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Editors & Staff Andrea Catalina Vaca
Co-Founder, Publisher, Director, Photo Editor, Subscriptions, Artist Coordinator, Marketing, Advertising, Digital Operations
Jonathon Duarte
Co-Founder, Creative Director
Ariana Lombardi
Co-Founder, Executive Editor, Writer, Artist Coordinator
Jake Goodman Design Director
Chelsey Alden Editor, Writer
Fernando Gaverd
Designer, Digital Operations
BFrank
Designer
KNACK Magazine is dedicated to showcasing the work of artists of all mediums, and to discuss trends and ideas of art communities. KNACK Magazine’s ultimate aim is to connect and inspire emerging artists, working artists, and establishes artists. We strive to create a place for artists, writers, designers, thinkers, and innovators to collaborate and produce a unique, informative, and unprecedented web-based art magazine each month.
Cover Jake Goodman Spreads Andrea Catalina VacaÂspread photography Jake Goodman spread design Magazine Design Jake Goodman
Submission Guidelines
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Photographers, Graphic Designers & Studio Artists 10–12 high resolution images of your work. All should include pertinent caption information (name, date, medium, year).
Writers
You may submit up to 5,000 words and as little as one. We accept simultaneous submissions. No cover letter necessary. All submissions must be 12-pt Times New 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
KNACK encourages all submitters to include a portrait, a brief biography, which can include; your name, age, current location, awards, contact information, etc. (no more than 250 words). And an artist statement (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.
Formats Images
pdf, tiff, or jpeg
Written Works
doc, docx, or rtf
Knack Needs Your Help!
knackmagazine1@gmail.com
Subject
Submission [Photography, Studio Art, Creative Writing, Graphic Design]
KNACK Magazine is requesting material to be reviewed. Reviews extend to any culture related event that may be happening in your community. 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 Magazine. 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 Magazine 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 N. 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.
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Contents Steven Hughes
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Ana Jovanovska
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HĂŠctor Ledesma
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Gino P. Paradela
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Patrick Roessner Avila
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Quick Look Jennifer Ali
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David Bremer
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Featured Artists Steven Hughes was born on November 23, 1998, in Odessa, TX. Hughes is the Photography Editor at Pulse Magazine, an undergraduate magazine published by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, where Hughes is also enrolled as a student. Hughes currently lives in Harlingen, TX. e: steven.hughes01@utrgv.edu
Ana Jovanovska received her MA in Printmaking from the Saints Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje in 2016. Jovanovska has had 10 independent and more than 100 group exhibitions in North Macedonia and abroad in countries such as Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Romania, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, USA, UK, and so on.
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Featured Artists
Héctor Ledesma has attended the National School of Fine Art (DOM), APEC University (UNAPEC), Altos de Chavon School of Art and Design (DOM), Circulo Bellas Artes (Madrid), and the Artistic Serigraphy at El Elefante Rojo Workshop (Madrid). His artwork is in private and public collections internationally, such as the Museo de las Casas Reales of Santo Domingo and the City Hall of Madrid, as well as in several books, such as Dominican Painting from 1890 to 2000, Dominican Plastic Arts Encyclopedia, and Cesar Suarez Pizano Art Collection. Ledesma was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in 1967.
Gino P. Paradela is a teacher based in Cebu City, Philippines. Paradela has had poetry fellowships from the Cebu Young Writer’s Studio Workshop and the Bathalad Writer’s Workshop. His works have been featured in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, both based in Hong Kong. Currently, Paradela works with The Stray Poets Collective, a literary community dedicated to help popularize poetry in Cebu, and with Bathalad Sugbo, one of the oldest literary groups in Cebu. e: ginoparadela@gmail.com i: @ginosoraptor
Patrick Roessner Avila is a graphic designer, performance artist, photographer, DJ, and more. But, most of all, he is grateful and blessed to be part of this epic journey through life.
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Steven Hughes
Through my writing and photography, I try to tell a story of people or of my life. I live in an area where it is common to think nothing happens here but that is not true. The Rio Grande Valley has a story to tell and I will help to share it through my work.
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Chair
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Steven Hughes
Fan
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Flooding—Man
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Steven Hughes
Shoe
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Red Lights
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Steven Hughes
Moon
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Ana Jovanovska
Through my art, I explore the inexhaustible theme of the relationship between human nature and its social constitution displayed through juxtaposition and duality in the materialization of a certain concept. The visual approach to problems such as individual/society, man/woman, and human nature/social normative, is interpreted in layers, in parts, and by gradually removing redundant information in order to provide insight on the uniqueness of existence. Dead Point a series of collages made from cut-outs of hand-pulled traditional prints in various techniques such as dry point, aquatint, etching, and color blocking.
