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Interior detail features of Souther Salazar's live/work space.
Souther Salazar has made a name for himself by creating art that combines an almost folky, childlike color palette and
sensibility with the cut & paste methodology of zine-making. True to form, Salazar maintained this quirky, playful tone
when developing his ideal workspace, combining plenty of storage for both cats and paintings alike. Here he explains some
of the things that influenced the creation of his space.
I am currently living in a house overlooking a river. A lot of the elements in my ideal space are very similar to the elements in
my real space, but converted into a tree space. I love trees and being around trees, and have always tried to live in places that
have windows near tree canopies, so I can feel like I’m in a tree house. When I was a kid my dad built a great tree house for
us, and we spent tons of time up there.
In the house I live in now with my fiancée, there is a large picture window and from the high vantage point we can see tons
of creatures: hawks, foxes, raccoons, ducks, etc. I particularly like to watch all the feral cats exploring the environment. They
seem to have a lot of little secret places they go, one of them is under a large tree, another is under our deck in the dark where
the ivy grows wild.
One time, I was walking on the other side of the river with my brother, and we saw what looked like a carefully trimmed portal
through a mass of tangled vines and branches. As we approached it, a friendly cat came out to greet us. When we peeked into
the opening, we saw several pairs of glowing eyes. It felt like a glimpse into a secret cat world. We later discovered that the
portal was really the entrance to a hobo jungle, and that the tunnel through the vines and branches led to a small fort of scrap
wood, with one side of the fort open to the river. We were able to get better glimpses into the hobo fort by rafting down the
river and peeking in as we floated by. A small elf dummy was propped up on a chair outside the fort, probably as some sort of
strange device to scare off intruders.
Visit Cat World in the interactive version of this issue at scionav.com/scionmagazine20
thedisappearingtreehouse.com