ShopColumbia’s Dark Market is back for its sixth year, ushering in the spooky season with a showcase of eerie artwork and handmade creations.
Senior illustration major Avery Miller designed this year’s promotional materials, drawing on his interests in science and witchcraft to shape the look and feel of the event. This helped shape the theme, “Cabinet of Curiosities.”
Miller said he was excited to explore the specimen-collection and apothecary side of a curio cabinet. “It was a theme that I could totally incorporate a lot of my own interests into,” he said. “There’s a lot of self-references within the illustrations.”
Workers at ShopColumbia will build cabinets to showcase more 3D pieces such as sculptures and trinkets.
“I really love that it’s becoming a larger thing from year to year,” Miller said.
Head sales associate Angela Kalish, a senior graphic design major, has worked at three previous Dark Markets. She said the tradition brings people together and adds excitement to the start of the school year.
Kalish has watched the market grow and noted that it consistently draws a large turnout. She added that the Dark Market usually sees the highest number of new student submissions of any ShopColumbia event.
Students from any major are welcome to submit artwork that will be sold in the Dark Market as part of a temporary contract with ShopColumbia, allowing them to test the waters before committing completely or being involved only during the one season. There is a theme each year, which can help students feel less pressure to come up with something entirely original off the top of their heads.
“There’s a lot of new students who will come in, and we’ll have our open call for work, and it’ll inspire them right away before they even set foot in their first class,” Kalish said.
ShopColumbia is a year-round art market at 619 S. Wabash Ave. that is open to the public from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Thursday. The store gives members of the campus community a chance to sell their art without having to purchase a business license. Students earn 75% on sales, while alumni, faculty and staff earn 50% on their goods.
Miller said that the seasonal Dark Market offers a unique opportunity for artists to embrace the more unusual and spooky themes that come with Halloween.
“I think that’s really important, because I’m really into a lot of that stuff, and sometimes it feels like there’s not as much interest,” he said. “Having that space for the market every year is really cool.”
Senior illustration major Boston Netterfield-Kline plans to contribute a series of “body-horror jars,” inspired by work he created for a class project at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago.
“They’re little jars of mutilated body parts that play into the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ vibe,” he said. “It seemed like something I could make a variety of, and they’d be interesting.”
Netterfield-Kline added that Halloween gives Columbia students room to be both creative and playful.
“It’s a low-cost, low-stakes season to just be weird, have fun and show off any creative inclination you have,” he said.
Abigail Pajeau, a senior illustration major, said she will have a monstrous bite with her body-horror comic, “The Hunger.” She will also sell five spooky stickers, including a punk Frankenstein, partially inspired by a former teacher.
“I feel like it’s more of like a personal connection for me because I took this horror movie class a while ago, and the teacher was, like, super punk,” Pajeau said. “So now those two are just correlated in my head.”
Pajeau said Halloween gives them space to experiment with darker themes, colors and even playful depictions of gore.
“The graphic quality of it is enticing,” she said. “From an aesthetic standpoint, you can just lean into it so much more during Halloween.”
For junior animation major Petey Holman-Herbert, this year’s Dark Market is about the lighter side of the season. Submitting work for the first time, he’s bringing a set of pumpkin stickers with quirky jack-o’-lantern expressions.
“Everyone loves a good, silly jack-o’-lantern,” they said. “In our current political hellscape, anything that can bring joy—even a silly pumpkin—is worth making.”
Copy edited by Vanessa Orozco
