Kamy Smelser

Walking into one of the interactive spaces at Prince: The Immersive Experience, guests are invited into a replica of Prince’s Purple Rain album cover with a black motorcycle sitting in front of a dimly lit building. Smoke fills the room where guests can sit atop the iconic motorcycle and rev the engine as if they were the award-winning artist, Prince. “I hope [Prince: The Immersive Experience] celebrates who he was. That to me is the biggest thing, is celebrating Prince and all facets of who he

Echo magazine is an award-winning, student-run magazine and during the Spring 2022 semester I had the honor of managing this issue with our creative and innovative team. Find my stories on pages 16-17, 38-39 and 46-49!

Editor’s note: This article is from the Communication Department’s award-winning Echo magazine. A black, unmarked door sits next to an Anytime Fitness, with no hint of what lies behind it. To enter, visitors must make a phone call to ping pong coach Ardy Taveerasert, who will then open the door to an entryway that leads to his table tennis club, ChiSlam. The corridor echoes with the sound of ping pong balls popping to and from players. In a room at the bottom of a set of dimly-lit stairs, club

During the opening remarks of the For Women, By Women art gallery, co-curator and senior photography major Corinne Pompéy held back tears as the gallery’s mission to uplift Columbia women artists had come to fruition. “[The gallery] is just everything that I’ve ever pictured that it could possibly be,” Pompéy said. “Just that [we] were able to bring so many people together and to support one another and create such a safe space is exactly our goal, and to see it here is heartwarming.” The open

In the opening scene of the theatre production “Betrayal,” Emma and Jerry, the main characters, begin a conversation in American Sign Language. Emma, who is Deaf, shares her concerns with Jerry about the affair they have been having. The actor playing her, Kayla Casiano — a first-year acting major — is also Deaf. “My character Emma, [is] very smart and brilliant, [she is] very private … and poised about the affair,” Casiano said. “Also her character happens to be Deaf, just like me.” “Betraya

The sounds of an electric keyboard and the voice of senior comedy major Ron Hexagon reverberated throughout the third floor of the Student Center, as he performed original songs such as “Bananas” and “Constellation: Friendship.” “I love music, and I love comedy, and usually they’re separate,” Hexagon said. “It’s really interesting and funny to me that I do music that is silly, entertaining [and] goofy.” Hexagon, along with 11 other student performers in Columbia’s first annual Columbia Laughs

As the tall, white curtains of the Immersive Frida Kahlo exhibit open, visitors hear the sounds of classically-composed music which draws them into a walk-through digital experience of paintings and self-portraits by Frida Kahlo. “The show is very intense, but in a way that isn’t overwhelming,” said Jack Braithwaite, a junior photography major and shift lead, who supervises daily operations at the LightHouse ArtSpace Chicago. “I think the most impactful thing is just seeing how she represented

Deep in the roots of Columbia’s history, it was three women — Mary A. Blood, Ida Morey Riley and later Jane Alexandroff — whose leadership and work as founders and pioneers in their field shaped the college into what it is today. Columbia started as the Columbia School of Oratory in 1890, founded by Blood and Riley, who were both instructors and graduates of Emerson College. The two women had a vision to teach public speaking, among other subjects, using principles they learned from their educa

During a school day in rural Scotland, Benjamin McEwan said he was following the story on the crisis in Ukraine, and while at lunch he asked himself: “Is there anything I can do?” After having a conversation with his friend James Kitching, he found a link in a Reddit thread Kitching created, which brought him to a Discord server for a tech initiative, TechForUkraine, and he shared it with his followers. “After school, I went to check the server, and there were 200 people on it, so that was pre

In Dawn Turner’s latest book, “Three Girls from Bronzeville,” the reader is taken through the personal journey of Turner’s experience growing up with her sister Kim and friend Debra, and their shared experiences of facing “race, fate and sisterhood.” Turner begins this story by describing her early childhood days playing in the summer sun in Bronzeville with Kim and Debra, then walks the reader through how life took the trio down three different routes. Turner also shares her experience growing

