Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.

AT THE ALBUQUERQUE PUBLIC SCHOOL'S METRO YOUTH ART EXHIBIT STUDENTS ARE ABLE TO SHARE THEIR CREATIVITY AND INSPIRATION.

TO CELEBRATE THE ARTISTRY OF SPOKEN WORD "SALT LAKE SPEAKS" BROUGHT TOGETHER TEN LOCAL UTAH POETS FOR A SLAM POETRY SHOWCASE.

TURNING EVERY BITE INTO A CELEBRATION OF CULTURE AND CREATIVITY, ROBERTA COTA-MONTGOMERY, FOUNDER OF THE SUGARED SQUIRREL, INFUSES HER VIBRANT MEXICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE INTO PERSONALIZED COOKIES.

CREATIVE JOURNIES [Music] >>Faith Perez: Sweet.

So, we can get started now.

So, what piece are you most proud of?

>> Trinity Mendez: Ooh.

Um, I really like the Jungkook one I did because I was able to like cut the Washi tape to look like, to fit in his jacket.

And it just like looked like him and it looked really good and I spent a long time on it and I was really proud of that.

>>Trevor Martinez: The piece I'm most proud of would probably be my Hockney collage.

And with this collage it was with me and my friend, who was my model in the photos.

And so we took our time and we just really planned it out together.

And once we were starting the process and piecing it together, we just really liked how it came out.

[Music] >>Connor Cole: The piece I'm most proud of would probably be the armor.

But it's not because of how, how like difficult it was.

It's probably just 'cuz you don't see things like that every day, you know?

>>Faith Perez: What inspires your work?

>> Trinity Mendez: Um, I like nature, like how random it is.

I really love how the ocean is like, very inspiring.

And I like using like, texture in my art.

Like uh, mixed media, to make it like weird.

Like the ocean.

And I just really love colors.

I can't draw black and white.

It stresses me out.

I need color.

>>Trevor Martinez: Anything surrounding me that is moving I guess I could say.

Such as like people just walking, running, moving cars, birds flying around.

Just whatever catches my eye inspires me and gives me a lot of ideas to think about.

>>Connor Cole: I don't know.

I've just always been into like history and whatnot.

And I've always watched documentaries and that type of stuff.

And just to be able to like, create stuff that I see and enjoy, is just makes me really happy, you know?

>>Faith Perez: What do you love about creating art?

>> Trinity Mendez: Um, it's just really fun to like, do whatever I please, or whatever comes to my mind.

Just like set it on there and like, let other people see like, what I think, or what I think is cool.

>>Trevor Martinez: What I love is just basically seeing the world through another perspective, rather than seeing it through my own eyes.

'Cuz with photography, you can really edit it to see a more beautiful perspective on the world, rather than it being bland and dull, with color.

>>Connor Cole: When you're able to put your thoughts into a piece of clay, it just makes it that much better.

And it's just so, it's uh, you just feel accomplished, you know?

>>Faith Perez: What's a lesson that you've learned being an artist?

>> Trinity Mendez: Just taking your time.

Don't rush things and it takes time to like, improve and get good.

And you don't have to like draw every day, or like do your hobby every day.

Like, it's pretty stressful to do that.

So just take your time.

Let things settle or whatever, but also practice when you can.

Yeah.

>>Trevor Martinez: The lesson I've learned I definitely would say is being patient, but also managing your time very well.

Because like, I do a lot in school, so trying to find the time to go out and do things is kind of hard sometimes.

And so, it's just yeah, finding the time.

>>Connor Cole: Being an artist, you have to be able to accept when you make mistakes.

And you just either got to roll with it.

And you got to decide whether you stick with it or you don't.

And you can't be a perfectionist by any means.

You cannot be a perfectionist or you'll never get any work done, you know?

>>Faith Perez: Will art be a part of your future?

>> Trinity Mendez: Art will be a part of my future.

For a while, I think um, I thought like many years ago I wouldn't, 'cuz I did it just for like fun.

But I realized like, art is like the only thing I have, and it's one of the only things I'm like really good at.

I want to be an art teacher mostly just to like do what I love while teaching others.

I think it's really inspiring that art teachers you know, just do what they do.

Um, my art teacher, Miss Truman, she's so cool.

She's really good at art.

Um, she's so inspiring, and I wish to be like someone just like her.

>>Trevor Martinez: I definitely hope it will be a part of my future because it is my passion and I just love art a lot.

And it's what I grew up doing a lot.

