Revisit some of the strongest articles published in the arts section during the academic year.
Revisit some of the strongest articles published in the arts section during the academic year.
From shirtless rockstars, furries and TikTok icons to local musicians, authors and actors, arts platformed a plethora of personalities this year.
With Rogers Park at the heart of our coverage, the section delved into the local arts scene with luminary features, highlighting the creative outputs of Loyola professors, students and our neighbors.
Beyond the campus bubble, writers embraced opportunities to interview internationally acclaimed filmmakers, musicians, costumers, writers and stars like Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri and Lionel Boyce. Thoughtfully questioning seasoned interviewees, arts contributors represented The Phoenix with professionalism and skill.
Mainstays in the arts section, film and music reviews got a makeover with more narrative direction. From indie artists like Kinneret to global acts like BTS, our coverage crossed genres and contemplated thematic throughlines.
The section also delved deep into local theater and art exhibits, including Loyola’s playful productions at the Newhart Family Theatre to classics at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, sculpted scenes at LUMA, creative imagination at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Caillebotte and crime at The Art Institute.
Building upon the section’s innate freedom in subject matter, arts developed new columns like A Word with The Bird and The Music Sorce while expanding existing formats like listicles and retrospective columns.
We dove further into the multimedia realm with the Campus Histories podcast, photo essays and reels in collaboration with the engagement section, exercising writers’ storytelling abilities beyond the pen.
Each week, writers delivered with dedication, giving voice to the people and art that color our lives. While it’s impossible to condense the diversity of arts’ coverage onto four pages, what follows is representative of the section’s commitment to the interests of the Loyola community.
Here’s to telling more stories.
From For You Page to the Quad: TikTok Star Adamn Killa Takes Over Loyola
Originally published Oct. 22, 2025.
The incense hadn’t yet settled from Sister Dolores Jean Schmidt, BVM’s, funeral as hundreds of students swarmed North Kenmore Avenue — not for prayer, but to meet internet sensation Adam Kelly, better known as Adamn Killa. The Oct. 16 visit sparked a campus-wide frenzy as students crowded the street for a chance to be part of the viral moment.
Kelly built a name for himself through his “This is for you” videos, in which he does a signature dance to his 2025 single “Fall On” and dedicates it to a hyper-specific audience, like Kazakhs, or baddies who play basketball at Harvard.
Loyola wasn’t the first Chicago university Kelly visited. He stopped by the University of Illinois-Chicago Aug. 27 and DePaul University Sept. 10.
Read more here.
‘The Song of Songs’: Liturgical Music at Loyola
Originally published March 25, 2026.
When Vivian Pearson starts to play the piano, everything else goes quiet. She places her hands that sometimes still shake from nerves, thinks about the tempo, checks her sheet music and counts herself in. As a student in liturgical music, she’s not playing for any ordinary audience, or even herself. Pearson is playing for God.
“Everything is just a peaceful stillness, or a calmness,” she said. “I don’t really hear anything. But I don’t hear nothing. I think that’s where God is present. Present in the stillness, present in the silence.”
Pearson is a third-year music major with a specialization in liturgical music, one of two current Loyola students with the specialty. The last student before Pearson graduated in 2021 — some years, there are none.
Read more here.
‘Rent’ Pays a Rockin’ Homage to Queer History
Originally published April 1, 2026.
Beginning March 26, audiences of the intimate Newhart Family Theatre gathered to experience a wonderfully sensual night of pure musical bliss.
After waiting for what seemed like “525,600 minutes,” Loyola’s theatre department finally held its debut performance of “Rent” — and the Broadway hit’s message couldn’t burn brighter.
“Rent,” a rock musical written by Jonathan Larson in 1996, follows struggling artists Mark Cohen and Roger Davis as they navigate life in late ‘80s and early ‘90s New York City amid poverty, grief and the growing AIDS epidemic.
The show also features fellow urban residents Mimi Márquez, Maureen Johnson, Joanne Jefferson, Tom Collins, Angel Dumot Schunard and Benjamin Coffin III — all of whom navigate loss, sex and a passion to leave an impact on the world.
Read more here.
The Mertz Magician: First-year Student Leaves his Mystical Mark on Campus
Originally published Nov. 19, 2025.
Walking out of their dorm, most people check their pockets for their phone, wallet and keys. Jude Al-Hallaj never leaves Mertz Hall without checking for his deck of cards.
