Knife coverup

continued from page 22 treat her anxiety.

“As parents, this has been very difficult for us. We just want answers.”

The United Federation of Teachers, the union representing teachers and other school staff, also criticized the school administration’s response.

“Staff members were gravely concerned that the P.S. 398 administration did not properly address a safety incident nor provide staff or parents with timely information,” union spokesperson Alison Gendar said in a statement. “It is DOE’s responsibil-

“We look at things like sunspot activity, the moon and where it is in the sky and where it has been in previous years. We look at previous historical storms.”

And Duncan says the Almanac has had centuries of practice.

“When it started there was no other source,” she said. “People lived outside. They were farmers and they needed to know what the weather would bring. It was also important to list times of sunrise and sunset for planting. Now obviously, it would be much easier today to get that information on your phone, these days, or on website. Back then it was the only source because people had to plan ahead.” Q ity to provide a safe school environment for students and staff.”

Since the incidents, Wu said she’s been struggling to explain to her son how he had been put in harm’s way. The mother added that she’s “still trying to prepare myself to have that conversation with him when it comes to it.”

“I feel so hopeless. I think I’m just nobody,” said Wu, who is calling for UreñaThus to resign. “This says a lot about our city, our system … I don’t know why nobody’s listening.” Q

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ARTS, CULTURE & LIVING

Repurposed materials and markers of historical change are just some elements of Socrates Sculpture Park’s current exhibition.

Equipped with funding and access to the park’s outdoor studio, the 2023 Socrates Annual’s six artist fellows crafted works over the summer with themes of transformation, mirroring the park’s shift from a landfill to a community space.

Astoria artist Kate Rusek’s work “Imagined Fungal Emergence” transforms the capacity of aluminum blinds into something open and transparent. The 30-foot sculpture demands the viewer to look up at the trees, leaves and slight movement of its intersecting rings in the wind.

She aimed to explore the material’s potential, but also “our conception of how this object exists in our lives as this barrier between us and the outside world.” Its location on the park’s secluded southern lawn reflects her intention for the work to be inhabited rather than viewed from afar.

Rusek’s life and art are very intertwined, particularly her affinity for found materials and tendency to repurpose them in her work and treat them as nutrients rather than objects to be disposed of.

“The waste landscape, the things that we throw away, the overconsumption that we engage in in our society can feel really bleak when we’re reflecting back on it,” she said. “Change is necessary. However, we have to understand what that change looks like, and we as humans are much more moti- vated by delight and beauty and things that feel open, ideas that are not scary.”

She hopes that art and beauty can motivate people to address environmental problems and view landscapes with an abundance mindset.

Rusek finds Socrates Sculpture Park an apt location to reconceptualize the environment because of its historical use as a landfill.

“To have this sculpture emerge from the soil, emerge from the park itself is sort of this monumental love letter to the history of this place,” she said.

Rusek is this year’s Devra Freelander Artist Fellow, an honor that recognizes an artist whose continued on page 33