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 established 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.
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 2,500 words and as little as one. We accept simultaneous submissions. No cover letter necessary. All submissions must be 12pt, 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.
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 125 words). And an artist statement (no more than 250 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.
ACCEPTABLE FORMATS:
Images: PDF, TIFF, or JPEG Written Works: .DOC, .DOCX, or RTF
Email: 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 hearing from you and seeing your work!
Andrea Catalina Vaca Co-Founder, Publisher, Editor-In-Chief, Artist Coordinator, Digital Operations Photographer, Designer, Circulation Director, Production Manager, Business Manager
Jonathon Duarte Co-Founder, Creative Director
Ariana Lombardi Co-Founder, Executive Editor, Artist Coordinator, Writer
Chelsey Alden Editor, Writer
Fernando Gaverd Digital Operations, Designer Benjamin Smith Designer Curtis Mueller Editor
Andrea Catalina Vaca
Ariana Lombardi
Benjamin Smith
Curtis Mueller
Fernando Gaverd
Jonathon Duarte
Chelsey Alden
Andrea Catalina Vaca was born in Ridgecrest, California, in 1988. She was raised in Chicago, Illinois. She studied photography in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 2007-2011. Vaca continued her education by interning at Outside Magazine, working as a bookstore clerk and then at the contemporary art space, SITE Santa Fe. Vaca co-founded KNACK Magazine in 2012 with like-minded friends & artists. KNACK Magazine features artists and artwork from all over the world. She explored the healing arts and studied massage therapy in 2014. She moved back to Chicago in the fall of 2015. Since moving back to Chicago, she exhibits her photographs whenever she can, promotes KNACK Magazine, and awaits what the universe has in store for her next.
My process is quite fluid. Themes reveal themselves to me. Each project leads me to the next one. Life is infinite and I want to understand and connect with as much of it as possible. This series was made for enjoyment. For the viewer to behold and remember their own experiences with sand & water.
When observing sand & water, I watched as they moved together and how they thrive on their own. They are a team; they create a balance. As human beings, we sometimes travel from afar for these experiences. At the beach, we feel at ease in its presence, yet, we also go to have fun and enjoy ourselves. Sand dunes allow us to get lost in landscapes. Sand is solid but also flexible and it gives us space to go on a journey. Water is dreamy, fluid, and shows us reflection. Life exists in both places. It is important now more than ever to take notice of nature. Because of the climate crisis, opening our minds to new ways of looking at nature must happen. –
Lay in the sand Conscious Water comes in around you as you float Subconscious Let your feet feel at home in the sand Set sail for your dreams
Ari Lombardi is a writer and art practitioner. They hold a Masters in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art from National Taipei University of Education. Ari’s artworks and performances have been included in group and solo shows in Santa Fe, NM, Guangzhou, China, and Taipei, Taiwan.
These works are an exploration in sonics and meaning.
How do we make meaning mean what we want and when does it diverge from our intention?
Routine is a well oiled vehicle. It runs like water, there is smoothness in running water. Think about how water breaks and meets itself again even when there are hard, earthen unmoveable, unloving objects in its path. See there - its path? Water possesses because it exists - in any form - water is - it claims all that it touches. If I count the possessive lexical units just in those two sentences, I cannot talk/think/write about water without it having. In Chinese you can say the positive and negative form of any verbs and it is a question. Have, don’t have, can, cannot. Water gave this page, this vehicle: its moves, take it, having. Morning is harsh in that it’s a slow revving to begin. Time is a long breath. It doesn’t move in lines.
In a book titled, “How Language Works” I read that meaning has many meanings. The texture of sentences like this make me smile. I write all the words that ‘mean’ means on a post-it note, followed by “lists of lexemes,” “Mandarin collocations.”
In all the dreams I have had this month, I wake up from sleep. I am in my bed, my whole body is flat against the bed sheets. It’s a purple black I see coloring everything. I put my hands on my belly and hips and I feel as real as I am. Sometimes I give myself pleasure, sometimes I drink water, sometimes I listen to hear what time it is, what it is I think I need to rise for, sometimes I go back to sleep. I always feel safe, warm and happy. My bed is never as comfortable as when I wake in it inside of a dream.
I wake up in the dream from the sleep that I am sleeping. I rise and walk out of my bedroom. Sometimes this is automatic, like a robot, sometimes a ghost, a servant, a god. Sometimes this movement is floating, sometimes, flooding. Sometimes I sit up in bed and in the next breath I am someplace in the city, someplace with people. They are always people I do not know, but I understand them.
Two nights ago, I was on the sidewalk of the street I live, right outside the castle’s mouth. There was an old Cantonese woman I was speaking with, wordlessly, and she was speaking and pulling the arm of a locksmith and his eyes were dark, filled with rain. And it was as if his body said something different than his mouth, and the two things being different from one another made a third thing, because he was speaking Mandarin and thought I did not understand, but I did. And all of the sudden, without breath, without being alive and real in his eyes, I heard my voice and I understood the Mandarin I was speaking, and he understood the words I was saying, and this third thing remained. It made a shadow of a human on the wall of the key shop behind him. The edges of everything started to burn away and I woke up.
