Seven-Eighths of the Time: November 2012

So...I have always thought those cheesy I <3 New York shirts were dumb, but I have changed my mind. They are so true. New York is wonderful!! I have only been back for less than 24 hours and I already miss it. I hated it when I first arrived, but who can blame me? I was running on no sleep, after a 5 hour plane ride, and it was blizzarding. Not the greatest first impression. By the end of the week I knew that I had to go back to the wonderful city as soon as possible.

We shall start at the beginning. I went to New York for a school field trip. We were there to experience as much art as possible in 5 days. Our plane left Salt Lake at 11:30 pm Tuesday night. Needless to say, I got no sleep that night. We arrived in NYC at 5 or so in the morning. We were bustled onto a subway, where we were crowed into a teeny space with a gazillion other people, and then stood there, surrounded for over an hour as the subway train hurtled through the darkness. It was intense.


Me, in the subway, at 5ish in the morning. Not pretty.

Then, with no nap (and after we dropped our stuff off at the YMCA we were staying at) we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was amazing. Words cannot describe my joy and happiness. I saw so much awesome stuff. Like this:

There is a real dear under those glass bubbles.

This is one of Bernini's clay models for the giant fountains he made which are all over Rome.

This was made by my favorite old sculptor, Rodin. I was so stoked to be in the presence of his work, I didn't even care that much that I couldn't see my favorite sculpture of his.

This is by the ever creepy Kiki Smith. This one is called Lilith.

Another Rodin!!


I just like this guy's expression :)

My Met exploring buddies.

When we got out of the Met, there was a full fledged blizzard going on. I took a picture of my sadness while in the shelter of a building.

I believe that at this point (we had been walking around the Met for 6 or 7 hours), I was too exhausted to do anything, so I voted to go back to the YMCA for some rest. We also went to a food place to get some breakfast stuffs, but that isn't too important.

Thursday we got up at 7 to begin another exciting day. We rode the subway. This is all I could ever see:


Curse being short!

The first activity we did was go to the Strand, which is an amazing bookstore. It is huge! and has really good prices. They say that they have over 18 miles of books shelves. I believe them. I got 3 books, which I am very excited to read.
After that we went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). I was given a free ticket by some nice lady, which was very lucky, since it was $14 I got to spend elsewhere.

Picasso used to paint like this before he got all weird.

I just really love this. I am going to paint something similar and put it in my front room when I grow up.

Me with a cool light sculpture.

Love it.

I walked on a Richard Serra piece! The sign told me I could, so I did. I got some really funny looks from people who didn't read the sign.

Jasper Johns, I remember learning about him in Art History.

This is what I saw every time I got off the subway to go back to the YMCA. There is cool art all over the city.

That night when I got done with the MoMA, I went to the Phantom of the Opera. On Broadway. I know you all are jealous :)

While it was cool seeing a musical on Broadway, I actually prefer the movie, which will probably be held against me somehow.

Friday was another intense day. Up at 6:30 so that I could go to the Ground Zero 9/11 Memorial. It is beautiful. They did a really good job catching the loss and devastation caused by the attacks, while at the same time giving a sense of hope.

After visiting Ground Zero, we moved onto another activity that was kind of sad. We went to visit the galleries in Chelsea. The only problem is that Hurricane Sandy destroyed most of them. We just kept walking around, looking for galleries, but most of them were closed for remodel. You could still see the water marks in some places. Even though there was a lot of destruction, there were a few galleries open, so we did get to see some stuff.

Like this graffiti.

And this sweet video/animation piece by Michal Rovner

And a whole show by Antony Gormley, who is one of my favorites!! Here I am holding his hand. (all of his pieces are based on his own body)


Just interacting with the sculptures.

After the rather disappointing visit to Chelsea, we headed off to PS-1 MoMA, which is an outpost of the MoMA that I mentioned earlier. The only thing worth mentioning that I saw there was a beautiful piece by James Turrell, another one of my art heroes. It was one of the most powerful pieces I have ever experienced. You go into this room, and he has benches all around walls, with lighting just above them. The main part of the piece is the giant hole that he has cut into the ceiling. The sky looks like it was painted on. I sat there and watched the sky go dark, since I had timed it perfectly to see the sunset. It was life changing.

When I first entered the room.

Just before I left. The whole sky was black when I actually left.

After leaving PS-1, we headed to Union Square to do a little shopping, but that is nothing to write home about.

Saturday was by far my favorite day in New York. We went to the Dia Beacon. I wasn't actually too excited for this one, I just wanted to go on the train ride to get there. The train ride was beautiful, but the museum was definitely up there on my favorites list. It was amazing.

View from the train. It was like this the whole time.

Me and Heather.

Another beautiful scene

And another. Somewhere on the train ride, we passed a castle. No joke. Look up Bannerman Castle.

The next pictures were taken inside the Dia Beacon. Which is illegal. Oops.

A piece by Robert Smithson. I had to be super sneaky because there was a guard right behind me.

Richard Serra. Who is my very favorite artist at the moment because of this trip.

Creepy spider thing by Louise Bourgeois

Another Richard Serra. I totally had a moment of pure joy with this piece, which consists of four HUGE metal structures.

On the train ride back.

After getting back from the Dia Beacon, Heather, Robin and I headed out to Little Italy for some delicious foods and cheap souvenirs. We saw a creepy baby Hulk graffiti.

Weird, huh?

Then we went to the Brooklyn bridge, which was also cooler than I expected.

Heather smiling behind me, and Robin taking a picture.

Sky line

I love New York

After the Brooklyn bridge, we met up with some of our other classmates and professors at the Guggenheim, which had the dumbest exhibit of Picasso up, but had super cool architecture. You win some, you lose some.

Ashley and me outside the Guggenheim.

Inside the Guggenheim

After the waste of time they call the Guggenheim, we decided to go see the Statue of Liberty. It was quite the adventure. Here is a picture from halfway down the world's longest escalator. It was trippy.

The subway was closed down three stops before where we needed to get off to get to the ferry, so we had to get on a different train, then walk 4 blocks to the ferry. We totally got lost, talked to a nice guard, and ran on a freeway past a lot of construction workers. And missed the ferry by 8 minutes.
We had to wait another hour for the next one, but we decided that it would be dumb to have gone to all that trouble to get there just to give up. So we went on the 9:30 ferry to Staten Island, which goes right past the Statue.

The next day, Sunday, we went to church, were I saw one of my ex-boyfriends. It was only slightly awkward.
We also went to the Frick Museum, which was pretty cool, especially since it used to be someone's house. It was like being in Downton Abbey. Beautiful.
Then we went and hung out in Central Park for the last few hours before we had to head to the airport.