Since this year’s Welcome Week, rumors of a magician on campus have been brewing. Reportedly, a student would go around introducing himself as such and offering magic tricks like classic “pick a card, any card” ruses. But to his friends, this magician is no mystery — it’s Al-Hallaj.
The first-year biology student said his passion for magic began when he was a high schooler in 2024. Not having known any magicians prior, Al-Hallaj said he simply picked up a deck of cards out of boredom one day. The passion has since grown to be a huge part of his identity.
“I got pretty good at it, good enough to get invested into it, so I just continued doing it and eventually I got paid for it at one point, and I was just like, ‘Alright, this could be an actual career,’” Al-Hallaj said. “Plus I’m meeting new people, I’m making friends, it goes well with my personality.”
Read more here.
Comradery in Fourth-Year Dance Majors’ Final Bow
Originally published Feb. 25, 2026.
Palm Court was abuzz Feb. 21 as family and friends of four fourth-years filed into the make-shift theater. They gathered to support the students displays in the Dance Senior Solo Showcase — one of the students’ final performances as pupils in Loyola’s dance department.
This performance works as the senior capestone project exclusive to dance majors. Dancers in this course are tasked months in advance with finding choreographers in the Chicago area to work with them in developing solos, which are performed every February.
Before dancers took to the stage, Artistic Director of the performance and Senior Dance Lecturer Sarah Cullen Fuller gave touching remarks about her time with the dancers and her hopes for their future. In directing this performance, Fuller worked to highlight the intersectionality dance with core Jesuit values at the center of every students’ liberal arts education at Loyola.
Fuller said the setting of the showcase in the glass-walled atrium was an intentional choice. Rather than being swept up in the grandeur of a typical stage performance, the natural light peering in and reflecting off coordinated all-white costumes set a welcoming tone for the show.
Read more here.
Putting Life on Paws With Chicago’s Furry Fandom
Originally published April 1, 2026.
On March 12, 2025, Texas state Rep. Stan Gerdes unveiled the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act.
The bill aimed to prohibit all acts of animal behavior in public schools, motivated by conservative activist Lisa Hansen’s 2021 testimony of litterboxes in Michigan public school bathrooms.
If the backronym wasn’t obvious enough, the bill mainly targeted the furry fandom, a subculture in which individuals dress as or draw anthropomorphic characters, often ones representing themselves.
Republicans would later retract the false litterbox claim, but not before the already stigmatized group took center stage as yet another conservative talking point.
“I’m from a sundown town that was a pretty conservative, rough place to grow up in,” Evanston furry artist Nick Hathaway said. “Now as an adult living here, I’m realizing that people who are so aggressive towards others because they’re experiencing joy, and because of some form of misinformation they may have read, you really just have to ignore it.”
Read more here.
That’s So 2016: The Loyola Phoenix a Decade Ago
Originally published Jan. 28, 2025.
Imagine a Loyola without a campus Target, where you can hit your Juul Bar freely on the quad, spin a PokéStop at de Nobili Hall and grab a Crunchwrap Supreme at the newly opened Taco Bell.
Ten years later as the 2016 facade fades and the Rio de Janeiro filter dissolves, Ramblers are left with a drastically less skinny jean-filled future. Past the motionless bodies of the mannequin challenge and the discarded Claire’s chokers, one publication has, albeit with multiple changes, withstood the decade — The Loyola Phoenix.
Read more here.
‘Revolution requires roles’: ‘Rome Sweet Rome’ at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater
Originally published Oct. 22, 2025.
In this modern “Julius Caesar” adaptation, “Rome Sweet Rome,” betrayal doesn’t come cloaked in a toga — it drops on the beat.
There are no marble steps, no fainting senators and no men crying “Et tu?” with tragic dignity. Instead, there’s bass, there’s bounce, a haze of marijuna on the floor and Brutus spitting bars under the fluorescent glow of Empire 2.0 — a new Rome where power gets remixed, and politics sound suspiciously like a freestyle gone wrong.
The production, which ran from Sept. 23 to Oct. 19 in the Jentes Family Courtyard of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, was created and directed by the Q Brothers Collective. It’s a “Julius Caesar” fan fiction on steroids — hip-hop Shakespare with a conscience, a looping mixtape of coups and choruses proving Rome never really fell, it just got better lighting.
Read more here.
Caillebotte Unframed: New Exhibit Explores the ‘Unknown’ Impressionist
Originally published Sept. 24, 2025.
