Box Removal

BOX REMOVAL

My brother, Larry, had trouble removing a chandelier in a Styrofoam box from its cardboard box. It reminded me of all the things that are so hard to get out of the box. It can be so hard to remove things from the hard-plastic boxes they come in that you really need scissors, but what if what you’re removing from the box is scissors? 

Stigmata

                                                                                             Word count: 1331

STIGMATA

It started simply. In a Delaware public school, the principal walked into the lunch room and told the students that no one would eat before prayers, and called a student to the podium. The student began, "In the name of Jesus..."

 Yusef, the Jewish child raised his hand.
"That’s not the barakah we use at home. We don’t pray to Jesus.
The principal replied, "That’s what you do at home. Your public school is in America, a Christian nation, so you do it our way or you can go to the side room there and do it your way"
         Yusef got up and went to that back room, He found a small room, probably used as a closet before now pretty much empty, with nothing in the room but a cross pasted up. He realized he couldn’t do the prayer for his lunch. He didn’t have any.

He had a bad habit. Whenever he got especially nervous or upset, he started to scratch, even though there were times that he scratched himself raw and got infections. He scratched his head now, prayed in Hebrew, then went back to his seat, next to his classmates.
         His friend, Chuck, asked him why he couldn't pray like everybody else.

        "You know I'm Jewish", he said. We don't pray to Jesus

"Then who do you pray to?"
Before he could answer, another classmate said, “Jews don’t pray to anybody. They’re atheists, like Marx and Lenin”

“We do pray God. We just don't pray to Jesus"

                                   “My priest says that the only way to the father is through the son,

So, if you don’t believe in Jesus, you don't believe in God"
             "So does my pastor!" another boy said
              "My rabbi says that only God is God and all this Trinity stuff is a way of worshiping a false god"
               "Are you saying Jesus is a false god?”                                                           

 Then it started. He hoped he imagined the words, Jew boy. As he sat, he felt the redness where he scratched and resisted the urge to scratch some more.
               At three, he came home, kissed the mezuzah and his mother.
               "How was school?" his mother asked                                                                                     
            "We prayed today, at lunch. Isn’t that illegal in a modern public school? Doesn’t that defy separation of church and state?"
             "Some atheists made it that way. We all know that the Constitution permits freedom of religion and all this talk of separation of church and state can’t stop it. You’ll be happy to know I and your father are working on that. We already got the principal to agree to it, so think of us, as you pray at lunch."
            "But it didn’t feel right, Mom. I tried to do the prayer the way the rabbi taught me to, but I only ended up scratching."
            "We warned you about scratching like that. Remember when scratched so much your skin got so red and infected we had to take you to the hospital?"
           "Yeah, Mom. But it’s hard to be the praying Jew."
          "Your classmates know you’re a pious Jew. Now as the prayers make them more pious, you’ll have an easier time"
           "Yes, Mom"

           The next day, he heard the whispers he hoped weren’t and tried not to look around as he walked.

"HEY, JEW BOY!"

             He heard it loud and clear, this time, as it was yelled into his right ear. He looked right, and someone pulled on his left peyos, the long sideburns orthodox Jews keep. "OWW!" he shouted, and felt his head pulled to the left, as someone on his right pulled off his yarmulke. He never saw it again.
           In class, he started scratching his head, but pulled his hands down and started to scratch his palms and wrists, stopping when he noticed they were getting red.

At lunch he sat for a moment when he heard the principal call for the prayer.
"But you, Yusef, may go to your room"
           He heard the other students laugh as he went to his little closet. The cross was gone. Its place was the word, "Jewish place", written with thick marker, and a bible on a table. "Christian
Bible, of course", he thought. "Well, this time, I have my kosher sandwich and soda"
           He went into his backpack to find his can of Coke was gone, with a container of milk in its place. He found his kosher salami sandwich, but a milk left the meal not kosher. He left the room and went back to the teacher in charge of the Lunch Room, Ms. Smith.

            “Ms. Smith, what happened to my soda? Somebody removed my Coke and gave me milk.”

            “I did that. You kids get enough soda. Milk is much more nourishing.”

            “But Ms. Smith, I’m eating a meat sandwich, and mixing milk with meat is against Jewish law.”

            “You’re against the law!”, a student yelled.

            “Mind your business, Jack”, Ms. Smith replied.

“But Ms. Smith, Jews like Yusef think Jesus is a false god”

            “I’m sure that’s not true. This is America. Everybody worships Jesus, including Jews. Isn’t that right, Yusef?”

            “Actually, we do think Jesus is a false god.”

