YOU CAN SMELL the popcorn wafting out of the Shop of Infinite Possibilities before you see it. Tucked into Gallup’s Rio West Mall, the store’s bright-yellow walls are full of oddities, such as a coffin-shaped purse that appears to be made from cake. Simulated teeth are embedded in products like electrical outlet covers, the little white nubs poking from bloody gums. “People are a little afraid of the unusual,” says artist Candice Carnes, who co-owns the shop with her partner, Zack Albatross. Even so, the popcorn machine helps lure them in. “A lot of people don’t like what I do, and that’s okay.”
Although she was born and raised in Albuquerque’s South Valley, Carnes always felt like an outsider. She knew she was queer as a young person but identified more as nonbinary than as part of the traditional LGBTQIA+ spectrum. “I always connected with the unusual [folks],” she says. “I thought they’d be the kind of people who would be my friends and wouldn’t exclude me.”
While in college on the East Coast, she learned more about curiosity cabinets, taxidermy, classifications, unusual objects, literature, and science. Those influences developed her sensibility for quirky art with a big, beating heart.
The store, which opened in April 2024, features a selection of handmade jewelry, sculpture, paintings, and dollhouse miniatures—all with a story behind them. A bathing banana sculpture, for example, personifies people’s everyday relationship with food. “It makes people ask questions,” she says. “I think art should make you do that.”
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