Walking down North Halsted Street, the 2D Restaurant screams its existence as it pops out from its darker-toned, brick-covered neighboring buildings. With a bright, white facade and hand-drawn “2D Restaurant” logo, the restaurant sits ready to show off its environmental artistry. The 2D restaurant, 3155 N. Halsted St., opened Feb. 22 in Lakeview and welcomes customers to experience its hand-drawn and comic-like decor while ordering an item from its growing food and drink menu. While waiting for

A lineup of 12 comedic acts stood behind the curtain of Columbia’s Getz Theatre waiting for the spotlight to shine on them during a special event organized to help the homeless. The stand-up comedy special, held Feb. 25 in partnership with the homeless care project Visible Faces, was promoted as the first mainstage stand-up event at the Getz Theatre Center, 72 E. 11th St. While the show was free to attend, attendees were encouraged to bring donations for Visible Faces to hand out to the homele

Masks will continue to be a requirement in classrooms and inside campus buildings for the foreseeable future. The announcement that Columbia will continue to enforce mask-wearing on campus was sent via collegewide email and also discussed during the Feb. 11 Faculty Senate meeting, after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the state’s mask mandate will be lifted Feb. 28. An email from the Incident Assessment Task Force sent to students, faculty and staff on Feb. 10 said the decision was made

Piles of graphic tees, sweaters and an assortment of bottoms covered the tops of plastic picnic tables organized throughout the fifth floor auditorium in the Student Center. Students from all majors crowded around the tables looking at their options as they traded their own clothes for something fresh, all for free. “We know that everybody at Columbia loves clothing and is really fashion-oriented,” said Sage Brahmstedt, president of the Renegades Outdoor Collective and a junior cinema and telev

During a relationship that lasted through the summer of 2020, Spencer Washington, a creative writing graduate student, started seeing the red flags of their relationship with someone who had only been single for a few months. “I knew I was a rebound when they kept bringing up their ex, and then when I tried to be affectionate with them, they would pull away,” Washington said. “I felt that if they liked me enough, they would want to be affectionate and talk about serious things, like, ‘Are we to

When first-year film and television major Charlie Warren came out as asexual, they were in the car with their mom. “So you’re gay?” Warren’s mom responded. “I had to explain to her I was still interested in guys, but I didn’t want to have sex with or wasn’t attracted to them,” Warren said. “She still didn’t really understand it.” The term asexuality describes someone who has never had sexual attraction for others. Asexuality is closely related to aromanticism, which refers to someone who does

The first NFT Elise Swopes, a senior arts management and graphic design major, took was from a helicopter flying over New York City. Using only her iPhone to shoot and edit the NFT, she made it look as if a waterfall was actively falling from the edge of the city. She sold this piece in February 2020 for 11 ETH, or the equivalent of $17,000 at the time. NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are digital representations of ownership or rights to original pieces of content or art. Swopes, still using only

For college students living in downtown Chicago, eating out from somewhere other than Subway can seem like a dream. According to a survey done by over 30 Columbia College Chicago students, more than 96% of students would eat out more if they knew of affordable—and delicious—places to go to. With an eating-out budget of $5-15 in mind, the Frank team set out to find and rate the best places in and around the Chicago s

The first time John Bohlin, a Columbia fine art graduate student, came to Chicago, he was enthralled by a virtual reality art exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibit only required you to sit and put on a pair of headphones to experience another reality. “The work itself didn’t exist physically, only its mode of presentation,” he says. “And now we don’t even need a headset to experience augmented realities, just a phone, just a screen really.” Artists were once completely reliant on hoping a gallery would pick up their art for it to be shared with any audience. This has shifted with the obvious rise in social media consumption. While this provides an easy way to share art with a broader audience, this leaves artists with the question of how innovative or admired their art can be as it will primarily be seen through the quick consumption on a smartphone screen.

Depending on where you are, tattoos can be seen as unprofessional, artistic, or something in between the two. Within the Columbia community, tattoos are fun, sometimes meaningful, works of art that we love to show off. Scroll through our feed to get a glimpse at the ink of Columbia and hear the stories that we wear on our sleeves (literally.)