I made a cave of paper and hung it above my desk. When I sit in my chair and look up at it, all the words swallow me. I always feel safe, warm and happy. Last night, in my sleep, I must have come here. I wrote two notes to myself, “We commune at the lake. Throughout the day we all take turns jumping into the water from the highest cliff.” “A man cannot manage a woman’s heart. Only water has this agency.” I sit still and listen for the sense of these two ideas. I pull the sound out of my throat and smear it across my mouth like grease. It is blue and some linen and some fern green that is not fern green but a honey-like yellow, not golden though.
Cacophony and polyphony. Cacophony and polyphony.
“Apply yourselves to geometry.” Plato told me, “Soul is form.”
Here’s a thought experiment: the qualities of [consideration]
How do you consider yourself?
I think about weight. I think about it in terms of heaviness, and I consider heaviness in relation to sorrow. You can think of sorrow as water. Consider every iteration of water you have seen, will see, know to exist in the world. I take these (weight in terms of heaviness, in relation to sorrow, which you can think of as water), and I line them up, and rub them into blue. I consider blue in every variation that light can create. I consider the brilliance, tone, shadow, richness of that shade. I rub them together in any way that any two things could press up next to and into one another, and I listen. This is weight. This is how I’ve taught myself to weigh feelings. Every feeling has a color and some are richer than others. In this way, everything has weight. What are the differences in weight between discernment and consideration?
Evening imbibes a part of herself which they leave, peeled, in a ring.
lingering about us
Rainstorms house afternoon
Evening unfolds village houses -Maids with mop and pail
What sort of space separates? I think you would feel lonesome nearer to folks.
What want dwells?
We dress amid the recent cold We learn to give and to receive
we sing to maintain now authority // progression a thorny progression produce to satisfy
Benjamin Smith went to art school. He used the knowledge he accrued at art school to achieve things, sometimes here, and sometimes there. Living where he lives now, he’s finally able to focus on the things that bring him the most joy, his favorite things.
Sometimes he also makes art.
Most days, I feel like three little kids stacked up on top of each other, under a trench coat.
Life is full of unease, my work often evokes the same feeling.
Chelsey Alden is an editor & poet. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Santa Fe University of Art & Design. Past work has appeared in KNACK & Glyph magazines. Chelsey currently lives in Longmont, CO.
They are going somewhere important
They are moving in tight herds
I try to point them out to my sister but my hand disappears they are gone
I finally show my mom the mold
It’s all over my chest and neck only little spots of pink skin left It’s white and black and thick and flaky
Like too many layers of paint cracking and splitting coming off an old house But really I feel like a tree trunk. No one cares
My mom says mold is starting to pop up everywhere. Says to take a shower
Inside the bathroom the floor is deflating
It is hard to stay stable. My legs don’t hold me up
I look down and I don’t understand what is happening I look in the mirror and it shows me a fun house
Why am I not having fun here? Why am I not having fun here?
Curtis Mueller (he/him) was raised by two loving parents: one talker and one ornithologist. He grew up in the American South with a considerable amount of social privilege as a white, cisgendered, heterosexual male. In 2013, Mueller obtained a BA in Creative Writing and Literature. He currently resides in Santa Fe, NM, with his dog (Hippo) and works as a reading tutor.
Email: curtimueller@gmail.com
Often people say they make art in order to survive. While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, that wording feels dramatic to me. The phrasing places art before survival, as if on the first day Art said to the world, “Let there be light!” and there was light. First and foremost in my mind is Surviving, and its subcategory, Thriving. Surviving means not dying. Thriving means not dying and feeling good about it. The former takes shape as routine self-care, working towards my long- and short-term goals, feeling like I’m positively contributing to the world, and having some sense of contentment. Somewhere in there is where I make art, usually by writing. It’s quite true that I would be less happy if I didn’t make art. It would be more difficult to thrive that way, but I would likely survive. I am first a pile of organs; I am an artist probably ninth. When I start to consider myself an artist above all else, it is like fitting my torso into a shoe. I think of my art like my carbon dioxide. I hope you enjoy reading these byproducts of my body.
Grandmother reads a book on the porch. She is on the last page. When she finishes it, she holds the book closed on her lap so she may ponder what she read. An element seems out of place to her.
Becoming a Better Poker Player was supposed to be a book well-defined by its title, but early on Grandmother noticed the development of a peculiar plot—a love story. Two concepts, which should have no emotional capacities or embodiments of form beyond those of ideas, became intertwined. They were The Ante, and The Strategies of Bluffing a Full House. The Ante happened before the game even started. It was an agreement that the players would play, and that there would be stakes. The Strategies of Bluffing a Full House regarded the events during the game, the presentations of one’s self that is, or isn’t, alternative from the truth. The concepts complemented each other. They were the before and the during, irreverent of the bothersome future. There was nothing to call it but love.
