Candy Mosaics and Ghost Stories
The Art and Creative Writing Clubs collaborated and shared a space to celebrate Halloween on Oct. 29. The 2D Design class made table-length Día De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) inspired mosaics entirely out of candy. The Creative Writing Club held a short story reading of original horror fiction.
The event was held in the Dickinson building, where the Art Club lined up folding tables of mosaics along the wall of the meeting area. The tables were placed perpendicular to the wall, allowing space to walk around and look at each of the mosaics. Attendees could also vote on their favorite by putting a piece of paper into a mug next to their mosaic of choice. There were two winners, a judge’s choice and a people’s choice.
On the opposite wall was a table with leftover candy that the artists didn’t use in the mosaics, which was free for anyone to enjoy. For lots of different textures and colors, the mosaics were made from a large variety of chocolates, marshmallows, and hard and chewy candies. Fenella Belle, associate professor of art and adviser for the Art Club said, “I shopped by color.” Artists also dyed sugar different colors to look like sand.
After the winners for the mosaic were announced, the students started to destroy, and if they chose to, “eat the designs when we are done” Belle said.
As everyone moved down the room for the Creative Writing Club’s horror story reading, attendees passed a recessed nook in the wall where the Art Club had created an “ofrenda,” an altar created for Day of the Dead celebrations, literally meaning offering. It was decorated with LED tea lights, paper flowers, and traditional Day of the Dead skulls. Setting up an ofrenda is a Mexican tradition to honor and remember our ancestors and loved ones. Usually, pictures and tokens of loved ones as well as food and drink is put on ofrendas, but for this communal offering, little paper hearts containing the names of the deceased or messages to them were placed in the nooks of the ofrenda.
The Creative Writing Club had held a horror story contest (open to faculty, staff and students) earlier in October, and during this event, winners shared their stories with the public. Authors who read their stories were accompanied at the podium by life-size cutouts of Mary Shelly and Edgar Allan Poe to celebrate the Halloween spirit. The audience murmured and gasped appreciatively in response, as each story invoked images of monsters and eerie phenomena.
There were 25 entries in total. Three winners were students and two honorable mentions were faculty members. The president of both the Writing and Art Clubs read the honorable mentions stories as the winners were unavailable.
Winners got card games and little “surprise balls” as the clubs’ president called them, shaped as spiders and cats. Students can join the Creative Writing Club meetings in the Writing Center classroom (M627) on Wednesdays from 12:45-1:45 p.m.