And also, hopefully progressing to more film and filming, I guess.

Also, with friends and just coming with funny ideas and making a career out of it.

>>Connor Cole: I think art will definitely be a part of my future.

I am going to do my best to continue to do it and just expand on the different type of art forms that I can do, you know?

I really want to get into to woodwork and metal work and stuff.

But, I'd like to get like good at it and get experience in that field.

>>Faith Perez: Those were all my questions.

Thank you!

>>Trinity Mendez: Awesome.

>>Faith Perez: You did great!

>>Trinity Mendez: Do I get off?

>>Faith Perez: Yeah, you totally can, yeah.

SPOKEN WORDS This poem is we too are Salt Lake City.

Nah forget that, this ain't the ancient promised land of your so called Nafitas y Lamanitas.

We never stop being Aztlan.

Never stop being Mashika.

We are the maiz of the U.

And the Shoshone, the MacArthur.

The fly in your tie clip Moroni.

The Cacao that Cross Deserts before your borders word up Salt Lake City nah this lago teguayo homes.

We got a tia who survived US funded death squads named West Valley City, and a tio grilling the best carne ranchera you've ever seen called Rose Park.

We are the brain stick a Dine boy beat against a mattress before his family could afford a drum.

Because we are over 1 million acres of the Navajo Nation.

We are Brown Berets.

Slam Poetry is competitive poetry that encourages call and response.

It started in the 1980s in Chicago by a construction worker named Mark Smith in a bar.

So literally the competition is just a gimmick to attract people so that when it's America, once you make things a competition, people are invested.

But one of the reasons it's become such a national phenomenon and like such a hit among certain communities is that, communities of color and native community folks who are already doing beat poetry to Neo Ricans.hip hop, all could be channeled into slam.

The only real rules is like, hey, 3 minutes, no costumes, no props.

You can go up there and interpretive dance and they can't stop you.

In a lot of communities of color, especially already had the tools to just destroy a poem in 3 minutes.

So, it enabled a lot of folks to have a platform.

Ancestors at Yocepa we're the lifeblood of the city.

Without us, your grid system would be gridlocked without us, your slam teams would never win the part.

He tried to call us immigrants, but before you mispronounce my name, I was already sand.

When Brigham Young said, this is the place we were already here.

Our purpose as a division, as arts and culture is really to support and uplift all of our artistic communities in the county.

We've identified one area that we wanted to work more in, which was working more with individual artists to be able to provide them with some amazing experiences in our venues and also to be able to invite community members in who maybe haven't been to the theater before.

So “Speaks”, we were able to bring in some of the most amazing slam poets that we have here in Salt Lake County.

Give them the chance to perform in Eccles and the amazing Grand Lobby, which is so gorgeous, and then also to allow pretty much any community member to come and enjoy that for free, a really beautiful, high quality experience that they can then remember.

And then hopefully they'll come back and continue to enjoy the arts after that.

The Salt Lake Speaks event, this is the third year that we've done it.

It's just been my job to like reach out to amazing, talented poets in our community and make sure they're set up for the night and just kind of have a great community event.

The process for selecting poets is just mainly kind of what I decide, which is like kind of a fun way to look at it.

Just because I think that the Eccles theater really put it in my hands.

Like, okay, this is what we know about slam poetry, we want people from the community helping to organize this community event.

So, throughout the year I see amazing poets at different competitions, at different cyphers little community things.

And then from there I just kind of see who would be a really good fit for, you know, our celebration of that every year.

So.

What's most important is that people are going out there and sharing their stories and like Salt Lake Speaks is opportunity for a lot of the folks in the community to have an audience to share their favorite poems and like, forget about the scores.

Forget about all of that.

It's just to share with one another, like our favorite work with each other.

So, it creates this special space where we just get to be whole and human with one another.

I have a poem for each different kind of Pokémon trainer, including the gym leaders and the Elite Four, and this is what everybody says is their favorite one in the book.

And this is the poem for Sabrina, canonically the strongest human in the Pokémon universe.

Sabrina.

So, I bent some spoons and everyone said I was a witch.

So naturally I bent their necks because I am a witch.

They spit their Bible at me and I make their Bibles spit back at them.

They pry open the door to my—It's really cool to like be here with our poems, which are the simplest form of theater.

The simplest form of performing art is just spoken word to just a person sharing their emotional truths.

So, what it means for the community, having it be here, having it be free to attend, that's a huge thing.

