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KNACK’S ULTIMATE AIM IS TO CONNECT
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we are dedicated to showcasing the work of new artists of all mediums and to discussing trends and ideas within art communities
T & INSPIRE EMERGING ARTISTS we strive to create a place for artist writers designers thinkers + innovators to collaborate and produce a unique, informative, and unprecedented web-based magazine ach month
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acceptable formats
10-12 high resolution images of your work. All should include pertinent caption information (name, date, medium, year).
PDF TIFF JPG
writers You may submit up to 5,000 words and as little as one. .doc We accept simultaneous submissions. No cover letter .docx necessary. All submissions must be 12pt, Times New RTF Roman, single or double-spaced with page numbers and include your name, e-mail, phone number, and genre. KNACK seeks writing of all kinds. We will even consider recipes, reviews, and essays. We seek writers whose work has a distinct voice, is character driven, and is subversive but tasteful. all submissions
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
photographers, graphic designers & studio artists
KNACK encourages all submitters to include a portrait, brief biography including name, age, current location, awards, contact info (no more than 200 words), as well as an artist statement, with their submission (no more than 500 words). We believe that your perspective of your work and process is as lucrative as the work itself. This may range from your upbringing and/or education as an artist, what type of work you produce, inspirations, etc. If there are specifications or preferences concerning the way in which your work is to be displayed please include them. Please title files for submission with the name of the piece. This applies for both writing and visual submissions.
KNACKMAGAZINE1 @ GMAIL.COM subject: Submission Photography / Studio Art Creative Writing / Graphic Design
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is requesting material to be reviewed. Reviews extend to any culture-related event that
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KNACK
may be happening in the community in which you live. Do you know of an exciting show or exhibition opening? Is there an art collective in your city that deserves some press? Are you a musician, have a band, or are a filmmaker? Send us your CD, movie, or titles of upcoming releases which you’d like to see reviewed in KNACK. We believe that reviews are essential to creating a dialogue about the arts. If something thrills you, we want to know about it and share it with the KNACK community—no matter if you live in the New York or Los Angeles, Montreal or Mexico.
All review material can be sent to knackmagazine1@ gmail.com. Please send a copy of CDs and films to 4319 North Greenview Ave, Chicago, IL 60613. If you would like review material returned to you include return postage and packaging. Entries should contain pertinent details such as name, year, release date, websites and links (if applicable). For community events we ask that information be sent up to two months in advance to allow proper time for assignment and review.
We look forward to seeing and hearing your work.
andrea catalina vaca publisher, director, photo editor, subscriptions, artist coordinator, marketing, advertising, digital operations jonathon duarte
co-founder, design director, artist coordinator
ariana lombardi
co-founder, executive editor, writer, artist coordinator
fernando gaverd
designer, digital operations
chelsey alden
editor, writer
jake goodman
designer
bfrank
designer
juraj gagne
proofreader
Knac rufino medrano
design intern
www.theknackmagazine.com
submission guidelines
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steffen tuck 44 gary lehman 56
TA L E N T
brandon brown
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alexander binder 16 daniel garay arango
nicola heindl 68 F E AT U R E
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cover & spreads I rufino
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KNACK MAGAZINE 46
WRITER
brandon brown
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Brandon Brown, 27, is a curly-headed, half-black halfwhite kid from the South, who currently lives in Santa Fe, NM. He writes fiction, digs high-fives, hugs, and fist bumps. You can tweet him @bwandong, and he’ll probably see it.
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I would like to craft artifacts out of language: objects
with heft, objects with bounce, like a rubber ball. The work for me begins with stripping down observations— of dynamics, of an experience, of a sight or sound—a
handshake, which seems lighthearted at first; a whisper of birdsong; the sky on a particular afternoon and brandon brown
how softly the light strikes the earth—and then seeking
out the fulcrum of these observations—transgression, a yearning. I would like to be kind-hearted. Brevity is vital. Strangeness too. For some time, the language, these
rubber balls, have orbited a small town in South Caro-
lina called Brittle, and its season of the strange. I guess the goal is to craft a bunch of these rubber balls, gather
them in my arms, toss every one of them into the air and watch them bounce around.
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bathwater
In the courtyard of Brittle’s indoor pool, Priya found a Chi-
huahua half-buried in the soil beneath a dogwood tree. A thin lay-
er of dirt and bruised leaves hid the dog from view, which Priya brushed away. He was small, black, fearful, breathless, wet, stiff. No
collar. She pressed her palm to his chest, and curled her fingers slowly around his body, like a volleyball. She squeezed him: threads of
muscle, blood, water, some black bean, gushed out of him. A gaudy, mean thing abruptly welled up in her throat, oily and harsh. The day
was tinny. A storm waned, the sky the color of an old washcloth. Nearby, a woodpecker did its work. She shoved the dog head-first into her backpack.
