Author: Isabella Castillo

For this collage, I wanted to bring attention to pollution and how it affects people, animals, and the environment. The whole piece is built around one question: “Who Suffers?” because pollution is not just some far-off problem happening to “the planet.” It affects real living things that need clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment just to survive.

This topic is personal to me. I grew up visiting the Dominican Republic, and the beach has always been one of my favorite places in the world. However, there is a lot of pollution there, and I have noticed that there are not always strong protections for public land. Sometimes, people with more resources are able to buy land and turn it into private spaces for profit, while the environmental consequences remain for communities and the public to deal with. Growing up seeing these issues made environmental pollution feel real to me instead of something that only existed in articles or discussions.

I chose “Who Suffers?” as the title because I noticed that people often think about pollution as only a nature problem, only a human problem, or only an animal problem, rather than understanding how all three are connected. I wanted the question to encourage viewers to think beyond one group and consider the larger impact of pollution.

The article I read, “What Do You See?” from De Nichols’ Art of Protest, played a big role in shaping my design. It discusses how images can communicate ideas beyond what is immediately visible and how protest art encourages people to look deeper and question issues they may normally overlook. This idea influenced my approach because I did not want to show pollution only as an environmental issue; I wanted viewers to think about who is actually affected by it. That is why I included images of plastic waste, polluted water, air pollution, and animals. These images are meant to make people stop and ask themselves who truly suffers because of these problems.

I created the collage digitally using images from Wikimedia Commons. I also included a few small messages throughout the piece for viewers to discover if they look closely instead of placing everything directly on the surface.

If I had more time or materials, I would have preferred to create this collage by hand instead of digitally. I enjoy physical artwork, and I think a handmade version would have made the piece feel more personal and added textures that a digital collage cannot fully recreate.

I think New York City is one of the few places where a piece of art can completely change your day. A single work can transform your commute by affecting your emotions or even the thoughts that stay with you throughout the day. Sometimes a piece of art resonates with you for only a few minutes, while other times it stays with you for weeks, years, or even a lifetime. I also believe that every person experiences art differently because each piece creates a different kind of inner response depending on where you are in life, your past, your passions, and the things that bring you joy, worry, or sadness.

For that reason, and many others, it was difficult for me to choose just one example of public art. Art appears in so many different forms. It can be a beautiful sculpture or mural that suddenly makes you stop in the middle of your walk, demanding your attention. It can also be one of the poems displayed on the subway, reflecting exactly what you are feeling in that moment and inviting you to think more deeply or even write pages about an emotion you did not realize you were carrying. But my favorite form of public art is the art created by people themselves.

I have always loved art expressed through human beings. There is something beautiful and intimate about watching people freely share their creativity. They create not because they have to, but because it fulfills something within them, brings joy to their everyday lives, and allows them to be seen, heard, and appreciated. That honesty and vulnerability make it possible to connect sincerely with others.

The public art I chose was a jazz band I came across during a walk in the park. There was no placard or description because the performance itself was the artwork. Seeing how much they were enjoying themselves and the genuine smiles on their faces reminded me that sometimes all we need to do is slow down long enough to truly experience the moment we’re in. Their joy spread naturally throughout the crowd as people smiled, stopped to listen, and even danced. Everyone there had arrived with a different story. Some may have been having one of the best days of their lives, while others may have been having one of the worst. Yet, for a few moments, they all shared the same experience through music.

To me, that’s the importance of public art. It interrupts our routine and asks something of us. It asks us to pay attention, to reflect, and to become more intentional with our day. Every person walks away from the same piece of art carrying something different because each of us brings a different story to it. Whether it’s a mural, a poem on the subway, or a jazz band in the park, public art creates a conversation between the artwork and the person experiencing it. To me, that’s what art is: something that creates an inner response, connects us with ourselves and with others, and quietly changes the way we experience an otherwise ordinary day.

Julio Anta’s visit was one of those conversations that invited me to reflect deeply. As someone who considers culture to be such an important part of who I am, especially because I spent most of my life growing up in Latin America before moving to the United States, his words made me feel seen.

Since moving here, I have never been able to stop comparing the differences between my home country, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. There have been moments when I have felt hesitant to speak Spanish in certain places. My native language, why should I ever feel the need to hold it back? One thing that really stayed with me was when Julio talked about how his parents taught him English first because they thought it would make life easier and safer for him. It made me realize that a lot of immigrant families have to make difficult choices while trying to adapt to a new country. Even though my experience is different, I am still adjusting to life here. There are so many parts of American culture that I am still learning, from everyday sayings to small cultural references that everyone else seems to understand. Sometimes I feel a step behind, but I also know that adapting doesn’t mean leaving my own culture behind.

Ironically, when I went back to the Dominican Republic last year, I realized that I did not completely belong there anymore either. My friends had grown, life had moved on, and there were references, jokes, and little cultural things that I no longer understood the way I used to. Even some words in my own language no longer came to me as naturally as before. Now, simply because I live here, some people no longer see me as fully Dominican. I am no longer completely from here, but I am not completely from there either. So where do I belong?

Without directly answering that question, Julio answered it for me. He explained that being Latino is not just about speaking the language or growing up in Latin America. Even when you are no longer in your homeland, you are still Latino. It lives in your culture, in the food you share with your family, in the endless dancing, and, most importantly, in the stories your parents carry with them and everything they had to go through to build a life here. Those stories deserve to be spoken with pride and, sometimes, transformed into art.

