On Tony Foster and the beauty of crooked lines By Lilah Chen Illustration by Lilah Chen I discovered The Foster Museum in seventh grade. Tucked in an alleyway on the outskirts of Palo Alto, the tiny museum exclusively displays watercolor paintings by British plein air artist Tony Foster. My favorite way to envision Foster is in full scuba-diving garb; face-to-face with a thriving coral reef, sketching the underwater ecosystem with his special colored pencils on waterproof pap

Four steps on how to be Chinese. By Willow Bradford Illustration by Lilah Chen The elevator is broken and my room is four flights up. Among many white canvases, a flimsy red and gold piece of paper is hastily taped across the elevator buttons on the ground floor of Sulzberger. An outstretched index finger reaches, through papers upon papers, to press up and down buttons, regardless of the cuts and scratches in between. Despite being covered by a poster for a Columbia business

Wisdom from the ghosts of Butler Stacks. By Luke Zinger Illustration by Lilah Chen NINTH FLOOR STACKS, BUTLER LIBRARY. It’s almost midnight on the night before a midterm worth 45% of your grade. You’ve consumed nothing but Blue Java hazelnut coffee and a stale slice of lemon loaf since 11 a.m. Out of the corner of your eye, you start to see strange words swimming around your field of vision, appearing on the walls, on the arms of the chairs, and on the table you’re working on