][4] a puzzle painting of more than 350 cubes with more possible arrangements than there are atoms in the universe; and The Mercury Oracle, an 88-card divination deck that raised more than $43,000 from 461 backers on Kickstarter.[6] Neeff was the first artist in residence for Urban Outfitters, a featured artist at Boulder's Dairy Arts Center, and one of eight artists chosen from 57 applicants for Broomfield's 2020 public mural wall,[15] and founded both the Diviners Guild and Carnival Society International.
Early life
Neeff was born in Superior, Wyoming,[14] a coal town in Horse Thief Canyon, Sweetwater County, in the least populous state in the country. Superior grew up around Union Pacific coal mines in the early 1900s and reached 1,580 residents in 1950. As demand for coal fell, the original town voted in 1963 to dissolve its incorporation, and neighboring South Superior took the name in 1984. The 2020 census counted 184 people.[11]
Career
Early work
Neeff's early works include In Regards to your Local Holiday (2012), a crowd-sourced holiday, which Neeff named a favorite accomplishment; Ozbox (2015), a sculpture of wood, enamel, electronics, and prayer built from a childhood toy chest; and Characters, Charlatans, Animals, Goons, an ongoing series of photographs documenting Denver's art community.[1] The series later moved onto the stage. On June 14, 2018, Neeff presented Charlatans/Animals/Goons at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver as part of Three Things, Any Three Things, the museum's series of evenings that paired a performance, a lecture, and music. Neeff's piece was the play This American Life.[14]
In 2017 Westword named Neeff to its 100 Colorado Creatives series. Asked whom Neeff would invite to a party, Neeff answered: everyone.
Absolutely everyone ever is invited and expected to come to my next party. It would be total madness, but it would be a potluck situation, so don't worry. We have enough dessert. Bring ice. We always need more ice.Lewis Neeff, Westword, 2017[1]
In the same interview Neeff said, "I'm currently trying to start my version of a circus. Working on the permits now."[1] The circus became Temple Tantrum the following year, and later Carnival Society International.
The Diary Library
For the 2017 solo exhibition Vulnerable at Dateline Gallery in Denver, Neeff appealed to the public on social media to sit for portraits and contribute their personal diaries. The show, which opened July 29, 2017, presented the diaries beside portraits of their writers and launched the Diary Library, an ongoing collection that Neeff hoped to grow "into an internationally recognized place of preservation."[1] Colorado Public Radio covered the exhibition, which ran through August 20, focusing on the cancer diary of one participant and how the pairing "will change the way you view portraits."[2]
Temple Tantrum
Over Labor Day weekend 2018, Neeff staged Temple Tantrum, a two-day street festival in Denver's Curtis Park. Westword described it as "part Meow Wolf, part Comic Con, part music fest and part interactive public art installation" and "a happening like nothing Denver has seen before."[3] Neeff billed it as a "DIY Exploratorium." The program included around twenty local bands, a juried fun-house installation, performance art, drag queen wrestling, a comedy stage, and a call for costumes. Sponsors included Meow Wolf, KGNU Presents, PlatteForum, Two Parts, and Understudy, and the festival was partly crowdfunded by the public.[3]
5280 magazine reported plans to turn three floors of studio space into a giant exploratorium for a 4,000-person costume party, quoting Neeff: "Meow Wolf is our main sponsor" and "Temple Tantrum will be a festival of characters for everyone."[4] The Denver Post photographed Neeff ahead of the festival.[5]
The Mercury Oracle
The Mercury Oracle, also called The Fool's Map, is an 88-card divination system designed, written, and illustrated by Neeff. The count matches the 88-day year of the planet Mercury. The deck combines planetary bodies, portal cards, and imperative cards such as "Be Kind" and "Burn Your Boat." The Dairy Arts Center describes it as "a robust 88 card divinatory tool. Full of tried and true cosmologies, contemporary techniques, and oblique strategies."[7]
A Kickstarter campaign from February 17 to March 22, 2023 raised $43,206 against a goal of $33,333 from 461 backers.[6] Production stalled when a print factory defrauded the project, a setback one reviewer said "almost put an end to all his hard work."[8] Neeff kept the project going, and by September 2025 the decks were printed and shipping to backers.[6]
Neeff has presented the Oracle at public events, including a two-day appearance at TarotArts in South Pasadena, California, in December 2024 with a talk, a reading workshop, and private readings.[9] A companion work, The Jupiter Oracle, a 144-card printed deck of twelve suits based on the moon families of Jupiter, is in development.
