Souther Salazar doing a joint JANM MOCA teen workshop

Today was the closing of the JANM show. It was a great ride, but it wasn't done until Souther did his job which was to do a joint project for the kids. TOCA it's called... Teens of Contemporary Arts. They're from all over, and it's a program that MOCA does for the kids. Today, they heard Souther talk about his work and then they got some of his instruction.

The room full of kids. Many definitely got inspired by seeing his work. I think the best part is seeing them go for it. I think it's interesting how groups of people's work can be similar. Are they just looking at each others works and inspiring each other? If so, that's cool.

This table looked great. I just wished there was no paper on it. I think these palettes are funny. You shove your digit through that hole, and you can pose like an artist. The thing is, the work was mostly small, and everyone's sitting, so these didn't come into play too much.

One thing that was funny was that Souther held the mic while he was walking around. Sometimes, I could hear his talk to some kids and the mic would pick it up. There was another moment where he was doing something, maybe ripping a piece of paper and the mic either dropped and made a huge sound. Another funny thing was that Souther said some last words to end the day which was about the students work, and then I guess he noticed something, and his actual last words were something like, "and someone got paint on the mic." He smiled, and I smiled, and that was that. The mic though had purple paint on it.

Souther liked this piece a lot. I think it actually has some similarities to his work. The snake is sort of like a highway, and you can see a building popping out of it. The roads are something... I don't know, there's rock or mountains, and some drawing. The point is that she used collage items that weren't photos of roads or mountains, but found substitutes and made those work. Her idea was that this represented a trip on the 5 freeway. From leaving the city to a long drive.