Souther Salazar’s work can be described as playful and other-worldly. People, critters, landscapes and the inanimate take life that extend beyond the usual canvas parameters. Curious lines wander through nooks and crannies finding their home from found scraps, sugar packets, and paper napkins to wooden constructions, clay figures, and full-life sculpture. The minute details of each piece come together to spin a full and overlapping tale about the artwork. For Salazar, creation is a restless process with an ending unknown, often revealing itself as it comes, adaptive transitions, mistakes, and all.

We Were Young and It Was Summer is a bittersweet phrase – once a celebration of times happy and golden, but now only reminiscence of the past. It represents a longing resentment or shrugging apology for bygone times and blurred ideologies – the byproduct of the inevitable push towards future. Salazar successfully combines the unabashed freedom of youth with the wisdom and sophistication that time brings to present the exploratory world to be discovered again and again in We Were Young and It Was Summer.