Residencies and murals
Neeff was the first artist in residence for Urban Outfitters. In 2020 Neeff painted All One or None (listed by the city as Community, Strength, Balance) in Broomfield, Colorado. The Broomfield Public Art Committee chose eight artists from 57 submissions to paint a brick wall at the intersection of Highway 128 and U.S. 287, as a project on mental health, diversity, suicide prevention, and inclusion.[15]
My mural uses Gestalt concepts to paint a picture of people coming together to establish clear lines of communication. I chose my colors to be timeless, based off of old food labels and advertisements. I wanted to make something that was engaging across scale and its meaning easily read.Lewis Neeff, Our Broomfield, 2020[15]
In 2022 Neeff was a featured artist at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder. A mural of The Mercury Oracle was installed on the center's northeast exterior wall, beside the main entrance at 26th and Walnut.[7]
Writing and theater
Westword's 2017 profile introduced Neeff as a "photographer, sculptor and writer,"[1] and Neeff wrote all 88 card texts of The Mercury Oracle, whose "writing style" Jason Gruhl singled out for praise.[9] Neeff's play This American Life, part of the Characters, Charlatans, Animals, Goons series, was performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in 2018.[14] Neeff's first book, Aurora in Abbadon, is in progress.
Guilds
Diviners Guild
Neeff founded the Diviners Guild in 2026. The guild describes itself as "a fellowship of visionary artists": artists, writers, and mystics who have created and published their own divination decks. It "exists to empower one another and create together," and offers events, publishing and fundraising support, and tools. Applicants submit their deck and are asked for "proof of the work," not a pitch. The guild is a branch of Carnival Society, and its gatherings are held through Carnival Society events.[13] The free FO-64 I Ching console links to the guild from its footer.[12]
Carnival Society International
Carnival Society International (CSI), founded by Neeff, is a guild network that "unites organizations to build, together, through joy." According to its charter, it grew out of eleven years of public participatory work, on the premise that "the carnival itself already worked" but needed a structure that could hold it "beyond any single person or event." CSI holds private, member-only Carnivals and works toward land, water, and a permanent site held in common. A CSI freakshow is scheduled at Junkyard Social Club on December 26, 2026.
Style and themes
Everything Neeff makes is participatory. Whether it is an object, a play, a festival, or a guild, each work is built to communicate a coherent message and is incomplete until people take part: a deck is shuffled and drawn, a diary is read beside its author's face, a festival is filled with costumed guests. Neeff describes this as a Mercurian practice, after Mercury, the messenger of the gods, who rules communication, exchange, and crossroads.
MCA Denver's 2018 biography put it this way: Neeff's art "is driven by his interest in the felt presence of direct experience, mysticism, and the absurdity of existence at large," and the works, "in photography, video, costuming, humor, and interventions within civic space," aim "to revivify the human spirit, empower the individual, and create a heightened sense that perhaps things [are] not what they seem."[14]
The clearest example is Neeff's puzzle painting, built from more than 350 cubes. Neeff painted complete images across the faces of the assembled block, one side at a time, then broke it apart and scrambled the cubes. Nine solvable puzzles are hidden inside it. Anyone can rebuild one of the nine or compose a new painting of their own.
The scale is astronomical. Putting 350 cubes in order alone gives 350! arrangements, about 10740. If each cube can also show any of its six faces in any of four rotations, the count rises to about 101,223. The observable universe holds about 1080 atoms. Nine of those arrangements are solutions.
The same principle runs through every medium. Sitters supply their diaries, the public supplies a holiday, and festival-goers supply the costumes. Neeff has rejected the complaint that "everyone is an artist," telling Westword: "I say, thank goodness. That means artists are still in contention, and we have a good shot."[1] In the same interview Neeff described loving art that imagines "a deeper, weirder and more human existence where we can blink in and out of different realities, speak to other worlds and create art that has its own deep sentient consciousness."[1]
The graphic work favors what one reviewer called "striking images often constructed of basic shapes and primary colors."[8] Neeff's poster work uses a ritual idiom: a few locked inks on tan or black, combed concentric arcs, halftone fields, glyph registers, and bilateral symmetry with deliberate breaks.