Having it be accessible from the streets gives people the chance to find and connect with their community and forge an emotional connection with the people around them.

I know things seem like people are getting crueler, especially on the Internet, but the emotional vulnerability shared by poets at Open Mic Night Slams and events like this are the way that we fight that and resist that.

And I hear they're burning little girls for being too pretty or too ugly or too everything to be anything but magic.

But I can see the future.

I can see the world they make by destroying all the magic they can or cannot find, it is a world of tax returns and report cards and stock market crashes.

Oh, how their children will beg for magic.

Oh, how they will grow up and attempt to build magic from lightning.

Oh, how they will fail and burn the world down as they try to escape.

And they will deserve every ounce of misery they have burned themselves into.

For me as an artist, it gives us a platform to perform our work outside of spaces that are not generally known for Slam.

Slam is in itself an art form.

That means so many different things to so many different people.

And so, it gives us a wider breadth and allows us to reach a lot more individuals that otherwise wouldn't hear our work.

And to that, it's really important to me to have that connection with our audience.

I think that's what makes SLAM so powerful is the ability to resonate with whoever's speaking.

And so, to give us that platform to shout on the streets of Salt Lake City, hey, these are my words.

This is my art.

And have the passersby come and hear us.

It provides a really unique connection.

Pigs have no real appreciation for the sky, but they do have a main concept of it.

See, the body of a domesticated pig cannot bend enough to allow them to look up directly at the sky.

Years of breeding, a forced genetic mutation in the name of a perfect harvest.

Their bodies have succumbed to the weight of consumption, a common dated the fat and muscle and their necks and spine through fusion.

Now their mobility is limited to a 45-degree angle.

When I was six, I was told that my body eventually would start to contract for the compensation, of loss and muscle of fat that eventually my neck and my back would fuze.

That my movement too would be limited to a 45- degree angle.

I think with any piece that I do, I want people to leave thinking about the piece.

I want it to be sticky, right?

So, the way that I kind of think of it is there are feelings and then there are emotions.

So, feelings are things that you can very aptly and easily name.

So, you've got like anger or sadness, whatever.

Feelings are that sticky in between toddler mesh in there that you can't quite name, but that stays with you.

And so that's my mission with my poems is to have people really have the poems, sit with them for a minute and be sticky and allow them to kind of parse through what feelings were invoked by the pieces.

Como un coche.

We had bodies made for slaughter.

Pink flesh characterize by body scoring charts, methodical weigh ins and density tests, how beautifully marbled our muscle is when we are cut into.

The surgeon told me once that the cut he made along my spine was his finest work, that I was a babe worthy of a blue ribbon.

To say that a pig cannot see the sky, however, is incorrect.

The same way it is to say that a body is meant to bleed so tenderly.

See, we still persist despite our damned destiny.

We have evolved, prioritize survival over comfort life over the ability to look straight up.

Because I want to be humbled and inspired and awestruck.

I do not mean to look at heaven, but rather at my own reflection.

Revealing resistant resilience stares back windows all above me.

And I know this because when I lie on my back, the same way that a pig does, humble and against the dirt, I can see the endless above me without effort.

And for a moment, when our eyes meet, we both see an upside down and sunset reminder of what an unrestricted and capable body could look like.

My advice for someone who's starting to get into the spoken word scene or slam poetry is sort of just like explore, you know, feelings that resonate with you.

I think it always starts with sitting down with yourself and writing for a little bit and thinking like, what really makes me feel something like a big feeling, like anger, sadness, like love, things like that.

And once you start writing and figuring out like what you want to say, then I think finding a community is very important.

Talent is a myth.

Talent is a costume that privilege wears.

Anybody can be good at anything if you give-- if you have the passion for it and they have the time and opportunity to practice it.

A lot of people might see these poets on stage like, oh wow, these people are really talented.

It's not true.

They're all as talented as you are.

They have just practiced their bravery and that's what it comes down to.

It's not about being the best wordsmith.

It's about being the bravest, showing your vulnerability, having the courage to speak about the things you are the most passionate about.

My biggest advice would be to find some homies to not be afraid to connect to people, especially if there's a poet that you see perform that just moves you to be like, Hey, let's hang out sometime.

The most important thing you can do as a writer is build a community among yourself for people that you trust, the people who are going to be honest to you with you as well as people who can truly hold your truths.

Slam Poetry is competitive poetry, where people are doing-- reducing art to numbers, where audience members who are judging are sometimes just completely random people who, you know, aren't experts and also don't know where we come from.