Grandmother puts the book down and leans on the corner railing of the porch. Hints of sunlight peek through scattered oak trees, highlighting green and brown shades in the backyard where children shout and wield sticks. The children move as if they are simultaneously in both combat and cooperation. Each strike is a feint, each charge a retreat. Formations assemble and dissipate. No one is getting hurt. Grandmother does not know why these children are here any more than she knows the use of love in a game of poker. The book, which Grandmother left on the table by her chair, begins to boil.
It makes a sound like the popping of a soap bubble made of iron, a great wrenching of laughter that evokes within Grandmother both a feeling of comfort and imminent death. She turns at the sound and sees the book swirling in a configuration of forms solid and gaseous.
“I just wanted to understand,” Grandmother says. The book settles, and is no longer a book, but a child, who walks past Grandmother and off the porch towards the others.
“Wait!” Grandmother says, wielding her frustration. “You owe it to me.”
The child stops, picks a stick from the ground, and faces Grandmother with eyes like turning pages.
“You will not take me apart,” the child says.
A strange being eats breakfast in a house of their own creation.
This is a place of special colors, new subtleties, lines broken at sharp angles. Rooms are indistinct, defined by spectrums rather than walls. The houseplants are living crystal. There are no light sources, but everything is visible, autoluminous. The building’s foundation is an extremely dense liquid. Thus, the structure does not sit firmly, but floats so that the kitchen and the bedrooms and the porch all undulate in gentle competition. It always smells like rain.
Despite all this, the house is not so different that it is unrecognizable. The strange being’s visitors always remark just how familiar it seems.
The strange being bites into a piece of furry toast slathered with carrots, and then notices something. Their favorite sharp angle of the house, the one tied in knots, just over there, which is always so pleasantly incomprehensible, had changed. The furry toast falls to the table. The strange being’s pupils dilate. Their skin pales.
The strange being understands the angle.
What was once a hopeful mess of lines and space and dimension, is now simple, upright, and flat. The strange being cannot bear to look. They move outside to the porch, lean against the rail, and stare into the forest. They drift slowly with the flow of the foundation. A familiar question enters their mind, and for what must be the millionth time, they ponder its answer.
Many years ago, before they built the house, before the smell of rain, before the beautifully messy angle, the strange being sought the aid of a wise elder. She lived in a square hut built on the perfect intersection of four terrains: ocean, desert, forest, city. On each side of the hut was a door, and to gain her counsel, one must enter from all four terrains at once.
The strange being did this easily.
The elder sat in the center of her hut, eyes closed, legs crossed. Her skin on each quadrant. The two sat in silence for a long time. The strange being didn’t know what to say, and the elder wouldn’t speak until spoken to. They admired the elder’s poise. She touched four different terrains at once, and yet seemed completely comfortable. The environments did not compromise her. A pathway in the strange being’s mind clicked. A gate opened. Electricity flowed. The strange being formed the familiar question for the first time.
“Why does it feel so strange to be cared for?” the strange being said.
There was once a little farm in a green valley in the high German hills. The family who lived there had never seen other people, had never seen the world outside their valley. They ate turnips, drank sheep’s milk, and had pork chops for the holidays. One day a helicopter landed in their fields.
“What are you?” said the family. “I am a helicopter,” said the helicopter. The family nodded.
“You could come with me,” said the helicopter. “I could take you over these mountains. You could see the rest of the world.”
The family gathered into the helicopter. They brought with them all their sheep, all their turnips, their house, and the entire valley itself.
“This is more than I have carried before,” said the helicopter, its blades fluttering over the empty obliteration.
A human being and a forest tree are racing to decompose. They agree that the first to become dust wins, with the understanding that dust is never the end of decomposition, that the dust will ultimately be reborn and reincorporated as part of something else, and that this cycle will continue until entropy flattens the universe.
“And even with that in mind,” the human being says, “I, my self, will be gone when I am dust.” The tree understands. And so the two set off to disintegrate. One morning the human being opens its eyes and sees the tree is dust.
“I have focused too hard. It has preserved me,” the human being says. Little does it know that its decomposition has become like an asymptote, always approaching dust but never reaching it. The forest wilts and the streams freeze and all the stars in all the galaxies die. Entropy compresses the universe to homogeneity and the human being waits, a whisper away from emptiness.
Fernando Gaverd is a designer and graphic artist from La Paz, Mexico. His collaborations have ranged from Paramount Pictures and NASA’s 2020 Perseverance Rover to designing textiles, wood, and metal works. Gaverd’s 10+ years of experience have given rise to a multitude of logos, books, websites, and app interfaces.
My projects often extricate elements of my homeland, where seashells & harbors, sea & desert, juxtapose my experiences and inquisitiveness. Contrast also shows itself in the imagery of my designs, from La Baja’s shores to my adoptive land of the New Mexico desert.
Jonathon Duarte is a multidisciplinary creative currently based in Madrid, Spain. He lives, breathes, and eats design.
“Most people don’t have any idea what improvisation is…It means the magical lifting of one’s spirits to a state of trance…It means experiencing oneself as another kind of living organism, much in the way of a plant, a tree–the growth, you see, that’s what it is…it’s not what to do with ‘energy.’ It has to do with religious forces.”
-Michael Ventura
