Art

WHAT: Día de los Muertos
WHEN: Art hanging party on Saturday, Nov. 1 from 1 p.m. 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2 from 1 p.m.-9 p.m. Procession at 8 p.m.
WHERE: Altered Esthetics.
TICKETS: Free.

WHAT: The Haunted Basement
WHEN: Oct.17 – Nov. 2 nightly from 6 p.m. to midnight
WHERE: The Soap Factory, 518 2 St. SE
TICKETS: $15 http://www.soapfactory.org

Welcome to Scaretown — population: You. With all hallows eve only a week away, there should be only two things on your mind: The sepulchral and the macabre. Since magic doesn’t exist (filthy muggles) and the verdict is out on ghosts, we must resort to the next best thing - haunted houses.

WHAT: “Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis”
WHERE: Walker Art Center, Target Gallery
WHEN: Oct. 18 – Jan. 11
TICKETS: $6 Students

The comments book poised on the gallery wall is plain and unassuming. But as local artist Ta-coumba Aiken opened it up and began reading aloud, a smile formed across his face.

"That's what I'm talking about," Aiken exclaimed as he peered down at the penned reactions of visitors to his new exhibition "Call and Response," which opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts on Nov. 16.

You may not notice by looking at his paintings, but Leonardo da Vinci probably didn't like drawing hair. Most of his portrait sketches are deeply shaded faces that seem to emerge out of another dimension, their hair not quite formed, still in the realm of the pencil and paper, whereas their faces have become something suspiciously real. The contrast between the polished product that is a painting and the intimacy of an artist's personal sketches creates a mystical insight into creation that The Katherine E. Nash Gallery examines in its latest exhibit, The Process of Drawing.

Punch Neapolitan Pizza has been proclaimed as having Minneapolis' best pizza by everyone from picky critics to poverty-stricken college students. The restaurant boasts its membership in Vera Pizza Napoletana, an "organization dedicated to regulating the authenticity of Neapolitan pizza." Punch is one of a handful of members not located in Naples. It was recommended to me by classmates, a few perky workers at Banana Republic and even a chemistry professor my freshman year.