            Ms. Smith gave Yusef a sour look, then said to him, “We don’t need your wise ass heresy. You go to detention until you’re ready to apologize to our Lord and Savior.”

           On his way out of the Lunch Room, he heard some students.

"How was your meal?", someone yelled. Several students laughed.
             He never left detention that day. He cried to himself and didn’t even try to stop himself from scratching.
             The next day, he came in, staying close to the wall, holding his backpack close to

his chest. Someone tried to grab his peyos, but he had taped them down. He kept his yarmulke in his backpack until he got to class.
           "Today will be different", he thought.
           Lunch came and he was surprised to see his mother there.

 "Since I helped establish the prayers, I have the privilege of watching you lead the lunch prayer", she said.                                                                                  

              Lunch time came, and he stood in front of the room, with his mother on one side of him and the principal on the other. He had a full, freshly baked loaf, a real knife and real bottle of wine in front of him. He opened to the correct page of what this time was a Jewish prayer book, when a note fell out. He picked it up and it was a computer printed page full of nothing but the

word Jew boy, repeated over and over.
            He started to cry and scratched himself all over, especially his head, his hands, his feet, and even his side. All those spots began to bleed, so the teachers picked him up and took him out.

"Wilmington or St Francis hospital?" the secretary asked the principal.

"Delaware Psychiatric, and call his psychiatrist. He's had a nervous breakdown."
            I'm calling a lawyer, and you can bet the press is going to hear about this!" his mother yelled.
            Next week, he returns with his mother, his father, his principal and a cop, to pick up his things, for the last time.
           They pass through a crowd of students.
           "Not a word", the principal says, but a few grow close, with tears in their eyes.
           "I’m so sorry we did this to you" one says

         "Where can I get a yarmulke?"
        "How do I grow peyos?"
        "Can I join your shul?"
        The principal says, "I can understand your apologies, but why do so many of you want to convert? Isn’t that a bit much?"
        A student pulls out a newspaper. The headline says, "SCHOOL HAS NEW SAINT, JEWISH BOY HAS STIGMATA"

END OF STORY

Pet Peeves

PET PEEVES

Cab drivers who have to leave their windows open just a crack, so you, in the back seat, get all the weather, despite the fact that he insists he has his heat or a/c on. Sure they're on for him, but you're getting the weather.

Your mother has her own dialect and if you don't understand her, it's your fault.

Print Festival Report Critique

Critique of my report,

 by my Print Making class professor Aragon

Great description of the pieces; your narrative of the essay has a natural flow but there are times when it felt a bit dry. Mainly because there were some sentences that need to be connected rather that have them on their own. When you create short sentences you define a style that mimics a more factual element of the piece; in your case, while you are using facts, I think it would’ve helped the tone of voice of the paper to be less formal so that the reader can “immerse” into the description of the events or the artworks. It seems to me you really enjoyed the Print Fair and had quite the time discovering new artists and their work. I hope this has translated into your own ideas for future pieces and makes you push yourself into creating more complicated imagery.

Keep up the good work

Met Art Museum Report

Met Art Museum Report

November 20, 2016

Rewritten December 2, 2016

These are Claude Monet’s pieces, Four Trees and Manneporte (Etretat). The Manneport surprises me because there are a lot more details than you expect from the father of Impressionism. Still, there’s a lot of shadow and motion, from the curve of the rock and the movement of the water, which you expect from Impressionism. It had a lot more detail than the Four Trees. Manneport has a lot of feeling, such as my Mask piece. My Mask piece gives you a feeling of horror. Manneport gives you a feeling of loneliness, like a leaving. I liked the fact thatthe inside of the arch in Manneport was very bright on the yellow/orange side, which contrasted with the dark blue water and light blue sky. Four Trees has very little contrast. Just a bit of yellow sky. There was also a lot of hard edges in the arch, unlike Four Trees, which has very few hard edges. It helped Manneport in that it was very close, allowing for a lot of the detail that made it so good. Four Trees is more distant and has less detail and, being an Impressionist piece, suggests a lot, like my Doll House.

I also saw Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheat Field With Cypresses. I was impressed with the way he used color, mostly blue skies and very green plants, contrasted with the very yellow wheat field. His contrasts and composition were effective like Manneport, though it was much more distant, like Four Trees.  He used a lot of bright color, the way I did with my Fruit On The Table piece, but he was a lot more organized with his complimentary colors and composition. Van Gogh's yellow in Wheat Field contrasted the blue and the green the way the yellow/orange contrasted against the blue in Manneport. Even the blue and green were interesting in the way they were separated, though they're not contrasting colors, they were contrasted in their shape. the green plants have a lot of short lines, while the sky has a lot of broad, blue space. Another point of contrast in Wheat Fields is that it is mostly vertical, except for the tree on the right going upward, not centered, giving us a surprise. Four Trees has four, evenly space trees that don't contrast with the rest of the picture.