Her mind slimmed. The desk clerk was sprawled on the
desktop, sound asleep. The lobby hummed; its floor, walls, desk and
light fixtures were egg-white, clean, flat. A keyring gleamed at the clerk’s elbow. She leaned over the desk and stole the keys, in her
wake a wisp of fur. The poolroom was deserted. A wind chime rang, her mother’s, in a dim corner of her skull. Light shimmied along the walls, burst from the pool. Cool air pricked her spine. Nothing in the whole world had ever been as blue as this room, this palace made of
shaved ice and of heart light, of eldritch concrete. She thought of the drab sky, as she lowered her backpack into the pool, the worn
and dirty sky, the thick air in her lungs. Her backpack struggled, her
dog-eared copy of Twilight and her purple gel pen and her journal struggled, squat and shriveled in her slim brain, slowly drowning—
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PHOTOGRAPHER
alexander binder
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Alexander Binder was born in 1976 in the Northern Black Forest, Germany. He’s a self-taught photographer. He uses vintage lenses, prisms and optical toys in his work, which is rooted in the history of symbolism and shows zeal for the occult and the surreal.
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Alexander’s photos have been exhibited internationally (Germany, France, UK, Poland, USA, Canada, Northern Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands). His work has been published in VICE, LODOWN, SLEEK, TUSH, TWIN, GUP, Clark, Fotografia, and Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, among others. alexander binder
His artist books have been shown at the ICP Triennial Photobook Installation, and they are held in the collections of the National Art Library, British Library, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Salford Zine Library, Indie Photobook Library, The Library Project and the Médiathèque André Malraux de Strasbourg .
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das innere alexander binder Das Innere has an ambiguous meaning in German. The
noun is used to describe the inside of a physical object, but it is also used to describe the inner life of a human being, his thinking, his emotions, his hopes and fears.
This photo series approaches and takes hold of this ambiguity in a very literal sense. On one hand, pictorial photo-
graphs from smoking volcanoes and magmatic eruptions give the viewer a very lively impression of the destructive
power existent below Earth’s surface. On the other hand, the images come directly from the inner workings of my soul. They are expressions of anxiety and loneliness.
The photos of Das Innere were taken during several journeys to Southern Italy, Sicily and the Aeolian Islands over
a three-year period. Spending endless days and nights observing volcanic wasteland, igneous activity and the
elemental forces, I was able to capture unique moments that seem to be far away from any known place or time.
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PHOTOGRAPHER
daniel garay arango
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Daniel Garay Arango is a professional photographer and graduate of Zona Cinco Academy in Bogotรก, Colombia. He has worked as director of photography and camera man at Voice Productions Colombia. Currently, he
is based in Bogotรก, Colombia and will move to Madrid, Spain in October 2017 to earn a masters degree in photographic post-production.
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I am always seeking the unknown, running away the “everyday” rut, the “everyday” city—the usual. I find black
and white and the imagination to be powerful tools; and
I use these elements to take to and capture the life of the city. I aim to take “the usual” observations to a new level and give them new meaning, showing what is hidden daniel garay arango
in plain sight. This is an exercise of patient observation. With architecture as my main visual language, my photographs are timeless in that, there’s no day or night, age
or time, just light, texture and shape. While I am currently based in Bogotá, I will move to Madrid to expand my photographic career and cultural boundaries. I want to find new subjects to capture and new inspiration.
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PHOTOGRAPHER
steffen tuck
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Steffen Tuck lives and works in Brisbane, Australia and runs a small, private architectural practice from their home studio. She is 55-years-old and a mother of two daughters, both of whom are currently studying at university level in the creative arts.
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Exploring urban environments to seek out the hidden visual treasure amongst the everyday and ordinary is where the ‘stuff ’ (the minutiae of surface, shade, light and patina) is easily forgotten or buried in the hurried rush to live life.
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My architect’s eye looks to the built environment to find relationships between forms, or for juxtapositions and intrusions. A reductionist viewpoint allows a new and heightened reality to be portrayed. This reality re-read shifts the view slightly to the left, revealing the “other” previously unseen or missed, and forecasts the hidden beauty through slight nuances and imperfections rather than grand gestures. The decoding of the normalcy, where daily use, habitation and disintegration through wear or weather, provides a subtle reminder of the transient and ever changing nature of our urban surroundings.
I look to compile images which celebrate the ordinary by focusing on their hidden beauty.