Elongated arms clench against the handle of the wood scrapers — the bodies of three men, kneeling on the floor, are illuminated by muted, sterling silver sunlight that stumbles from an open balcony.
It’s not the serene, idyllic image most have in mind when thinking of the great French Impressionists — it’s that very spirit of individuality the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibit, “Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World” explores.
Throughout the first weeks of September, students enrolled in French classes of any level were expected to tour the exhibition — which opened June 29 and will close Oct. 5 — and engage in discussions or projects surrounding this formerly unknown 19th century French Impressionist and his exhibited works.
Read more here.
An ‘Objection!’ to Finn Wolfhard’s Performance at Thalia Hall
Originally published Sept. 17, 2025.
Kicking off his “Objection! World Tour,” Finn Wolfhard sent Thalia Hall into a haze of indie rock and 1960s nostalgia Sept. 3. The actor-turned-singer embarked on the 16-stop world tour in support of his debut album “Happy Birthday,” released in June.
While better known for his lead roles in the Netflix sensation “Stranger Things” or the “It” movie franchise, Wolfhard has been a member of many short-lived bands since 2019. “The Objection!” tour stands as his first solo stint.
Read more here.
Raising the Bar: Loyola Law Student Reigns as Miss Windy City
Originally published April 15, 2026.
Allison Garcia wears many hats — she’s a second-year law student, research assistant, Community Equity Response Collaborative Fellow, competitor for Health Regulatory Compliance Team, editor-in-chief of Loyola’s Annals of Health Law and Life Science, secretary of the Sports and Entertainment Law Society and vice president of the Health Law Society.
Now, she wears a crown, too.
The 28-year-old is Miss Windy City, a local preliminary title under the Miss Illinois Scholarship Organization awarded annually at the Miss Chicago Competition in January. Under the umbrella of the Miss America Opportunity, the pageant queen will vie for the statewide crown in her last year of competitive eligibility this June at the Miss Illinois Scholarship Competition.
Read more here.
2hollis? Too Good.
Originally published Oct. 15, 2025.
Experimental rap and electropop artist 2hollis returned to his hometown of Chicago, bringing the sounds of his latest album “Star” to swaths of adoring fans at The Salt Shed Outdoors on the Oct. 2 stop of The Star Tour.
After the electric performances of openers rommulas and nate sib, the crowd seemed brimming with excitement for 2hollis. Enveloped in sudden darkness, waves of fans crashed expectantly toward the stage which would soon hold the esoteric icon.
A sudden crescendo of high-pitched syncopated beats, overlaid with sounds of speeding cars and Minecraft firework sound effects erupted from the stage, evoking a nostalgia for the early 2010s digital age. Amid smokey flashing lights, a massive inflatable white tiger rose up from its slumber in anticipation of the artist’s arrival.
“Do you trust me?” 2hollis asked from the darkness.
Read more here.
A Word with the Bird: Lionel Boyce on Space, Fear and ‘Project Hail Mary’
Originally published March 21, 2026.
“Project Hail Mary,” directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, is a breathtaking adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2021 novel of the same name. The film centers around science teacher Ryland Grace’s (Ryan Gosling) eventful mission to stop the sun from dying, including flashbacks of the mission’s lead-up and the help of robot Rocky.
Enter Carl (Lionel Boyce), an intimidating yet playful security agent who becomes Grace’s friend and helps him research.
Ahead of the film’s release, The Phoenix sat down with Emmy-nominated actor Lionel Boyce to talk about the film, space and fear.
Read more here.
Photo Essay: Strutting for Sustainability at Fashion Art Club’s Green Light Fashion Show
Originally published April 15, 2026.
Blinding lights, shocked gasps and staring eyes — this is the experience for Fashion Arts Club (FAC) runway models.
Hosted in Palm Court March 25 with a three-dollar cover charge, the Green Light Fashion Show served up chic looks with a sustainable twist, sharing commentary on the fashion industry’s unethical practices through sustainable pieces, with all proceeds from the fashion show being donated to People For Community Recovery.
Featuring original looks designed by FAC fashion design and stylist teams, the show struck an exciting balance between sustainability and beauty.
With the help of a sustainability team — composed of environmentally conscious Loyola students, FAC ensured all items used in the show’s three sections— Green, Greed and A Sustainable Future — were sourced ethically. All pre-owned materials were acquired from The WasteShed Evanston, thrift stores or FAC members’ personal closets.
Read more here.
Get the Loyola Phoenix newsletter straight to your inbox!