Sometimes.

So, the most important thing, especially if you're an artist from a marginalized background, person of color, queer, disabled, is finding your tribe and making sure that y'all are able to hold true to the reason why you're doing it right.

One of the most important things is to make sure you're being selfish with your writing and that you are doing it for your goals and your reasons and not compromising that while challenging yourself to be better.

Right?

So, finding your crew of people that's going to help you do that, even if you have to create your own space, I think is the most important thing.

TAKE A BITE As a child, I was very creative.

I loved to bake, I loved to paint, and I made my own doll furniture out of matchboxes.

I mean, you name it, I was always creating.

I grew up in Lake Tahoe, lived there for 30 years.

Being able to go out my back door and go hiking and just be in such a beautiful place, it was just really special to grow up there.

My mom is such a nurturer and my dad was an artist, and together they just gave me this environment of "Do whatever you want.

Do dance class."

They made it happen, and so I was able to try everything I wanted to, and, you know, they never said, "Oh, you can't do that."

They grew up with not a lot.

They grew up in families where they worked in the fields and picked fruit when they were little kids.

So, knowing that they came from that and opened successful businesses and I watched that happen and then they helped me to do that, is just so awesome to me.

My name is Roberta Cota-Montgomery, and I am the founder of The Sugared Squirrel.

I was making gifts just for friends and family for Christmas one year, and a couple weeks after Christmas, I had people calling and going, "Oh, my friends saw those cookies "that you gave me.

"They wanna know if you'll make some "for their child's birthday or their anniversary."

And by February, I got my cottage license and started doing this full-time because I was so busy.

The name, The Sugared Squirrel, came about because my friends and family are constantly telling me how I'm such a squirrel.

I just one thing to the other so.

So, it kind of fit, you know, "Sugared Squirrel" for cookies.

I'm just all over the place with making things all the time.

I definitely feel like a squirrel most of the time.

Usually, when I get an order, I'll ask for a theme and maybe an invitation or some of the stationary they're using, and then I go from there.

Sometimes I'll go on Pinterest and just look up fashion or things like that.

Most of the time, I won't look at other cookies on purpose.

I wanna come up with my own designs.

When I come up with a set, I usually try to tie in maybe like a wedding dress.

Say, for a wedding or a bridal shower, I'll ask if I can see a picture of their wedding dress, and then I'll try to mimic the shape of the dress or put in the pattern somewhere on the cookies, and I'll try to do multiple designs.

It could be a ring or the flowers that they're using for their wedding, things like that.

Just knowing a little bit about them before I design their set allows me to add something of their story into that set.

They're just cookies, but they're also special for that event.

That's part of what I love about making the cookies.

I usually start by making my icing depending on how many orders I have.

Usually, it's about five pounds of icing at a time, and then, I'll move on to my colors.

I fill all of my icing bags.

I usually don't use tips on my icing bags, but if I'm doing a floral or something like that, then I will use a special tip for that.

I always weigh my ingredients.

I don't use measuring cups because it's a little more exact that way.

Once I roll out my dough and cut out my shapes, I always freeze them for about 10 minutes before putting them into the oven, so that they don't spread as much.

I bake all of my cookies on perforated silicone mats and that helps them not spread, also.

After that, I let them cool for a few minutes and then I transfer them to parchment paper-lined sheets.

Once they're cool and ready to go, then I start decorating.

The way I give my cookies some depth is I try to add texture wherever possible.

I also sometimes will use airbrushing or using a paintbrush with edible color.

Decorating is definitely my favorite part.

It does become a family thing sometimes.

Everyone just comes together.

My dad, my mom, my kids, everybody's helping me packaging.

They are the best cheerleaders.

I am Mexican American, and our culture, I feel like everything revolves around food a lot.

As a family, everything was always cooking and baking and eating and celebrations, and just a lot of people together all the time.

I think that all translates into a lot of my work as well, and I love being able to represent my culture in that way.

I definitely think of my cookies as edible art.

I do have a rule though.

I always tell people, "If you're gonna buy the cookies "you have to eat them!"

'Cause a lot of people don't wanna eat them.

But that's what they're there for, so you have to eat them.

Part of the fun of it is getting to destroy the work of art.

Seeing it so pretty and then taking a bite out of it.

The award-winning arts and culture series ¡COLORES!

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From classic episodes to brand new shows, ¡COLORES!

is everywhere.

Watch now on your favorite NMPBS platforms.

Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.