My Job Is to Scare the Crap Out of You

At Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, Dead Bodies and Killer Clowns Are My Artistic Medium

I always knew that writing and visual arts would be unpredictable career paths. But I’ve discovered that there is one thing that I can always count on: dead bodies.

As the art director for the “Scare Zones” at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights, I oversee the zombies and ghouls that overtake sections of the park every October. I was just 18 when I started working at Universal. In the fall of 1980, I graduated from high school in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and was trying to find …

by Patrick Quinn | October 22, 2014

Want the Arts to Make Your City Vibrant?

Don’t Just Throw Money at Artists. Give Them Places to Perform, Collective Bargaining Powers—or a Break on Permits.

October 15, 2014

For towns like Visalia, California, the expression “arts for art’s sake” doesn’t make much sense. In Visalia—as in other emerging arts towns throughout the U.S.—art isn’t just there for its …

The Whitewashing of the Most Visceral Mural of the Chicano Movement

Remembering Roberto Chavez’s L.A. Landmark

by Sybil Venegas | October 10, 2014

In 1974, artist Roberto Chavez painted a 200-by-30-foot mural called The Path to Knowledge and the False University at East Los Angeles College, where he was a professor of Chicano …

Barbershop Confessions

People Talk About Their Families, Love Lives, and Jobs in the Barber’s Chair. I Paint Them.

by Jodi Bonassi | October 1, 2014

Life is better when you get a haircut, especially a good one. The moment you take a seat, you can give yourself over to the hairdresser or barber. I am …

Scenes of Ebullience—and Unease

Garry Winogrand’s Photographs Capture ‘America’s Busy, Teeming, Intricate Whirl’ After World War II

August 29, 2014

If hashtags had existed right after World War II, America’s would’ve been #winning.

Besides emerging victorious from the deadliest war in history and demonstrating American might to Europe and Asia, the …

How to Find the Paul McCartney to Your John Lennon

You Can’t Engineer Great Collaboration, Says Joshua Wolf Shenk. But Brilliant Creative Pairs Have a Few Things in Common.

by Sarah Rothbard | August 14, 2014

Most of us have been buoyed by synergy or thrived off the energy of another person. We know that chemistry is something that exists between certain individuals—like, say, John Lennon …

No One’s Going To Murder Your Cat Today

Halloween May Feel Sinister, But That’s Mostly Because of Untrue Stories

The Horror Genre’s Unique Autopsy of Our Times

Terrifying Films Are Feasting Off Real-World Nightmares—And Experiencing a Global Renaissance

Here’s Your Snickers. Just Don’t Kill Me.

Halloween Has Gotten Milder Over the Years. But—Take It From a Vampirologist—It’s Still About Rule-Breaking and Bargaining.

When Halloween Mischief Turned to Mayhem

Nineteenth-Century Urbanization Unleashed the Nation’s Anarchic Spirits

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