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Last night when I was sorting the photos taken during the weekend when I went kayaking on Huron River with my friends, a really interesting one caught my eyes. In the picture, there is a boat in the middle of the river. My friend and I are sitting on the boat, taking a break from kayaking, effortlessly holding the paddles and turning our heads to look at three swans floating on the river. In the distance, there are trees with beautiful foliage of vibrant colors like red, yellow and green. Above the trees is the blue and cloudless sky, which is mirrored in the water, along with the reflections of us and the trees on the river bank.

This image immediately reminds me of the painting, In the Norwegian Boat at Giverny, by Claude Monet. In the painting, three girls in white dresses are boating on the Giverny river. Well, obviously they are dressed more elegantly than us, but the pleasant environment and the leisurely mood are quite similar with what we have in our photo (and we got swans lining up in the background!).

The idea of unconsciously recreating paintings in real life fascinates me. After all, the painters get their inspirations from reality. When I was studying abroad in Paris this past summer, I visited Auvers-sur-Oise, the village in which van Gogh spent his last two months of his life, on a Saturday. The little village keeps most sites that appear in van Gogh’s paintings unchanged over the past decade, and there is even a map that marks each site so visitors can take a themed tour of van Gogh. I went along the route. I saw the église (church), the wheat field, and Dr. Gachet’s house, and I was trying so hard to find the perfect angles in order to capture photos that are exactly the same with the paintings.

However, after I came back, it was this picture I randomly took that immediately melt my heart:

I didn’t even remember when I took this picture. However, it is definitely a perfect recurrence of the touching scene of parental love shown in van Gogh’s First Steps.

Some people describe Auvers-sur-Oise as an eternal village because it has little changed over the past decade and every corner is as beautiful as a painting. However, it seems that sometimes real life could be even more beautiful than paintings.

Awwww…cutest thing ever.

Back in the day, the mention of “anamorphs” only had something to do with teenage heroes who could transform into any animal they touched, fighting a constant battle to save the Earth from unfriendly aliens (see “Animorphs”, by K.A. Applegate). Then I discovered the work of artist/scientist Jonty Hurwitz, and the meaning of the word – spelling differences aside – was changed forever. Just as the Animorphs were bestowed with the ability to take on multiple forms, Hurwitz is able to imbue his sculptural systems with the properties of both cast object and ephemeral image. Each work in the series, which has been revisited multiple times since the birth of “Rejuvenation” in 2008, operates in these two modes of expression simultaneously. The objects themselves seem to be frozen in the midst of transformation – but from what origin does the projection begin, and into what new form are they melting?

Anamorphosis is the process by which a two- or three-dimensional image is translated through a lens or mirror in order to clarify its distorted visual information. In biological terms, it is a gradual, ascending change of form “to a higher type”. Jonty Hurwitz takes both into account when he creates these complex sculptural installations. Each is made up of a metal casting that stretches around a focal point, abstracting its representation into a streak of circular motion. A cylindrical mirror accompanies each sculpture, placed at the very center of its distortion. The image that appears on the mirror’s surface is a perfectly accurate rendition of Hurwitz’s subject – a hand, a frog, or a pair of faces staring back at one another through the reflection. The result is an artwork that exists as both a sculptural set of abstract objects and a painstakingly accurate reflected image. Neither element “works” on its own, each half depending on the other to make sense of itself.

Jonty Hurwitz was not always an artist. He received an Engineering degree in his hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa, considering himself the “techie” when it came to skill sets. He had a knack for calculations and coding, torn between a love for art and the practicality of mathematical physics. One day in 2003, he stumbled across a series of anamorphic portraits created by classical artists like William Scrots and Hans Holbein, which changed his life forever. After four years of simultaneously programming the British payday loan company Wonga and making art in his spare time, Hurwitz decided that he had done his part for the corporate world and devoted his life to “expressing calculations visually.” This obsession with logic and science is clear in Hurwitz’s anamorphic sculpture, giving the distorted forms a definitive quality that is not simply “abstract”. There is a sense of reason in their abstraction, a method to the madness. To confirm this feeling that there is form beneath the distortion, if only we had the right lens to see it through, the mirror is placed at the exact center of its circular path. Hurwitz sets up the viewer with a proposition: “You think this is just another contemporary abstraction?” He immediately answers with a cylindrical, reflective, “Think again.”

A lot of my memories, especially early ones, are associated with wisps of senses—the warmth of the eggs we had incubated in my 3rd grade class, the enormity of the first Fourth of July fireworks I watched, the smell of cinnamon buns cooking in the oven on an unexpected snow day. A lot of the American road-trip memories that I keep with me are feelings of vastness, of simultaneous emptiness and freedom; somehow, I remember the Southwest roads the best. The slightly dusty, clear-skied landscape seemed to stretch on forever, not paying the slightest attention to our little Mitsubishi Galant crawling on its surface.

