Author: Bohdan Omeliukh

The background is Ukrainian symbol Tryzub (Trident). On the mask, I put things important to me: family and my home country. I also drew some things I enjoy: tennis, chess, sports, math. I did it with some help of my little sister who was excited when she heard about this project.

The movie starts with a not bad song. Then it starts romanticising people not paying rent. Very similar to the opera or the book, but for some reason in modern context it feels worse. There’s nothing cool in not being a contributing member of a society and saying “we won’t pay rent for last year, this year, and next year”. If you don’t want to pay for yourself you expect for someone else to cover you. Overall the movie is corny, not really a fan. Opera was also corny in some way, but it felt natural. The inclusion of vulgarity and profanity was forced and unnatural not giving any value to the movie, just highlighted its bad quality. The opera didn’t have any of it. Mimi in the movie, doesn’t really resemble Mimi from the opera (at all). I wouldn’t call the one from the movie modest. The movie also covered much more in slightly less time; it was more focused on protests and public involvment. Opera’s plot was very primitive, but the way it was set was great and captivating. Opera’s actors were also much better at singing than the ones in the movie, but I guess that’s the biggest point in opera. Overall, I think opera was an interesting new experience and much more enjoyable than the movie.

We had a talk over Zoom with Rich about tattoos. I honestly didn’t find it very interesting. I appreciated that he was passionate about what he does, but I have zero interest in tattoos. Other than that, I remember him saying about the situations when they would not agree to do a tattoo: 6 identical tattoos for 6 girls, swastika for a “white power” person, and a gang tattoo for a person who’s not in that gang. The last story was actually interesting. He said the person did the gang tattoo anyway in another salon. Then that gang caught him with the tattoo, and according to Rich gave him two options : either cutting off the arm with tattoo or having a cover-up tattoo, which was just a rectangle. It seems a bit weird in today’s somewhat lawful world, but I guess a person who wants to have a gang tattoo, without even being involved in that gang, is stupid and puts themselves in those kinds of situations.

The whole Macaulay freshman class went on a trip to a Brooklyn museum. The museum was reserved just The presentation in the museum was funny because of the failure in the changing of the slides. After that, we were left to look at and SEE the art. There were some good and not so good exhibits in my opinion.

I liked this picture the most. It’s pretty complex and shows storm in the valley. You can see the parts of valley covered by the ominous clouds, but also parts untouched by the storms where we can see sunlight and Native Americans.

We spent time observing the art at that floor, but we covered the whole floor relatively quickly. I was disappointed to find that we are not allowed on the other floors. So we just hanged out after that.

Overall, this experience was pretty interesting, the best of all the trips so far. Talking to different people and seeing diverse art opened some perspectives.

I thought we have to be at the theater at 1pm as it says on the syllabus, so I went early on the ferry. Then I waited with a classmate for the whole group. We went to see a dance performance.

There were four performances. I would rank them this way:

• 1 – first one
• 2 – fourth one
• 3 – third one
• 4 – second one

It seems that I liked the ones that have more people in them. It honestly makes sense since the more people there are in a performance, the more spectacular performance usually is. The second performance also was weird. Overall, I would say the performance was ok.

This trip took a significant chuck of my time, but I am not frustrated with it because it was interesting to see something I haven’t seen before.

I went to the Art Lab at Snug Harbor. Specifically, I did Ceramic handbuilding, which I chose by randomly walking into a room and seeing familiar faces there. We worked with self-hardening clay, which hardens after about a week. For regular classes they use a kiln and the other type of clay. People in the room were making a pumpkin; I joined them.

Our instructor/teacher told us about his classes, which made me understand that this art lab is made for promoting art classes in their art school. This made me feel a bit bad since I had no intentions of joining their school, and the instructor was very nice.

Apparently, I wasn’t very good at handbuilding because we had to make a sphere first, and the teacher told me about 7 times to make it round. Honestly, I disagree a bit because pumpkins are a bit flattened on top and bottom, but I’m not gonna argue that my pumpkin was great. I think my classmates didn’t see the great idea and execution behind my pumpkin, but I don’t blame them.

I had to leave sooner to make it on time to my engineering class, so I didn’t get to finish the pumpkin and had to rush to CSI with not fully washed hands from the clay.

This is an anti-trust art. This one specifically protests against Rockefeller’s standard oil published on September 7, 1904. The image claims that Standard Oil grew to such extent to be able to control the government shown by its tentacles holding the capitol. Standard Oil controlled about 90% of the U.S. oil industry, and Rockefeller was the richest man at the time. Today, there’re anti-trust laws, but this picture may be still relevant today because new monopolies may emerge at any time. On top of that, lobbying is still present and tolerated in the U.S, and large companies can still influence government decisions.

I went to a museum with my classmates. First we wanted to go to the Met, but it wasn’t free, so we went to the closest one, which was Guggenheim.

We started from the highest floor as was suggested by Daniel. First impression was that there’s at least a pleasant view of museum from the top. It’s pretty different from most museums, but I appreciate the idea.

The art, on the other hand, was mostly pointless and effortless.

The image above that has the same pattern repeating appeared several times at the museum. It seems they really like it there.

There also were a couple screens with video compilations of random things.

There also was a chair, on which you can’t really sit on.

I liked the repeating pattern of the phrases on mirrors or plain canvas. I wouldn’t say it’s very creative or significant, but at least it talks to the viewer.

The “no mas” picture gives off Breaking Bad vibes. I just recently finished the series, so it makes sense.

There also were more classical art exhibits.

Upon exiting the museum, at the first floor there was a nice view of the museum.

Overall, it was an experience. I think this type of art is made for people that want to feel smart and good about themselves, and it doesn’t really have any meaningful value. However, it was still interesting to visit a modern art museum and see what it has to offer.