KNACK Magazine #37 by KNACK Magazine

KNACK MAGAZINE is dedicated to showcasing the work of new artists of all mediums and to discussing trends and ideas within art communities

nackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ultimate aim is to connect and inspire emerging artists

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We strive to create a place for:

ARTISTS, WRITERS, DESIGNERS, THINKERS, & INNOVATORS to collaborate and produce a unique, informative, and unprecedented web-based magazine each month

EN IS

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ANDREA VACA

c o - f o u n d e r, d i re c t o r, p h o t o e d i t o r, m a rk e t i n g WILL SMITH

c o - f o u n d e r, d i g i t a l o p e ra t i o n s ARIANA LOMBARDI

c o - f o u n d e r, e x e c u t i v e e d i t o r JONATHON DUARTE

c o - f o u n d e r, d e s i g n d i re c t o r MILJEN ALJINOVIC

editor FERNANDO GAVERD

d e s i g n e r, d i g i t a l o p e ra t i o n s, m a rk e t i n g JAKE GOODMAN

d e s i g n e r, p h o t o g ra p h e r BFRANK

designer CHELSEY ALDEN

editor JACOB BEWLEY

editor

7 ISSUE DESIGNED BY FERNANDO GAVERD IG: FERNANDOGAVERD WWW.GAVERD.COM

K N A C K M A G A Z I N E 1 AT G M A I L . C O M w w w. t h e k n a c k m a g a z i n e . co m

INDEX SUBMISSION GUIDELINES 08 KNACK NEEDS YOU! 10 TALENT 12

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

PHOTOGRAPHERS, GRAPHIC DESIGERS & STUDIO ARTISTS: 10-12 high resolution images of your work. All

should include pertinent caption information (name, date, medium, year). If there are specifications or preferences concerning the way in which an image is displayed please include them.

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 12pt, Times New Roman, single or doublespaced 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.

9 ACCEPTABLE FORMATS: IMAGES: PDF, TIFF, OR JPEG WRITTEN WORKS: .DOC, .DOCX, AND RTF

EMAIL: KNACKMAGAZINE1@GMAIL.COM SUBJECT: SUBMISSION (PHOTOGRAPHY, STUDIO ART, CREATIVE WRITING, GRAPHIC DESIGN)

ALL SUBMISSIONS: KNACK encourages all submitters to include a brief biography including your name, age, current location, and portrait of the artist is also encouraged (no more than 250 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. A brief biography including your name, age, current location, and portrait of the artist is also encouraged (no more than 250 words). * Please title files for submission with the name of the piece. This applies for both writing and visual submissions.

missed a submission deadline?

DO NOT FEAR!

KNACK operates on a rolling submission system. This means

that we will consider work from any artist at any time. Our “deadlines” merely serve as a cutoff for each issue of the magazine. Any and all work sent to knackmagazine1@gmail. com will be considered for submission as long as it follows submission guidelines. The day work is sent merely reflects the issue it will be considered for. Have questions or suggestions? E-mail us. We want to hear your thoughts, comments, and concerns. SINCERELY,

ARIANA LOMBARDI, Executive Editor

KNACK NEEDS YOUR HELP

11 is requesting material to be reviewed. Reviews extend to any culture-related event that 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. KNACK

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.

12 TALENT

CREATIVE WRITING

14 SARAH PARKER GRAPHIC DESIGN

22 ERICK DE LA ROSA CREATIVE WRITING

28 SOMMER SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGN

34 MARCO LUKINI PHOTOGRAPHY

40 AIMEE-ROSE LAING PHOTOGRAPHY

48 ASDRUBAL LUNA PHOTOGRAPHY

54 IRENE DE LA SELVA PHOTOGRAPHY

60 RAY CONTRERAS INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

66 CHRIS CONARD

KNACK: an acquired or natural skill at perfor ming a task an adroit way of doing something a clever trick or stratagem

S a ra h Pa rk e r i s a w r i t e r a n d p e r f o r m i n g a r t i s t i n M i n n e a p o l i s, M i n n e s o t a . S h e h o l d s a B FA i n M u s i c a l T h e a t re f ro m t h e S a n t a Fe U n i v e rs i t y o f A r t & D e s i g n . M o re p o e m s a t odiousodious.tumblr.com

SARAH PARKER

I’ve always enjoyed looking at my life as though it were a novel, finding motif, allegory, and extended metaphor woven throughout my personal narrative. I also like playing with poetry as a mode of conversation with another person. “the wind talking to the trees” is adapted from a poem I wrote with a friend via text message. Right now I’m particularly interested in how elemental, non-human interactions are a metaphor for human relationships. To me that concept is so trite (“Love is as boundless as the sea”); I want to take that idea further so that its triteness becomes irrelevant.