And if a crazy-looking hitchhiker with a Polaroid camera turned up on the side of such a road, we definitely would not have let him into the car. But of course, since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a horror film, the characters had to give him a lift. And of course, this leads them into a chain (ha!) of unexpected events.

I’d never seen the movie before the October 19th midnight showing, though it’s such an iconic film that I’d heard of it and the horror stories surrounding its filming process. Apparently Entertainment Weekly even ranked as the second scariest movie of all time, just after The Exorcist; and given my history with scary movies, it’s a mystery as to why I decided to go at all.

Then again, if EW had been at the midnight showing last Saturday, they would have retracted that ranking pretty quickly. The midnight showing was a testament to how the viewing experience could change the reading of a film drastically, for better or for worse. In a nearly filled room at the State Theater at midnight, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre read more like an unintentionally funny movie rather than a legitimately scary horror film. For me, it allowed me to distance myself from the film and make it less scary to digest, which I liked better. But I also know that some people were less than thrilled to watch it in such an environment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a great movie with genius pacing; the whole film details less than 24 hours and many scenes of just Sally running away screaming, yet somehow it still holds together. The creepy dinner scene at the end especially- the 27 consecutive hours of filming certainly paid off.

Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the audience, or maybe it was just that the ‘scary’ codes in the movie didn’t quite match up to 21st century standards—so many factors make up the viewing experience. There was a unique sense of community as well; the fact that all of us came out at midnight to see a classic horror film certainly added to this aspect. Personally, it didn’t detract from my appreciation of the film but made it more special. I’m looking forward to doing it again (Rock Horror Picture Show in a week- the Midnight Theater Experience, vol. 2!)

Greetings, arts ink world, it’s a real pleasure to be back here. My goal of blogging about music I currently enjoy is going to be made blissfully easy by a strong resurgence of excellently produced, intricately thought out and creative music in the past six months. Specifically, I will focus the next few blog posts on the burgeoning rise of the Chicago Hip Hop scene that, astonishingly, is spearheaded by a few 20-something year olds and exemplifies some of the most positive aspects of Hip Hop culture. I left off last academic year with a post about Milo & Otis, a soulful, hip-hop inspired duo, who mark the beginning of this new movement. To be clear, Chicago is no stranger to rising Hip Hop artists: Kanye, Common, Lupe, No I.D., Twista and Rhymefest all hail from the windy city. This recent surge marks a deviation from their impressive legacy because these artists form a collective– they are young, talented, and run in similar social circles. Milo & Otis released their stunning EP in 2011 (if this is unfamiliar to you google milo and otis the joy), and featured a collaboration with an emcee called Chance The Rapper. When Chance wrote and premiered on the track “Lift Up,” he was only eighteen years old.

I begin my exploration of the Chicago Hip Hop scene with Chance The Rapper because, although he is certainly not the pioneer of the group, he is presently at the forefront, arguably across the entire country, of Hip Hop. Chance began working with artists like Milo & Otis in high school, where he mostly learned and played soul and jazz music. He belonged to the same group of friends and musicians Kids These Days, a seven-member band (including rapper Vic Mensa, more on him to come) that blended rock, jazz and Hip Hop into their self-titled “Traphouse Rock” style. As Kids These Days was gaining popularity, Chance was turning his musical interests towards Hip Hop, influenced (as everyone is quick to mention) by Kanye West’s first album College Dropout. After being suspended from high school for ten days, Chance wrote and produced his first cohesive work: a mixtape called 10 Days. The mixtape put him on the radar of bigger names like Childish Gambino and Joey Bada$$, but it is Chance’s most recent effort that has every music blog and magazine gushing over the twenty year-old artist.

On April 30, 2013, Chance The Rapper dropped his second mixtape, Acid Rap; 13-tracks strong, it is unequivocally the most aesthetically pleasing, imaginative, expressive, relevant and original collection of tracks Hip Hop has seen in the past several months. (It is so phenomenal that, instead of overwhelming you with all my praise, I am going to touch on a few songs at the end of my next several blog posts, so that I extend my review throughout the weeks.) Hip Hop fanatics and skeptics alike should give Acid Rap a listen; Chance is a unique rapper in that he can be playful and silly– using his sharp and skillful wordplay to make jokes and spin out of control– and also solemnly reflective, sometimes on the very same track. His lyrics are not only substantive, they are also witty, include a wide variety of idioms, figurative language and impressive diction, and just sound good. I am so infatuated with Chance’s music because, among other reasons, it is such pretty rap; he translates his message without difficulty, but he does it in a way that channels his background in jazz and soul, setting him apart from the heavy-hitting Trap music rappers, known for their abrasive beats and overwhelming bases. Chance is markedly different, and the whole music scene is responding to him. He is so young to be so talented, and it is clear we can expect tremendous things in his future. I sometimes have to remind myself that he has yet to even produce a studio album, much less sign to a big record label. He’s still with the Save Money Militia, and he’s still gonna watch his bros.

If you haven’t gotten your hands on Acid Rap yet, go over to chanceraps.com to download it for free and peruse all things Chance.