Divination practice
Neeff works as a card reader and energy reader. On the Bitterfly podcast in 2022, Neeff gave the host a live reading and discussed energy work, the soul's journey, and contact with ancestors and pets who have died.[10] TarotArts introduced Neeff as a "facilitator, painter, fortune teller, performer, designer, mystic."[9] Neeff also practices the I Ching and treats the sixty-four hexagrams as sixty-four "types of time."
Software and instruments
In 2026 Neeff began building software as part of the practice. FO-64 is a free public I Ching console with single casts, thousand-cast "field readings," a continuous cast cascade, and a seven-stage course for learning the hexagrams.[12] Neeff is also developing a system that syncs a crowd's phones into one sound system without venue infrastructure. In October 2026 Neeff opened a print shop at imneeff.com that launched with 94 prints, including the Mercury Oracle cards and the eight-panel Dune Litany.
Selected works
| Year | Title | Medium | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | In Regards to your Local Holiday | Crowd-sourced holiday | Named by the artist as a favorite accomplishment[1] |
| 2015 | Ozbox | Wood, enamel, electronics, prayer, childhood toy chest | [1] |
| ongoing | Characters, Charlatans, Animals, Goons | Digital photographs, theater | Documentation of Denver's art community; includes the play This American Life[1] |
| 2017 | Vulnerable / The Diary Library | Portraits, donated diaries | Solo exhibition, Dateline Gallery, Denver[2] |
| 2018 | Temple Tantrum | Festival, installation, performance | Curtis Park, Denver; sponsored by Meow Wolf[3] |
| 2018 | This American Life | Play | MCA Denver, Three Things, Any Three Things, June 14, 2018[14] |
| 2020 | All One or None (Community, Strength, Balance) | Exterior paint, spray paint | Hwy 128 and U.S. 287, Broomfield[15] |
| 2021 | Puzzle painting | Paint on 350+ rearrangeable cubes | Nine solvable puzzles; about 10740 arrangements by position alone |
| 2023 | The Mercury Oracle | 88-card divination deck | Kickstarter: $43,206 from 461 backers[6] |
| 2023 | The Mercury Oracle (mural) | Exterior mural | Dairy Arts Center, Boulder[7] |
| 2026 | FO-64 | Software | Public I Ching console[12] |
| n.d. | Visual Art Fight in Flight | Poster | Ritual poster, owl deity |
References
- "Denver Artist Lewis Neeff Launches the Diary Library at Dateline Gallery". Westword, 100 Colorado Creatives 4.0. July 24, 2017.
- "This Evergreen Woman's Cancer Diary Will Change The Way You View Portraits". Colorado Public Radio. August 11, 2017.
- "Lewis Neeff is Throwing a Temple Tantrum – Denver's Latest DIY Fest". Westword. June 26, 2018.
- Faison, Amanda M. "State of the Art". 5280. August/September 2018.
- Ontiveroz, AAron. "Lewis Neeff poses for a portrait within his workspace at Temple Art Center". The Denver Post via Getty Images. August 2018.
- "The Mercury Oracle – aka The Fool's Map". Kickstarter, 2023; project updates via BackerKit.
- "The Mercury Oracle". Dairy Arts Center, Boulder. June 26, 2023.
- "The Mercury Oracle". Arrange for the Strange (Substack).
- "TarotArts Welcomes Artist Neeff for a Special 2 Day Event". TarotArts, South Pasadena. December 2024.
- "NEEFF! Artist & Energy Reader". Bitterfly, episode 35. August 4, 2022.
- "Superior, Wyoming". Wikipedia; population from U.S. Census.
- "FO-64". Field Oracle (official site).
- "Diviners Guild". divinersguild.net. Retrieved October 22, 2026.
- "Charlatans/Animals/Goons + Malingering + Frantic Techno | 3 Things, Any 3 Things". Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. June 14, 2018.
- Beckman, Kristen. "New Public Art Displays Tackle Societal Issues and Celebrate Broomfield's Natural Resources". Our Broomfield, December 2020, p. 22.
Statements without a numbered citation come from the artist.
External links
- imneeff.com, official website and print shop
- The Mercury Oracle, online edition
- FO-64, I Ching console
- Diviners Guild, official site
- @im.neeff on Instagram and TikTok
This page was last edited on October 22, 2026.