Issue No. 02 Cover photo: Maija Kakriainen (18)
CONTENTS
Maija Kakriainen (18)
A Note from the Editors
Piece by Ellie Dolan (17)
Andy swansburg
Q: Where do you find inspiration for your projects? I find inspiration in a lot of different places. I spend an embarrassingly large amount of time scanning the interweb for other peoples work. I find a lot of direction for my graffiti in advertisement—ads always have to be simple and easy to read and usually contain a good amount of cool typography.
Q: How do you go about creating a work of graffiti? What is your artistic process? How it usually goes is frustrating mistake after a long string of other, even more frustrating mistakes. I will draw out a concept, whether it be from my head or an image, then I trace it and scan it into the computer. From there I can block out a color scheme I like. Then I go pack my car with buckets of spray paint and my trusted ladder and I’m off. For any pieces I think are going to take longer than 4 hours I will go to the legal graffiti wall. 01|Page
Every piece is usually about 10-14 ft. wide and 10 ft. tall. I like this size because it gives me space to make big solid shapes of color and my art can be readily visible and quickly comprehended. At the wall I grid out my drawing and then grid the wall so I can rescale it; I block out the colors and place color by color until I can go in with detail. For most of my work it takes me about fourteen to twenty hours of spray painting and however long prepping it beforehand.
Q: What first got you interested in graffiti? Well graffiti is probably the most badass form of art. Maybe you can attribute it to a yearning of street cred but other than that I’m not quite sure. I started teaching myself [in high school].
Q. Do you sign your artwork in any way? I like Andy S. It’s easy. Sometimes I will put my phone number at the bottom and see what I get in return.
Age: 19 •Hometown: Beverly, MA• School: Boston Colleges’
• Medium: Spray Painter
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Q. What’s the hardest part about doing a piece of graffiti? How is it harder than other mediums? The hardest part is the thought process. Mixing colors is very hard to do [in comparison to other mediums.] It also has to be done in a way that can be scalable to larger sizes and not lose impact.
Q. To what extent is the work you do illegal? Most of the work I do is legal. I am the lame kind of vandal I guess. When I do any illegal work the nighttime becomes my best friend. There isn’t really a large underground vandalism community and most people that tag only need a few minutes whereas I need quite a long period of time.
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S
ometimes “ FFFFFFF I will put my h phone number at the e bottom [of my work] l and see what I get in l return. “ o h ” e
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Breanne Nemez Age: Age: 18 18 •Hometown: •Hometown: Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada Canada •School: University of Winnipeg • Medium: •Canon •School: University of Winnipeg Medium: AE-1 CanonProgram, AE-1 Fuji
400Fuji Film Program, 400 Film San Francisco (143) - Taken on a sailboat cruise in San Francisco Bay. Besides my own, San Fran is my favourite city in North America, partially due to this photograph and the memories behind it. Los Angeles - Snapped atop the Griffin Observatory in LA, with me on the left and my little brother on the right. That concrete ledge was the hottest surface I have ever sat on. 06|Page
CROTON ROAD there you did not grow up and there you were never raised but you unfurled instead like a fern green and alien and sharp, up against the tumbledown barns with millions of nests in the shaky rafters the flaky peeling white paint a wallpaper and up the crooked broken stairs darkness split through with sunlight pushing in between broken shingles to pour over dust motes and wild cats and raccoons and the feral stench of life. the tall twisted old pear tree standing alone between the grass and the marsh the bark rough heavy scaly and in the long buzzing heat of august plucking spiny cicada shells from the crevices, empty brittle husks to stick to your shirt the most valuable jewels. the ragged edge between the lawn and the woods the dogs racing back and forth in a mad dance and leaping and returning with broken bodies swinging limply from their smiling mouths, baby rabbits with necks snapped cleanly and small dull black eyes and you never asked once had they seen god because you didn’t pause to know but you knew they had. the time the sun had left the sky an endless velvet indigo pierced with stars but the heat still muffled even the grasshoppers and your father set off fireworks holding a sparkler in each hand you watched as he tipped over the bottle rockets and sent them blasting and sparking into the bog behind the tree. thunder and lightening and full purple clouds you were never afraid of these, you used to run outside barefoot in a t shirt and watch your life traced out against the darkness in pure white light a thousand different times fleeting and fragile and free. 07|Page
Olivia Thompson
Thompson
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Charlotte Allen Age: 16 •Hometown: Sherman, CT• School: Deerfield Academy • Medium: Pencil and Pastel
It is a self-portrait done from a black and white headshot that is supposed to show detail and the way light reflects on a person’s face. 09|Page
Chelsea Felker
Age: 18 •Hometown: Ontario, Canada •School: Carleton University • Medium: Photography
