- Hi, I'm Matt.

- And I'm Nicole.

- And today we're at Mass MoCA.

(upbeat bright music) (mellow music) - Mass MoCA or the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is a wildly expansive and innovative art center dedicated to contemporary art and has about 300,000 square feet of exhibition space on 24 acres right in the heart of downtown North Adams.

So the museum supports many different artists through many different residencies.

One of those ways is through the Studios at MASS MoCA residency program, which has been around for 10 years now.

We have 10 artists in residence right now who are midway through their four-week residency.

And today, we're going to take you around to go visit some of the artists who have opened their studio so you can get the chance to see their art and also maybe make your own art.

- Hi.

- Hi, welcome.

- I'm Nicole.

This is Matt.

- So what do you got going on here?

- Yeah, I'm weaving my hairs over here.

- Really?

- Yeah.

- Your hair?

- Yeah.

There are some hairs over there but before I come to Mass MoCA, I just, like, put them together so I have my material.

- Where did you get this idea to use your hair?

- The idea just, I'm from Iran and in Iran, we need to cover our hairs and after a certain time, I was like, "Hairs contain my identity and they started forcing us to covering my identity," and after that, I was like, "I want to make something with my hairs."

- Can you show us a little bit of what you're doing here?

- Yeah.

- Demonstrate for us?

- I'm going to just, like, put my hairs over here.

Yeah.

Something like that.

And then another tie.

Do you want to try?

- Yes.

- Oh my god.

Yeah, you try.

(group laughs) - So I think you're going to put your foot on this pedal over there to open the number one.

Yeah, and then right now, as you can see, it's a little fixed, so you need to grab the hair over here and use your other hand, yeah, from over this opening over here and trying to give this hair- - Through underneath?

- Yeah, yeah.

Underneath.

Yes, that's it.

- I really don't want to mess it up on you.

- No, no.

You're not messing up.

Believe in yourself.

(group laughs) - And you need to- - Now pull this?

- Yeah.

Be careful about your hand.

And then remove your, yeah, and you need to, yeah.

- Wow.

- And then put your foot on the five.

It's going to get open.

- Yep.

- And try this.

- Oh.

- So right now, you weave the hair over there so it means you can't pass- - Back there.

- Yeah.

- Oh my goodness, that's so neat.

- Yeah, this is your second row.

- And then down?

- Yeah.

- You fix that, and then you need to put your foot on the one again, remove that foot from, and you, again, have another opening.

Try it.

It's get fixed, right?

- Yeah.

- I think right now, it's better to just do another one.

You can go a little, even harder.

Yeah.

That's nice.

Yeah.

(group laughs) (group applauds) - Thanks, everybody.

(upbeat music) (group laughs) - What is this?

Oh my, a pear.

These are beautiful.

Oh my goodness.

So cool.

Do, do, do, do, do.

Oh.

(group laughs) - This is fun.

- Okay.

- Okay, so we're gonna head out to go drumming outside in an exhibition by Amanda Lovely.

She got connected with our amazing public programs department at Mass MoCA to eventually work and collaborate on this exhibition that brought two trees together.

One from the southern United States and one from around here in this region to come together to communicate, to learn from each other.

It's a piece about climate change, it's a piece about connecting with nature, and also migration.

The oranges are for an offering to the trees and to the land.

Chi-chi was grounding us in place of being visitors on Mohican land and doing this offering to the trees and land.

(rhythmic drumming) (singer vocalizes) - So my project is called (foreign language) which comes from two words, (foreign language), which means syncopation and (foreign language), which means peace.

This is a social practice, social action art project and I think we're gonna try to do some collective playing 'cause that's the project.

- Yes.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

(group cheers) (rhythmic drumming) - Go trees!

- Yay!

- Go trees!

(group laughs) Thank you so much.

That was so much fun.

I'm now interested in how you feel now.

- I feel happy.

I feel like, yeah, we were nervous at first and now we just made music and it was fun.

- I'm still nervous but I wanna do it more.

I do.

- Oh my god, that was so amazing.

There's so much going on here.

- So many different kinds of artists.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, and if you wanna know more about the programs that are going on at Mass MoCA, make sure to visit them at massmoca.org and thank you for joining us on this episode of "Field Trip".

Make sure to visit us at wmht.org/fieldtrip and let us know where you think we should go next.

(upbeat bright music) We just talked about how we both had piano teachers that made us cry when we were little.

- Everyone says that... (gentle music)