I USED TO RIDE MY BIKE DOWN THIS HILL

I used to ride my bike down this hill without pedaling. I used to see how far I could coast All the way to my motherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s driveway practically the end of the block

To get to your house required more effort At least several lazy rotations to propel us through the crosswalk the subtle grade

To ride up the hill was occasionally too burdensome to bother Eventually we stopped trying And walked instead, Expending our efforts on steering the bicycle beside one handed Our faces turned inward in conversation

Late Careless Small pilgrims who journey away from youth Unknowing

S a ra h Pa rk e r

THE WIND TALKING TO THE TREES

I need you for oxygen variety, something to touch

to reduce monotony to prolong the inevitable to gently destroy. To lash against other objects with blind impunity and elemental rage. To terrify children in their beds.

Without you I would be stronger Faster, probably, I would get more done; you are holding me back or you are making me softer, kinder I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell which and You supply the vital elements that constitute my being you are the source of my oxygen You are an obstacle! something to weave in and out of and around something to run my fingers through, sometimes we whisper together the quietest most universal music ever produced was you And I

S a ra h Pa rk e r

THE MOON SPEAKING TO THE EARTH

the moon speaking to the earth

there will be nights when you cannot see me

1 i pull you to me

10 you could doubt i ever was

2 i push you from me 3 the ocean sloshes violently

11 i will always return

4 i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think you understand

12 without me the tides might cease

the inevitability of kissing you

the life in the deepest parts of you would certainly

you see

alter

my love it was not a choice

13 i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think you understand my love

5 i will turn my face to the void

how inevitable is my return

and i will wait 14 i will fall gently over moss and lichen 6 kiss you again

gently i will glance over the faces of the lovers and catch

7 again wince away from you

in the woven hay

again wait every surface of you 8 a pair of lovers sit with hands touching on

every hollow i will seek

rounded bales

i will pour my love

looking up. 9 i will wane i will go cold

CARRIE AT THE NORTH SHORE

The weekend she got in her car and drove,

Every hour she had to wake up to set a log on the fire

alone, to her oneroom cabin by the North Shore

‘Mostly I just snowshoed a lot’ And she didn’t see or hear a mouse

She brought her skis, hopeful she would be able to

not once in that retro slopefloored cabin although we

use them

know they are legion

but although the absurd upper lip of the snow was six

a gnawed piece of something under a pillow

feet high it was icy

all else silent

brittle

and still.

and she was hesitant to trust Too much to hope for, that they would have vanished Although she had taken from our kitchen two apples,

Undertaken a great migration

two plums

been wiped out by a mousep lague (poor things)

nutrientr ich canned goods

She knew they’d be back

she ate only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

just a matter of time and no sense hypothesizing over where they were now

Mostly I just read by the fire.

just enjoy their absence, attribute it somehow to the

she told me

coming of spring maintain the traps

This elicited goodnatured dismay, as I’d tried to force a novel onto her as she was leaving but she told me it’s hard for her to concentrate on reading because of the depression

AFTER BILLY COLLINS’

S a ra h Pa rk e r

‘LITANY’

You are the creme brulee dish and I am the blueberries staining the bowl.

You are the dishwater sunshine trickling through the blinds You are the clock ticking steadily on the wall in the midnight silence

You are the mellow softness of white carpet upon my cheek and the Debussy sheet music which you won’t play for me unless I beg.

You will never be the icy snow beneath my boots but neither are you the fairy-l ight star of Bethlehem, illuminated on a snowy hillside in a mountain town.