You know you have committed friends when they tip toe across a nasty underground stream and jump onto a mouldy couch for you. It was a spontaneous adventure of fire and water and running away from wannabe 9th grade stoners. 11|Page
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Yesterday Today and Every Day After “You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.” -Cormac McCarthy
he sound of snow underfoot was barely audible, the crackles and crunches lost in a maze of fabric and insulation. Snow gave way to ice until the terrain changes became lost in the rhythm of his movement. His breath poured into the cold air like clouds, the same ones which had been the make-believe cigar smoke during the frigid mornings of his youth. Mornings just like today, he thought as he crunched a path between two aspen saplings. He took a short pull from a flask stuffed deep in his coveralls, simultaneously burning and soothing his aching throat. Small beads of amber liquid remained in his beard and he quickly brushed aside their remnants with a gloved hand. Miles of endless wandering led him to a small outcropping of trees, a welcome respite from the landscape blanketed white with snow. As he sat down several feet of powder gave way underneath the heft of his powerful frame. He let out a pained sigh and took another pull from the flask, this one longer and more deliberate than the first. The isolation of his situation forced his mind to search for distraction, hitting first upon the topic of spirituality. There was no point, he knew it. Not in his current situation at least. He chose instead to think about Sunday. Just a day. A mother clad in a floral apron and oven mitts, treading carefully through the living room with a freshly made TV dinner, just in time for his favorite show. That was the extent of his spirituality, a quiet reflection on the comforts of the past. He’d slide down the rail and scamper barefoot downstairs, carefully dodging the minefield of wooden toys that were strewn about the
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floor. Left, right, a quick spin and a masterful broad jump right onto the old leather couch. A path well-travelled. As often occurs in thinking men, his thoughts drifted slowly from the spiritual to the macabre. Just how long would it take to find a body in this weather, he pondered, as he let himself sink deeper into the white oblivion. He closed his eyes and imagined a group of men scouring the woods, flashlights in hand, frantically searching for a sign, any sign, of life in the dead stillness of winter. A boot, a glove, or a trail of bread crumbs all seemed like logical clues, he figured. He lay still for what felt like hours, fully allowing time to pass him by without any will to stop it. Anything was better than the past. This justification had an edge so jaded it was all too easy to believe. He rose, slowly at first, with little sense of neither direction nor time, only sensitive to the fatigue that had seeped into his muscles during his rest. He had snared two rabbits earlier, and the barely palatable meat offered little sustenance and even less satisfaction. With the concern of hunger put to rest, he laid his coat on a patch of snow and laid down for what figured to be yet another restless sleep. The scents from the old coat filled his nostrils as he let his mind wander. The coat, his father’s old Carhartt, was like many material objects, filled to each fiber with nostalgia and warming recollections that embraced him like an old friend. The first whiff of stale tobacco pulled him back to a scene of his early childhood, a quintessential scene of a family seated in front of a wood stove that exuded comfort as much as it did warmth. His father, a stern man, sat stoically in his arm chair, a plush number he picked up at a yard sale a few counties over. The man recalled the way his father chided him, gentle at first, then sharper with age as his mental toughness developed as well as his body. The moment, inconsequential at the time, stuck with him. His father had his feet on an ancient ottoman, pondering whatever it is that men of his
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age ponder. “Turning it all over,” he had called it, always with a cigar wrapped tightly in his age ponder. “Turning it all over,” he had called it, always with a cigar wrapped tightly in his lips, lips, as he spoke expertly out of the corner of his mouth. As the night wore out, the young boy’s as he spoke expertly out of the corner of his mouth. As the night wore out, the young boy’s eyelids heavy with sleep, his father did not once leave his statuesque perch, letting the wood eyelids heavy with sleep, his father did not once leave his statuesque perch, letting the wood slowly burn as the night wore on. As the boy grew so did his respect for the old man. slowly burn as the night wore on. As the boy grew so did his respect for the old man. He arose with the sun, stretched, and donned the old coat once again. He had no specific destination, but like the previous days chose rather to go where he pleased. From this he achieved a sense of liberation he had never before possessed, a sense that filled him with pride, but at the same time a powerful lack of purpose. No destination, no plans. A freedom without aim lacks any and all substance. His boots carried him many miles that day, further than the days before, stopping only to gnaw on a bag of jerky he had saved earlier. He was disappointed to find that the whiskey was gone, but he did