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Dead Point
Mirror
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Ana Jovanovska
Conversations
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Awakening
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Ana Jovanovska
While I was Taking down a Star
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Dead Point
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Ana Jovanovska
Long Nights
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HĂŠctor Ledesma
My art is influenced by Western culture fused with Caribbean/Dominican culture. I like to focus on issues of emigration, ecology, technological influence, as well as the behavior of modern man.
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Conversando con un sanqui sobr e la barry acrylic on canvas, 203×178cm
Atracado
acrylic, spray paint, and acrylic skin on canvas, 147×178cm
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HĂŠctor Ledesma
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El encuentro y la llegada
acrylic with acrylic skin on canvas, 305×140cm
Vamos pal juego
acrylic with acrylic skin on canvas, 457×178cm
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Héctor Ledesma
Una tarde de domingo
acrylic on canvas, 203×178cm
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En los Jardines del Embajador acrylic on canvas, 178Ă—150cm
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Héctor Ledesma
Untitled
acrylic with acrylic skin on canvas, 178×305cm
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Gino P. Paradela
My work primarily deals with the concept of alienation in the urban landscape. I enjoy exploring the artificial construct of “cityness” and what it means to be “citified”. My goal is to deconstruct the distinction between transcendent vs. immanent. It is a sublime experience for me when I am able to write about the profaned sacred, and the sacred profane. For me, poetry is about capturing a moment in peak ecstasy, translating it into words so that it may also be experienced by others.
59 Solvent Seers “The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.” —Terence Mckenna they cover their noses with transparent plastic, inhaling the fumes of industrial solvent. some eight, some nine, some eleven, some twelve— prophesying the new Pythia of the slum-streets, the incarnations of Nostradamus into teacup seers and they litter the streets and honor the gutters with their imitation rap songs, their haunting hums. they are the fruit flies of the middle-aged metropolis. and they flirt with danger for they cross the steel car currents with ease: initiating their bodies into the mysteries of the dying and the rising and they do not mind the iron clanging onto their skins for they were born children of iron. what messages from the gods do you bring as you bellow in ecstatic rap songs on the sacred monday, and on the sacred tuesday, and on the sacred wednesday— the week has not yet ended. what do the oracles whisper to your young ears as you inhale your synthetic fumes? what whispers? what worlds? what words have you heard behind the beating concrete heart? the spirit of the metropolitan Amazon? what secrets do the plastic bags reveal to us (what, indeed?)?
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Gino P. Paradela
Bar Girl by the door, she sits. calling old men to come inside her bar. she sells a lap dance for five hundred. she can be tabled, for three hundred a drink. she’ll rub you against her genitals, thighs-on-jeans for five hundred more. she’ll even let you sniff her hair. when her shift is over, you can pay her to bed. and she will do anything if the price is right. she can stop sitting by the door, all for the child who needs rice.
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59 By the Harbor Where Anchors Fall i like to stare at ships while they dock by the harbor, where their anchors fall and rise i have known the beauty of reunions but at night, when only the sea remains after the ships embark, there is nothing for the eyes to see but the light of a lone voyage, no sound but the haunting of the dead long forgotten, put to sea since the beginning of oceans, now passed by the waves made familiar by the wind, and tumbles them into the once majestic form. tries to make sense again. i see the many heartbreaks left by people left behind. my head plays imagined exchanges— the many whispers spoken in between sobbing lovers. the coral stones have heard all the prayers, the sea knows too much of saltiness. this i have known when the ships sail out to sea.
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Gino P. Paradela
Eucharist as a young boy i have seen the miracle of mass. the priest raises the bread and the cup—and the sparks of holiness fly up and up and up
These must go back home.
this morning, i was in the yard watching my dogs do their business, leaving their nuggets on the grass, and as they fell from their bottoms i noticed the same sparks flying from the priest’s bread and the wine so i, the priest of the earth, faithful to my calling lifted the chunks of brown to the heavens intoning
These must go back home.
HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM
and all was put to right.
