The Cocktail Party Effect

   The Ten Largest (1907) Hilma af Klint Even though the exhibit “Paintings for the Future” featuring Swedish artist Hilma af Klint’s work at the Guggenheim Museum ended this past winter, “The Ten Largest” series (featured above) has stuck with me. The ten pieces are labeled and thus ordered as a human life cycle beginning with childhood, going to youth, adulthood, and eventually old age. I believe examining the passing stages of one’s life is a universal concept, one to which people of all walks of life can relate. By engaging with this grandiose topic, af Klint’s “The Ten Largest” already has a heightened sense of importance in this exhibit. However, in addition to taking on such an ambitious topic, I think there is another layer to af Klint’s work as it transcends mediums as well. The design can be connected with the short story “Masque of the Red Death” by American writer Edgar Allen Poe . To my mind, a universal concept repeated with the same kind of imag...

Emergence (2013) Sayaka Ganz At the Stamford Museum and Nature Center , the building was small but the grounds were vast. The Nature Center had a petting zoo area, but I have never been one for animals, so I mostly stayed inside. Alas, the inside was filled with animals as well. The main exhibit featured animal sculptures by artist Sayaka Ganz which were made up of common household appliances like ladles and forks. The exhibit was named “Reclaimed Creations” to demonstrate how prosaic items can be aesthetically repurposed.   Some of the featured pieces were sculptures of horses. These 3D horses had a tremendous amount of movement to them despite being made of a multitude of static objects. Artists like 18th century British painter George Stubbs worked to revolutionize the portrayal of horses by drawing attention to muscle and tone of the animal itself -- demonstrated in "Whistlejacket" (seen below). While Ganz was not painting horses as Stubbs once did, she capture...

Katonah Museum of Art Building Katonah, NY had always been just a place I drove through on the way to a hike or trip upstate. However, when I found out there was an art museum there, I decided to make a place that had always been simply part of the journey, a destination. I ventured to this exhibit hoping to find some solace in the colors and textures of paintings that always bring me joy. I needed a distraction since I was having a crisis thinking about the state of the environment. Everything I read or watch on the news makes it seem like the planet is going to be up in flames tomorrow; internal anxiety for the environment comes easily for me.   The exhibit being shown at the Katonah Museum of Art called “The Edge Effect” aimed to use art as a catalyst for conversations about the environment. It was kismet; art and sustainability all at once was too well timed for my circumstances. Many of the works simply portrayed scenes found in nature. Some were straightforward...

The day I turned 20 was murky with the haze of a quarter life crisis. From everything I had heard about this decade of my life, I concluded that it would be a wild and nonsensical ride. While some friends would be married with toddlers, I would probably only just be coming out of grad school. In a short time, my life could become vastly different as many milestones seem to happen in a person’s 20s. Three years later—I will be turning 23 soon—I still have no clue what the future holds, but I am a little more confident that I will pull through my tumultuous 20s like countless others.   Self-help books have become all too common on my reading lists these past few years. I read Eat, Pray, Love and soaked it up like every other poor soul who would probably not being taking a years hiatus to travel around the world. I read Wild , The Happiness Project , and countless others which I loved and hoped would change my life. However, I began to exhaust my options and turned to book...

Month long remembrances are a way to honor different groups of people and this month, June, is LGBTQ+ Pride Month . Pride month began by honoring the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan in which a gay bar was raided by police and protest ensued. The purpose of the month is to honor the struggles faced by the LGBTQ+ community to find acceptance and respect. The latest craze sweeping the music industry is related to Pride month with the release of Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.” There has been a lot of controversy around this video which questions Swift’s intentions and right to speak for a community of which she, a straight cisgender women, is not a part. As an ally myself, also a straight cisgender women, I wondered if my own allyship would warrant criticism as well.   I set out to evaluate the “You Need to Calm Down” and make my own criticisms. If you haven't seen the music video yet for the song, note that there will be spoilers ahead. Overall, while I was a...

Failing the Bechdel Test The  Bechdel Test   is a feminist measure to see if two female characters could interact by communicating about something other than men and their romantic relationships. I’ve seen it mostly used to analyze pop culture: movies, TV, books, plays, etc. It’s amazing how many things fail at this task—like this post!   Dating makes me feel like my life would not pass the Bechdel Test. Everyone is always asking “So, have you met anyone yet?” or “Why don’t you have a boyfriend yet?” I cannot talk about that all the time. Therefore, I will attempt to talk about relationships once, and never again. I don’t like to brag, but I am an expert on relationships; I studied psychology and I’ve seen a lot of rom-coms. Clearly, I’m qualified to give advice, so read on! But firstly, let me put myself in my place: I am a straight, cisgender female. I apologize for the narrowness of my view, but I think it’s best to only generalize my own experie...

The Benefits of a Non-Traditional  Post-Grad Year College ended in May 2018 for me. It was a terrible, rainy day, and, unknown to me, the day my very traditional life became a little less linear. During undergrad,  I loved my psychology major and the friends I had made. However, I had no clue what to do next. I had spent my senior year fundamentally switching careers after I decided that my lifelong goal of being a lawyer was no longer favorable: teaching, social work, nursing, nomad, artist, you name it.  Fear not -- I am going to graduate school in September 2019 for business; I still don't know fully what I want, but at least I'll get a job. Yes, that is a year after all my friends started their advanced degrees or jobs -- a fact that haunts me every day. As someone who has always tried to me ahead of the curve in life-planning, this year between undergrad and grad school has been a real low.  While I could focus on how much of a classic your-...