not miss the drink itself, merely the warmth it gave him as he traveled. Memory kept him sane and entertained as he moved, some small, some large, each one a small thread weaving together his past into his existence at that precise moment. The past wasn’t all great, and he could not keep his mind off the bad moments, the ones that he could never dull with time. His father had told him that you forget what you wish to remember and remember what you wish to forget. It was too strange a notion to dismiss entirely, but at the same time one that gave him an uneasy feeling. His father’s turn of phrase had merit in his own life though, as the pain of certain memories was like a favorite childhood toy, too far gone to revisit often but too important not to take notice of. Joey Blevins called him white trash in 11th grade and that pissed him off. Pissed him off that the insurance salesman’s kid could talk like that. Pissed him off so bad he broke Joey’s jaw with that right hook. He could still feel that crunch, the smile that curled maniacally across his lips as he opened the door to his
car. That kind of pissed. The “I’m-so-pissed-I’m-going-to-find-the-most-beautiful-thing-in-theworld-and-slash-its-throat-pissed.” Yeah, that kind of pissed. He was over that now, the hatchet long since buried into sodden earth, yet it was that sort of memory that stuck with him. That sudden clarity of memory always astounded him, the recollection of an emotion so powerful that 35 years later he could still feel the heat rush to his face, his lips quivering, unable to fully understand why he felt that way yet still relishing the power it afforded him. When he saw that waving flag outside the house he knew it was over. You can kiss it goodbye, right over the right field wall, gone. He kicked his shoes off and watched them drop in a heap onto his porch, right next to two pairs of children’s snow boots, still damp with snow and sweat. It was then that he noticed his wife staring at him through the screen door. Her face reminded him of how she eyed the collection of moths that frequented that screen in the summertime. Utter indifference. He was almost looking forward to his night on the couch, as if the “dog house” could really affect him at this point. He chuckled as he held her, tighter and tighter, as if letting go would send him right back to the woods, right back to the very depths of his inadequacy. He was shocked when she held him with the force she did. He cherished the feeling, bathed in it, breathed it, and was left gasping with its weight, he loved it. The distance between them vanished instantly. His old man held that kind of power over him, that thick love that warmed him to his very core, the kind of love that didn’t require a father-son fishing trip to show. He tried to slide past her but she held him tighter, silently, and her hot breath on his neck felt warm and comforting. He let go and slipped by her, her eyes still shut, and grabbed a half gallon of milk from the fridge. He sat down and stared at his wife from across the table. She was pretty. Pretty in a bland way with nondescript features that seemed to blend together, an aristocratic nose trickling down into thin lips with a rose tint, upwards towards a pair of brown eyes that he never ceased delighting in.
He smiled to himself and walked upstairs. To think that merely hours ago he stood, knees aching, vision blurred, in some unknown territory was preposterous. No matter how much he burned for rationalization, he could not articulate a simple answer to the equally simple question of why? He didn’t know. He just didn’t. Plain as that. No mystery, no motives subtly hidden like the seeds of regret that had begun to sprout in the corners of his mind, nothing. His action felt weightless, without purpose and severely lacking resolution, aimless. No amount of persuasion would convince him otherwise and he knew that. That was the pain of it all but there was no use. Not anymore, not ever. Just to forget and live and take it all in because he couldn’t stop thinking about how much worse it all could be. He fell asleep. Soft sleep. The kind that seems to hinge on the inexplicable conviction that the sun will rise in the morning and everything will be just as you left it.
SINCLAIRE
BROOKS I’ve been working on this piece for the last 8 or 9 months. I tried to get a sense of confusion with the beginning of the story, then focused on images from the protagonist’s past to help create a convincing, complex narrator. His interactions with his wife are subtle, somewhat unsettling & the abrupt end was meant to reflect his continuing dilemma, the notion that despite this traumatic event his life really has not changed.
Age: 18 •Hometown: Orange, VA• School: Groton School • Medium: Fiction Writing
Maija Kakriainen
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Maija Kakriainen Age: 18 •Hometown: Mikkeli, Finland •School: Mikkeli lukio • Medium: Photography 19|Page
Thomas Robertshaw Age: 17 •Hometown: New York City •School: Taft School • Medium: Poetry • E + M Forever There is more than I can Understand in a love message Written on the plastic rim of A desk in a math classroom By some dead Alumnus of the peculiar institution Of Mathematics, Who has been dead for Many years, Written in pencil pressed hard.
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W I T T Age: 18 •Hometown: Dallas, TX• School: Taft School • Medium: Oil 21|Page
F E T T E R First one is 18x24 second one is 24x36 22|Page
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