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59 Life (A Monologue) (curtain opens) (lights on) Mother comes on stage wearing a batik duster. MOTHER: Where have you been? It’s late! How much weight have you gained? Who’s this woman? Is this another one? What happened to the last one? Oh, she got pregnant? Do not tell your father. What are we going to do about it? When are you getting married? Does your budget fit? You did not have enough plates for the guests! Do you have any idea how much the milk costs? Congratulations on your first son! Where are you going to send him? She’s pregnant again? What is her shoe size? You better start saving for a house. Your father got sick. Do you have some money to spare for the hospital? Your father would have been proud to see you. I am on my way to senility. It’s late! How much weight have you gained? Who is this woman? Where have you been? (lights off)
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Gino P. Paradela
The Abattoir in Ermita Street in fear, their bowels drop open— i learned this in biology. when you enter, it is said that the air stings with urine and crap. the men shove the creatures when the gates are opened. their eyes moisten, and their bodies bruise, and they shake as if knowing what will happen next. the men come with their knives, aprons donned with medallions of blood— then crying, and bleating, and screaming when they are held. it is said that they whine, scream, and kick before the knives make them give up their necks for silence. and they die. putrefied clumps of red drip. a daily ceremony, a sacrifice to be packaged neatly in polystyrene to be shelved among the vegetables at some supermarket. and in the blank, lifeless eyes (school has left this out) i see the tears sucked by a fat-bodied fly.
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Variables the teacher told us something i could not understand. i scribbled it down anyway. she said something about correlatives and differentials. things i know i could never possibly make out. inside the classroom, we sat as she talked, glasses thick, reading from her notes. the air conditioner hums a song— Here was something I could understand i closed my eyes and listened to the hum. for some reason it brought me back to when my mother said something to me inside her body— something i could never possibly understand but did. i thought about the chicken noodle soup that burned my fingers, about the first time i stepped on a small kitten accidentally, about the first time i made love nervously. i opened my eyes and we were now talking about research participants— i scribbled them down anyway as i listened to the hum.
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Gino P. Paradela
Twelve Minutes on Magallanes Street a woman waits by the roadside for her friend to come out from the makeshift beauty parlor. a pimp peddles his wares and bares them: skimpyclothed, red-lipped, high-heeled. from the parked jeepney, the gamblers wait for the police to pass by before they resume playing. smokers hold their breaths— it is illegal to puff smoke openly now. says the news. a passing hearse plays soft music. paid women follow and wail. no one appears to know the dead but people come anyway. for the coffee. potholes in the street are filled. the sounds of the drill mix with the afternoon smoke. the election draws near and poster-faces start to grace the wooden electric poles and whitewashed walls. a beggar stands beside a nursing student. opening his palms, badgering: taking what is freely given. a stray dog sniffs at the nearest hydrant. the water has dried up. as dusk draws, the fire sirens howl. the cars part in panic. the world stops and stares at the clock. a chinese merchant closes his storefront for supper. the road starts to fill, quietly, as the small corner in the chapel for the virgin. a wife removes her sandals. her husband shall arrive soon the rice is steamed and the vegetables are boiled. she waits barefoot on the sidewalk. standing on holy ground.
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Patrick Roessner Avila
The presence of the works featured here means the future of our beings as artists. We represent a revolution, a union, a tribute to the future and to the people. This is a tribute to the people that are with the revolution and never left the revolution of creating and elevating. This is a tribute to Jah. This is for Jah and me.
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All Dope
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Patrick Roessner Avila
Shells from Mexico
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Easy
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Patrick Roessner Avila
Free Senses
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Sublime Moments of Tribute
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Patrick Roessner Avila
Tide Chillness
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59 I didn’t know the true meaning of my emotions until I penned them down. The falling of the very first word on a sheet of paper gave actual sense to what I felt. My innumerable feelings at the most odd times is what makes me a writer.
Jennifer Ali Letting Go i know it’s very hard to let somebody go. but the truth is, holding on to someone who already made a mindset to leave is a wound which can never heal. don’t feel guilty, because you haven’t betrayed that person but he has. be strong enough to bid farewell with a positive thought. remember: if a person cannot understand your silence, your words are nothing to them. it’s your life, why make it a puppet show in the hands of others? care for the people who do the same for you. show your affection where it is appreciated and returned. be happy for others but don’t forget about your own happiness. remember: if somebody goes away, nothing changes. so why do we need to change? learn to go with the flow. it’s fine to cry for the loss you incurred, but before crying ask yourself: was it really a loss? appreciate people and nurture what you have in the present. instead of chasing what’s already gone and cannot be returned, cherish what you have in this moment.
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Quick Look
David Bremer As a visual artist, I focus on nature, animals, shapes, buildings, portraits, and my own cartoons. I use acrylic paints on canvas, wood, and cardboard. I use pencils, colored pencils, crayons, and markers whenever I draw on different kinds of paper. My artwork has been displayed at Columbia College Chicago and at C33 Gallery, an open submission student gallery on campus. I have a BA in Art & Design from Columbia College Chicago (2014). Since graduation, my artwork has been displayed at two galleries in the Chicagoland area and many fringe festivals. I am from Des Plaines, IL.
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