His work inspired me to create more, to ask my family about their stories, and even to write them down. For me, writing has always been the most beautiful, but also the safest way to preserve a story. After listening to Julio, I realized that every story we choose to tell is also a way of preserving a piece of ourselves. Maybe that is where home really is, not in one country or another, but in the memories we carry, the stories we pass on, and the courage to never let them be forgotten.

Last Friday, I finally got to visit the Society of Illustrators. Honestly, I pictured a pretty standard museum, like one big open floor, not something with a basement, a café, and a balcony. Instead, I found a building that felt almost like a house, spread across several floors, with a cozy atmosphere I wasn’t expecting at all. There was even a seating area in the basement where visitors could sit on couches and watch material about the history of illustration and animation. I loved that area because it reminded me of being a kid, sitting in front of the television, waiting to see what cartoon would come on next.

The Society of Illustrators felt very different from a larger museum, mostly because it didn’t feel overwhelming. Compared with the Alice Austen House, though, I noticed an interesting similarity. Both spaces felt personal rather than institutional. At the Alice Austen House, that feeling came from knowing I was physically entering the home and history of a real person. At the Society of Illustrators, it came more from recognition. I saw illustrations connected to familiar worlds, including Marvel and Harry Potter, and felt almost transported back to the cartoons and stories I grew up with.

The exhibit that affected me most was Rebecca Sugar’s Crewverse Zine & Sketches. I’ve loved Steven Universe since I was about seven or eight. It followed me through my adolescence and is still one of my comfort shows today. I have an entire playlist dedicated to the show, and I still listen to Rebecca Sugar’s music. “Love Like You” is one of my favorite songs, so seeing Sugar’s sketches brought back a whole part of my childhood almost instantly.

The strongest emotion I felt was nostalgia, but it went beyond just remembering a cartoon. The sketches looked almost exactly like the world I had known through television, except now I was standing directly in front of the drawings that helped create it. Growing up in the Dominican Republic, Rebecca Sugar and Steven Universe existed on the other side of a screen. At the museum, that distance just disappeared.

What stayed with me most was realizing how much the show had shaped me. Steven Universe taught me about empathy, communication, love, and building meaningful relationships beyond biological family. Seeing Sugar’s original sketches made me think about how something that begins as a drawing can travel across countries and years and become part of another person’s life. I wasn’t just looking at artwork from a show I loved; I was looking at a physical connection between my childhood, my adolescence, and the person I am today.

 

 

The photograph I chose from the Alice Austen House workshop is a group photo we took on the stairs of the house. During the workshop we recreated one of Alice Austen’s own photographs where she stood on those same stairs with her family and even her dog, though we did not have one with us. At first I just thought of it as a fun picture to take. But after thinking about it more I believe it actually represents community and belonging.

I think Alice Austen spent her life photographing the people closest to her, like her family, her friends, even her pets, and just all the little everyday moments most people never really think to capture. I believe there is something about the way she captured them that makes those relationships feel important, like they mattered. The photo we recreated shows a group gathered in front of a home just like her original, and I think that alone gives it a feeling of closeness. We were not even that close with everyone in the photo honestly, but I still believe we shared something real in that moment. We learned about her life, worked together to line up the pose, and ended up making our own little memory in the same spot where she made so many of hers.

Being in the house also got me thinking about what it means to have a safe space. I believe Alice Austen is remembered today as an important figure in queer history and her home feels tied to that, to freedom, art, and just being able to exist as yourself. I think it was a place where she could take photographs and just be around the people she truly loved. That is what makes the house feel like more than just an old building to me.

For us it was a museum we visited for a few hours. For Alice I think it was her home and her whole identity. Our photo kind of connects those two things, past and present, and I believe it shows that even after all this time that staircase can still bring people together.

I also think this is why photography matters so much honestly. A photograph is proof. I believe it is real evidence that someone existed and lived a certain way, and that kind of history can get left out of books, but a photograph is harder to erase.

This Friday, I visited MoMA after wanting to go for a long time and hoping to finally see my favorite painting in person. I prepared by going on the museum’s website, looking for tickets, and finding out that admission on Fridays was free for New York residents. Before even entering, something caught my attention: the structure of the museum. I did not realize that MoMA was inside such a large building, and since it was my first time visiting a museum organized this way, my first impression was a little intimidating.

I think big buildings can feel intimidating when you do not know what is waiting for you inside. The unknown is usually intimidating. When I entered the museum, I felt a little disoriented, but I quickly noticed that other people around me seemed confused too. After asking a staff member several questions and receiving a folder on how to navigate the museum, I finally felt more free to explore.

I started on the fifth floor, in The Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Galleries, and walked directly toward one of my favorite paintings: The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. I have always thought that my generation is hard to impress because we often see amazing things online before seeing them in person. But this time was different. No camera could fully capture the way my eyes admired that painting or the emotions it created in me. Other works that also captured my attention were Women Reading by Lucie Cousturier, Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, and Dance by Henri Matisse.

I only had about two hours to explore, so I was not able to visit all the galleries. Still, I left satisfied and grateful to be so close to these works of art. Thinking about Lindauer’s idea of being a critical museum visitor, I tried not only to look at the art, but also to question the experience around it. One thing I noticed was how many people were standing in line to take pictures with the art instead of stopping to truly appreciate it. This made me wonder: are we appreciating art for ourselves or for others? Are we really taking in the art, or are we simply accepting its importance because the public has already decided it is important?