You are not the marsh birds, suddenly in flight but then really is anyone

ABOUT SCARS AND SCABS AND PERSISTENT WOUNDS i have this horizontal line on my mid inner calf, a scar where the top of my new four inch boots chafed against my skin when i wore them at my father’s wedding in january. i wore those boots for at least 12 hours and when my skin started to rub raw and eventually to bleed you couldn’t even see me grimace in the wedding photos. that scar is evidence of how much i love my father i love him so much i wore uncomfortable shoes at his wedding and i love my father so much that you can still see it on my mid inner calf seven months later i have these skin tags on my feet that seem to be the places where my callouses are trying to rip right off and expose my nerves. they wont heal and i can’t pumice them off, i have tried. i pull my feet into my lap at inappropriate moments and try to pull them right off too but it’s too painful, they are too substantial. i clip off the excess with fingernail clippers but this just exacerbates the problem. i think they are a product of me choosing to do barefoot calisthenics and other exercises in the front yard every morning, and of my tendency to remove my shoes when climbing rock to rock or stepping over roots and pebbles. it’s my suspicion that the entire problem might eventually resolve itself if i consistently made use of my shoes and my socks but this is a sacrifice i am unwilling to make for the sake of mud and moss between my toes i will occasionally snag my own skin on the carpet and yelp and i can’t explain away the scars on my arms as a labor of love or a casualty of simple joy i can only explain that when the morning light shines on my face and i lie on the mattress sprawled and contemplate sitting up and then standing i often feel content but at the same time i feel like i wish i could stop being alive and my fingers seek the scabbed wounds of yesterday or hours earlier and tear into them like thirsty dinosaurs seeking the last freshwater on earth chasing one another away fleeing like vultures returning like spurned lovers rooting for infection tearing like crows at a corpse scattering guiltily upward to circle and descend.

E r i ck i s a d e s i g n a n d c a l l i g ra p h y g ra d u a t e o f t h e I n s t i t u t o N a c i o n a l d e B e l l a s A r t e s.

He is co-founder of Taller Cassiopeia Artes del Libro, where he teaches calligraphy along with his manuscript binder, Liliana Rodriguez. This is how he develops his work as an independent designer. Erick participates in diverse calligraphic work worldwide. He was the first place winner of the International Festival of Calligraphy and Typography â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rutenia-Ucrania,â&#x20AC;? in the Experimental category. The winning letterforms were chosen by the London brand Manuscript Pens. Erick is a member of Calligraphy Masters, a union of calligraphers and writers.

ERICK DE LA ROSA

E r i ck d e l a R o s a

S o m m e r S m i t h i s a w r i t e r, s i n g e r, a n d N e w M e x i c a n . P ro f e s s i o n a l l y S o m m e r i s C o - Fo u n d e r o f M e d i a D e s k N M -

a communications firm dedicated to nonprofits and social change. As a musician and poet, she is interested in both the release and the retelling of personal experiences. Her work mostly plays in the space between the mundane and melancholic.

SOMMER SMITH

Sommer Smith

SALT In the song I chose today it’s the ocean three times that carries us out. É o mar É o mar É o mar que carrega a gente para a gente pescar… but today it isn’t about the fisherman. Or the salty seawater, or the tears on shore. It is Tides. Today It’s about the Tides. Beyond our sense and best interest there’s a whole territory of salt. Castles of salt where he’s deposited life in salt forms. So much so that if the light refracts right It’s furious and pretty. The tides must have arrived and receded a million times to leave him with this much material. But it wasn’t all his doing, or the ocean’s three visits. There were friends and oceans came from their eyes. How kind, to include me among them. So many of us still not sure what to do… with all this salt.

CROWNED

“We all must learn to accept the departing nature of things” She says crowned in the leaves of her bougainvillea that emerges from a million places other than its pot. “Eventually we lose even ourselves.” She makes it seem so calm as if the idea of… dying might be the way a leaf settles, changing form to become another leaf. That is her lesson in losing. We’re a transitional period. A period between two transition periods. And just like that we’re losing and finding each other forever in a house where we walk in circles.

SLEEP – UNFINISHED

Sometimes I will my consciousness to slip and it won’t, like it has some tacky life of its own or it doesn’t fit where it used to. In the mornings It has this graceless dance it does as it comes back into four walls, some sheets three dimensions, slow and formless as if to say ‘sorry for last night.’ It settles into the backs of my eyes and checks its size in the mirror like it had a body that’s different from yesterday some form of excess that doesn’t settle into its own shell.

Sommer Smith

AUSTIN 2016

Our shoes were busted battles with dance floors peeling layers. Beer spill high heel peeling layers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The night was long Austin lamps throwing hot iron shadows on smooth stone. Even the girls stopped calling love.

MARCO LUKINI

Upon graduating high school, I pursued two Bachelorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degrees in Photography and Film near my hometown of Mexico City, Mexico. In between degrees, I worked for several movies productions and TV shows (including HBO Latino) for a year and half, and also on independent projects with friends. After my education in Mexico, I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and completed my BFA in Graphic Design. The day after I graduated SFUAD , I was sent by Laureate Education to teach 3 -month experimental design workshops in India, Italy, and Mexico. While working between all of these places, I also had 2 shows of sculpture and graphic design in Mexico

City. Currently I am halfway through receiving my

Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Degree in Graphic Design at California Institute of the Arts, and am very much interested in having a creative and challenging professional life.

