Author Archives: SOPHIA IOSPA

Marc Chagall was a French, Russian, and Jewish artist. He was born in July 1887 and died in March 1985. He was one of the early modernist artists and the influence of his work has reached many places in the world. He was associated with major artistic styles and created a large variety of art, such as book illustrations, stained glass, drawings, the Paris Opera ceiling, the windows in the UN, Chicago, and Israel and more. Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, “Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is”.

The painting I selected is called I and the Village. It was created in 1911 by Marc Chagall. 

This painting has many modernist elements. It includes the use of vibrant colors – red, pink, blue, green, yellow and a mix of them. It also expresses emotions such as the artists’ longingness for his village and the people who lived there – we can see a woman milking a cow, perhaps this was his mother. The use of straight lines to separate and combine many different ideas in one painting such as a man with a sickle, houses and a church, a horse and a green face looking at each other, woman milking a cow, a hand with jewelry and a tree blooming. I am sure that this painting hides many more images in it that will reveal themselves when revisited with a fresh look. 

I encountered this painting during my visit to MoMA. At first glance, this work seemed too busy to me, but the more I looked at it, I began to see the many details Chagall integrated into it. A feeling of curiosity arose and I found myself standing in front of the huge puzzle trying to understand the artists’ message. I like that this painting expresses a variety of emotions, and you can always find something to relate to in this work in any emotional state.

(https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78984?artist_id=1055&locale=en&page=1&sov_referrer=artist) 

“Incidents in the life of a slave Girl” is a very powerful text that unfortunately is relevant in today’s world as well. “I want to add my testimony to that of abler pens to convince the people of the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by experience can any one realize how deep, and dark, and foul is that pit of abominations” (Preface). Harriet Jacobs’ goal is to educate the free world about slavery, hoping that such horrors will cease to exist, but it seems that the more progressive we became as a society the more we learned to call slavery different names and became more indifferent to the sufferings of others. During slavery in America, people were enslaved in plantations, people nod their heads and draw a clear difference between the world we live in today and the world and cruelty that used to excised.  But the truth is that not everyone is free in 2019.

The ability to choose a profession, place of living, a spouse, sexual orientation, or even the food one might eat is not as easy as one might think. For example, most of the population in the western world do not know who stands behind the everyday food they purchase on a daily basis in the supermarket. Those very people who grow the avocados that we are exposed to year-round, do not know the taste of this fruit simply because they cannot afford it. They are being ripped off by large companies, being enslaved in horrible conditions in their countries, work unreasonable hours from a very young age, even die because of criminal organizations that arose due to the avocado demand in the western world. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and so the criminal organizations rule the crops and the farmers are their slaves, while the criminal organizations are slaves as well to an even bigger party.  So we are facing a new kind of slavery, modern slavery, where everything is legal on the paper, and where invisible people are more invisible than ever.

Hello All,

My name is Sophia Iospa. This is my first semester at Baruch College. My major is Actuarial Science.

I moved to New York in 2014 and currently live with my husband in Brooklyn. I am fluent in English, Hebrew, and Russian.

When I moved to the States, I had no idea I would be staying here, or going to college. I was 24 and had just begun to question what I wanted to do next. I come from Israel, so the typical path of a young adult is very different to that of someone in the U.S. Whereas in the US after high school graduation a young adult typically either goes to work or to continue their education in college, in Israel our next stop is the IDF (Israeli Defense Force).

After the Army, I moved to the US for work. I worked in an office in NYC for more than three years when I decided that it is time to go back home. I had everything ready, I notified my family that I’m coming back, and then, 2 months before my scheduled departure, I went on a date with the best man I have ever met. At the time I didn’t know he will become my husband, but my intuition told me to give him a chance.

So, in Fall 2017 I registered to my first semester at BMCC. I kept my job and for the next 2 years, I was a full-time student and worked full time. It was very challenging, but also very rewarding. By the end of my associate degree, I married my prince charming and graduated from BMCC with a GPA of 3.9.

Today, I have a similar plan in mind, I am 5 months pregnant with my first child and I am a full-time student. My goal is to graduate as soon as possible while maintaining my grades and the quality of my work. I hope to graduate with honors while raising our daughter.

I will finish with a quote I really like by Theodore Roosevelt – “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; … ; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly” Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship in a Republic”.

I am looking forward to the semester that lies ahead, but most importantly I am excited to “dare greatly”.