My Home

Earlier this week, I posted several photos of my immediate neighborhood, the area where I have grown up and the streets that have shaped me. Now I want to share a few more photos of Manhattan, because this week I have also spent time exploring more areas of the city. The photo on the bottom right is a picture I took recently in Riverside Park, looking through the grass at the Hudson River. When I was in the park I noticed that the ground was littered in trash and my friend and I spent a few minutes cleaning the area around us. I thought about how important it is to contribute to the neighborhoods that shape me. Just as Manhattan's Upper West Side has helped me grow into who I am today, I have responsibilities to clean and maintain the areas around me. I think that is part of what No Longer Empty does-- create an environment where people feel a sense of ownership and responsibility towards their neighborhood community. Just as Grand Concourse now offers its residents art and beauty in the Andrew Freedman home, residents of the Bronx take time to appreciate the space in which they live and contribute to it.

Bronx

169 and Grand Concourse. this where i was born and raised. a lot happened in this neighborhood and thats what makes me who i am today. there is no place like home.

Aminata Batchilly

outgoing, fun to be around, caring

Zerega, My Neighborhood

My neighborhood and the neighborhood that No Longer Empty's exhibition is in are very different. My neighborhood has houses everywhere and the neighborhood NLE's exhibition is in has buildings all over. I used to live in that neighborhood, in a building, i loved it there, but know since I moved here I like houses much better. I go and visit my old friends some times and I miss them a lot. I would take a picture there to keep the memory and take a picture of my neighborhood to show my old friends. 

Nusrat Bhuiyan

I'm interested in art, actually vary interested. I love to draw and paint, I applied to Laguardia when I was in 8th grade but i didn't get in. I also went to this Saturday program about East Harlem art and we made a map at the end with all our drawings. I came to NLE mostly because of art but also to help my communication skills, i am not vary good at speaking out loud in front of people,and i heard we were going to talk to a lot of people and give a tour at the end in NLE. I pretty sure that will help me.

Youth Docent, Week 2

 The images I've chosen are very different in context but, the same in concept. Places unknown...until explored and realized of its true potential...or lack of potential.

I took these photos of the Andrew Freedman Home and the area across the street to represent the going "backwards" in time as you enter on to the Freedman Campus, so to speak. Once you enter through these gates it is as if you aren't in the Bronx (2012); it is almost as if you've traveled back through time or thrown into this pre-modernization age of tranquility and freedom. Your mind is free to wander and create its own conceptuality of what "time" is, what "the past" is, what the "present" is. The Freedman Home is a blast from the past most of us never get to experience knew we could experience.

Where I live. I chose to take this picture at night through my window at night to capture the true lies of my neighborhood. With this image you can't see much of the area or anything for that matter, but a tiny piece of a building close to the bottom and blurred street lights, to me this shows the true reality of where I live. Nobody can see through the darkness unless they are in it, and nobody can navigate their way out until their eyes have "adapted". My eyes are adapted, I am the one light that can see the building and area around me, I know where I am and where I want to go. The two green blurs of light on the right half of the image near to center is the police station; the light they create in comparison to the rest of the area represents the amount of influence they hold where I live, unfortunately that isn't much. The rest of the lights represent lost hopes, dark deeds, and terrorized souls.

Media Literacy Workshop Part 1

Yesterday Roderick Giles gave us a 2- hour Media Literacy Session. Thanks BronxNet for making this possible.  We will get to film in our next session April 25.

And we leave it here with one question:

What are the differences and similarities between a pencil and a video camera?

New York City is made up of thousands of criss-crossing worlds, microcosms and cultures that wind their way around one another and sometimes intersect.

It's always fun to leave my neighborhood and explore a new one, which is one of the reasons I loved gallery sitting this weekend. So many different individuals came to stroll through the exhibit this weekend-- young children, elderly women, middle-aged couples. It reminded me of how much rich diversity New York holds within it. Each person I spoke to had a story to share, a nugget with which to enlighten me. One woman I spoke to told me that she had lived on Grand Concourse in the Bronx since the 1970s and had watched just that one street transform over the decades. She told me how gratified she was to see that the Andrew Freedman Home had come to life once again after years of slumbering in the middle of a busy neighborhood. After we had walked around one of the rooms together, she asked me if I too was from the Bronx. I told her about my neighborhood in Manhattan's Upper West Side (see my photos above). "I'm not from the Bronx," I told her. But what I didn't say aloud was that I'd take home a small slice of her neighborhood when I went home that evening, carrying with me the smiles and the stories of the people I encountered.

Fitting, it seems, that the first time I entered the Andrew Freedman home, spring had just tumbled into New York. It was early March and one of the first days of the year graced with ample sunshine and a light breeze. It was a day for new beginnings and possibilities. That sense was compounded the moment I walked through the cement courtyard of the Andrew Freedman home. Watching the artists transform the home's grandiose, well-worn ballrooms into pieces of art was truly a magical experience. I was watching the house come to life, becoming a space for innovation and renewal. And best of all, I was a part of the process of rebirth.

So now I suppose you know that I have a passion for new beginnings. I have always been open to adventure, whether that means sampling a new flavor at the Ben and Jerry's on my corner, or attempting to pick up a new hobby such as juggling or zumba. Which, I suppose, explains why I was eager to apply when I heard about No Longer Empty's Youth Docent Program. Art has long been an outlet for my energy and creativity whether I am painting in my school's studio, doodling in class, or writing poetry at after school workshops. But now I have the opportunity to experience art in a completely new way, and I am thrilled to continue imparting the experience to you through this blog. I'll write again soon!

Emma Goldberg