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STUDIO ARTS
glehman@gstudiodesign.net www.gstudiodesign.net
gary lehman
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Gary Lehman is a Chicago-based artist. He has worked in two-dimensional media since childhood and studied at Purdue University. Gary has been a faculty member at institutions including, The Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Lake County College, and the Chicago Botanic Garden. He has created public exhibits nationwide, along with showcasing in the region. He created his own design and art studio, G Studio, in 2009.
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Gary Lehman’s artwork depicts an event in an image. Each of the events relate to a personal belief or experience in his life. They capture the emotional interaction within line and composition. The abstraction allows the blending of organic and architectural forms.
gary lehman
The artwork is based upon a personal relationship with an event or story. These are characterized into a series of sketches. Once the sketches realize the image, the image is converted to a digital file and reversed. The reverse image is printed with a grid to be re-drawn onto a linoleum sheet. The image is then carved in relief as a key block. The final stage is to create a series of prints from the key block. Oil-based ink is added to the block and covered with paper. Pressure is applied to the surface by hand. This process assures variation and unique characteristics with each print.
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5 CA RDS O F FO RTUNE Linocut print, oil with acrylic and playing cards 18” x 11” 2017
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WOMAN READI NG A PLAY Linocut print, oil on bristol board 10” x 8” 2016
SYRIAN FLI G HT TO AM ERI CA Linocut print, oil on bristol board 7.5” x 12” 2016
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BURNING TRAI LER Linocut print, oil on bristol board 7” x 8” 2017
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SHARDS O F THE RAI NBOW Linocut print, oil on bristol board 12” x 9” 2016
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EL REBEL X @ ESTRELLA Linocut print, oil on bristol board 10” x 8” 2017
65 MEI DAUDDY IST LI I CHT Linocut print, oil on bristol board 12” x 24” 2017
C OT TO N CA N DY M A N Linocut print, oil on bristol board 10” x 8” 2016
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WOMEN ON THE HIL L Linocut print, oil on bristol board 8” x 10” 2016
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M OT H E R AN D C H IL D Linocut print, oil on bristol board 5” x 7” 2017
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STUDIO ARTS
www.nicolaheindl.com
nicola heindl
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Nicola Heindl was born in London. She completed a degree in illustration and graphic design at Central St Martins in 1987 and worked as an illustrator and designer. Past clients include British Vogue, The Guardian, The Times, Picador, Virago Books, Marie Claire, ELLE and Putumayo World Music, for whom she created over 250 CD covers. A well-versed traveler, Nicola moved to Santa Fe, NM in 2013 with her family. In addition to painting, she began working with ceramics in recent years. In Santa Fe, she has shown her work and been participant in shows at the Center of Contemporary Arts. David Richards Gallery, Santa Fe Collective, and a solo show at The Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s, El Zaguan on Canyon Road.
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nicola heindl
For the last decade, I have been making my personal work separate from my commercial work. My job as an illustrator and designer, while it demanded I make art and employ artistic practices, did not nourish my personal practice. It has been liberating to not be inundated with client briefings since taking a step back from this world. As a result of fostering my personal practice more deeply, I have explored painting with oils on wood, ink painting and wall ceramics. These approaches are usually grouped together to resemble seascapes. While many pieces explore the human figure and nature, they are largely abstract. I have made approximately 600 pieces in the last ten years, and I have been involved in a few exhibitions since 2012. I also embarked on the work of a series of large, female ink heads over the last three years. These imagined portraits usually depict women reflecting deep pain, rage or anguish, yet also inner pride and strength. Neither culture, country, religion nor status is meant to be evident, though the viewer may well see them there. What I wish to convey is a universal sense of despair, displacement and the anticipation of where the world is heading. These themes are indeed topical, yet, I would hope that the paintings evoke a more a unified and empathetic human response. My clay wall pieces intend to echo these themes in an abstract way. The pieces are at once, intricate, female and inviting, yet hostile and protective.
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inner thoughts. We draw lines between what is good, what is possible and what is acceptable to share or manifest in our daily lives. We store these things away for the future. But, the future is now! And, we all have more in common than we’d like to think. We believe that community and interconnectivity can grow when we think outside the box. Join us. Submissions can be given over online at wethesalon.com Or if you want to submit a video stating your dream or aspiration, post it on Instagram and tag @wethesalon Be sure to use the hash tags #thesalon #theboxproject #truthmovement
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dreams or a safe space to relinquish their secrets. Often, we box up our
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The Box Project offers participants the opportunity to give voice to their
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By submitting your dreams, aspirations and/or secrets, you are participant in a worldwide public art initiative: The Box Project.
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