M a rc o L u k i n i

AIMEE-ROSE LAING

Aimee-Rose Laing is a soon-to-be postgraduate with a Hons in Photography at Leeds College of Art. She grew up in the North West of England, first being introduced to photography through a creative arts project for children at the local arts centre. After studying photography for five years in total, Aimee is now ready to graduate after three years at university. Fine Art photography and surrealism are main sources of inspiration

for her work, and influence the themes in both her personal and professional projects. As a professional photographer, commercial photography is a career path in which Aimee aims to follow, while still incorporating surreal themes and fine art photography into her work. Even though there is a vast difference between the personal and professional work created by Aimee, there are still strong visual links in the aesthetics of the images.

The aesthetics and creative freedom that come with Fine Art photography are things that have always interested me. Being able to create images that are both visually appealing, and have an underlying message behind them, is a personal creative project that I enjoy in my

spare time and professionally. I include the visual language of fine art photography into my commercial work as a way of making it stand out from the crowd. This group of projects convey the creative freedom and surreal aesthetics which come with fine art photography, and the diverse outcomes from this practice. This small collection of images all relate to the fine art genre. The images are visually appealing, yet have either an underlying message behind them, or are not of what they are first perceived to be. Landscapes through broken mirrors, oil spots on coloured water, and landscapes at a popular England coastline engulfed in fog are the themes of this collection of images by Aimee.

Aimee-Rose Laing FOG 2 FOG 3 FOG 6

Aimee-Rose Laing M I R RO R 1 M I R RO R 13 OIL 2 OIL 6 O I L 10 O I L 12

ASDRUBAL LUNA

A s d r u b a l L u n a A g u i l a r g ra d u a t e d f ro m C E D I M a s a d i g i t a l a r t i s t . H e i s c u r re n t l y c re a t i v e d i re c t o r a t Tre s p u n t o s, a n a d v e r t i s i n g a g e n c y. MX - @infectedluna

MX is a space for exploration, where I can play freely

with different visual elements, textures, lights and shadows, geometries, perspectives, tones, compositions, and more. The photographs I take are not planned. I do not have a goal, no personal interpretation; all are spontaneous, and taken with the camera that I have at hand (either my 2 megapixel tablet, my Canon T5 i, or my cell). I take them simply because I like what I see. What I see makes me feel something that I cannot explain in words--that is why I do not put titles to my photographs. I do not want to pigeonhole with words work that is purely visual, and full of multiple meanings.

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m still wandering around in this space, aimlessly.

Asdrubal Luna

I ’ m I re n e C l e m e n t i n a , c re a t o r o f H OT S H I T, c o l o r a dd i c t , s p o ra d i c a l m u s i c i a n a n d p e r m a n e n t t ra v e l e r. W i l d n a t u re, m o s t l y. Tro p i c a l l a n d s c a p e s. T h e d e s e r t .

My work moves from the natural division between man and nature  to the hysterical night-life chronicles we live in nowadays. I frequently use myself as the subject of my many stories and have a soft spot for wild nature, tropical landscapes, the desert and black cats. I fight against submission. I’m a creator of image.

IRENE DE LA SELVA

I re n e d e l a S e l v a T he Red Snaps

R a y C o n t re ra s i s a 2 9 - ye a r- o l d g ra p h i c designer with a huge passion for fashion p h o t o g ra p h y a n d p o r t ra i t s. A bl a ck a n d w h i t e f a n a t i c.

RAY CONTRERAS

R a y C o n t re ra s

J ch r i s c o n a rd . c o m ch r i s. c o n a rd @ g m a i l . c o m 512.296.0649

C h r i s C o n a rd i s a f re e l a n c e a r t i s t , d e s i g n e r, t h e a t e r t e ch n i c i a n , f a u x p a i n t e r, a n d c ra f t s m a n w o rk i n g a n d l i v i n g i n A u s t i n , Te x a s. C h r i s h a s b e e n w o rk i n g a s a n a r t i s t f o r o v e r 10 ye a rs ; i n 2 0 14 h e g ra d u a t e d f ro m T h e S a n t a Fe U n i v e rs i t y o f A r t a n d D e s i g n w i t h a B FA i n Te c h n i c a l T h e a t e r D e s i g n .

Chris strives to create unique works of art that equally satisfy form and function. He believes that the highest forms of art solve a practical problem or need while retaining their natural beauty; his favorite project to date is his handmade Bluetooth radio constructed out of walnut. Currently Chris is working on an infinity mirror with remote controlled LED s, a 20 â&#x20AC;? tall posable Yeti, and an adult size sit-and-spin picnic table.

C h r i s C o n a rd

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