Finally, there was Siesta, by Paul Gauguin. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. It was a very peaceful piece, no where near as erotic as we’ve come to expect from him. I saw little else that impressed me. There was bright and dark colors in some of the shirts, which contrasted with the green glass, but it wasn't as impressive as Monet's and Van Gogh's color, contrast and composition. No really hard or soft edges. No emphasis on any space. It's just a painting of a family photo.

Print Festival Report

Print Festival Report
by David Rubin

Today I went to see Print Festival, at the International Print Center, at 524 W 26 St, Manhattan. It was an exhibit of print art by students.
There was so many good-looking prints, I didn’t know where to look first. I was also surprised at how simple some of the work was. Some of it was as simple as making a print of pressed dandelions and it looked great.
My favorite artist is Lizzy Itzkowitz, a cartoon art student at the School of Visual Arts. She’s been working at it for seven years, studying the Adobe Creative Suite. She’s worked on a variety of media, including gouache, acrylic, paper collage and digital. She does a lot of print pictures, as well as cartoon booklets. You can see her work at https://www.behance.net/lizzyitz
She screen printed a lot of designs and I love all the color, especially the cat. The

cat has three colors, neon pink, neon yellow and neon blue. All those blotches of neon curvy color make it seem quite happy, especially the large orange on yellow on his belly, which strikes me as much of a greeting as the raised left arm.
She also screen printed Cactus Terrarium, 11"X17", neon pink, neon yellow, neon blue and navy blue, and Coral Reef, same size and colors, done on a transparency, below. Like the cat, they are both beautiful because of all the bright, neon colors.
I like the looks of Coral Reef. There seems to be a lot of movement in that sky blue background.
As for Cactus Terrarium, as good as it looks, it looks out place without any background. I’d have printed  it as being on a table, or something. It is on a transparency. Perhaps the background is whatever she puts it on. If it were me, I’d have painted a table and put the transparency on it, a multimedia.
Another piece I liked, to the right, is Monday’s 2016, by Kathleen Johnson. It’s a 28" X 29" woodcut. Clearly this belongs on the cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. It’s nothing but black lines on a white sheet. Allthose lines give it a lot of horrific detail, especially the thin lines on his face and nose. All that horror is emphasized by the thin black rays around it.

Autistic College Experience

I’m an 59 year old autistic person and, most of my life, had little ability to gain or hold down a job, even with the English degree I got from this institution,  so what did I do when my mother died and I came into some money? I came back to this institution!
Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to be something of an amateur artist. You can see my art blog at www.daru3-davidart.blogspot.com , so an art major was a natural. Also, the first time I was at CSI, I majored in computer science, but did poorly in the advanced classes before switching to an English major, so I’m trying a computer major again now.
I started the summer of 2015, with Intro to Computer Programming and, despite some problems with the last lessons, I got a B, so I went ahead with Fall classes. I registered for Intermediate Computer Programming, but couldn’t understand the teacher. She had a rather thick Russian accent, or at least I thought so. My class mates understood, but, being autistic, I need a certain amount of precision, so, to me, this Russian woman sounded like she had big plans for moose & squirrel.  I dropped her in favor of Intro to Portraits, which immediately followed Intro to Drawing, giving me eight consecutive hours of drawing models, nude and dressed. It was too much consecutive time. I missed much and only got B’s.
I also got a B for Intro to Painting class. It was hard in that, though I am an artist, my teacher, Geoffrey Dorfman, had to tell me to slow down and concentrate on my details, even while telling me to get done in the few weeks we have.
In the spring, I took Intermediate Programming for a second time and again, had to drop it, for want of an understandable teacher.
I also took Art 100 and had Mieke Paulsen, a wonderful lecturer. I loved listening to her. Just one thing. She just talked, wrote little or nothing on the board, so I wrote little or nothing, leaving me with no notes. I was so sorry to drop her course.
This left me with one course, Intro to Sculpture, which was a truly fun class, an easy A.
This year, I’m taking Intermediate Painting and, for a third time, Intermediate Computer Programming. I tried taking Intermediate Drawing, but my teacher, Professor Pels, couldn’t even handle normal students. She had no idea how to handle an autistic student and wouldn’t learn how. With the Art Chairman’s help, I switched to printing.