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CONTENTS 1 Victoria Ottomano
13 Kenneth Miller Plaintiff May Collect
30 Avery Morgan apology
2 Maximillian Pollio
14 Maximillian Pollio Moun
3 Tristan Dubin
Carcass
15 Sam De Poto Mixing Fuel
31 Phil Gibson Untitled (Stay Out Long and Forget)
4 Maria Valle
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6 Jia-Lian Lin
24 Loisa Fenichell Impulses
8 Loisa Fenichell Boars
26 Matthew Capers Severed Head on a Platter & Beauty Queen ll
9 Jason Fox Narc
27 Magnus Gitthenderson Me + U
11 Alex Perez Untitled
28 Toniann Chianese He Makes New Beginnings and Marvelous Ends
Untitled
Heated
Death in a Time of Birth
Untitled
12 Phil Gibson Unicornfetti
29 Roger Richardson Tom
32 Dennis Moore “Morphism� Light Studies 33 Maria Valle Guerrero, Mexico 34 Chris Sommerfeldt Heist with Perforated Scenery 36 Brian Collazo Introspective 38 Dennis Moore Lucid Order 39 Magnus Gitthenderson Untitled
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VICTORIA OTTOMANO Untitled
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ZOE LUBIN-FOSHA
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TRISTAN DUBIN Carcass
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Death in a Time of Birth Maria Valle
I was born with alphabet soup dripping from my mouth, building Aztec pyramids from the fat that dried on my lips The umbilical cord cut by the sharp edges of an open wound I was born with my teeth stuck in the grip of my mothers thick skin I was born with mute veins and a dysfunctional tongue I was born as my mother gently placed a bookmark in her Bible, that book is now wrinkled around the edges from turning the pages many times trying to figure out why she had named me Maria, I begged her not to I told her she would regret it later on I asked her to name me Yesenia, Anna, Or Rosa, Anything, but Maria
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I was born with two cents to my name and a botton to keep me warm I was born to the blessings of a schizophrenic who claimed to be my father I was born in a classroom without a teacher, where lessons targeted our bellies I was born to my grandmothers habit of giving birth under tables I was born picking up the trash that my father left behind in my mothers womb, cleaning up her aisles I was born with a border installed in my heart and my hands placed in the right position in order to hold a tortilla for the first time I was born in the field of a cats litter box I was born believing in La Santa Muerte,
unibrown I was born to soft beds of dandruff and polka dot pigment
rubbing alcohol and cotton balls I was born on spinning vinyl in between the broccoli and potatoes on the dinner plate I was born annotating my mother’s thighs, On the broken egg that never came out of her nine months before and signaled trouble
I was born, but I left my reflection behind, Hungry, Isolated, Eyes wide open, I have marked my territory
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but now I know better I was born washing the shame off my mothers back with
I was born disturbing the peace on my mothers curls, flattening the surface of her silk, rolling cigarettes with her fallen eyelashes I was born to snapping fingers, Baptized in the grains of flickering eyes I was born separating Frida Kahlo’s
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Boars
Loisa Fenichell
1995: year the weather broke, year Grandfather died, year Mother & Father got into their first argument: these days: Mother is always jealous of Father: these days: Father tells more jokes, makes more people laugh. 1995: year I fell through Mother’s uterus, blood circling my scalp. 1995: year we all became planets. You were born the same day as I was, only far across the city. Your body wrinkled like the balding heads of uncles. Your mother was not mine, but they sounded the same when they screamed. Your father was not mine, but they both had stomachs that looked more like boys drowning in lakes than anything else
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JASON FOX Narc Front
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JASON FOX Narc Back
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Untitled
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ALEX PEREZ
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PHIL GIBSON Unicornfetti
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Plaintiff May Collect Kenneth Miller
this city is made of circles and parameters my fingers are continually branching out from their roots and cite the abyss of unseen souls landmarks that collect at the wits of nuclear, swelling dew drops
she has the bruised bones of a holocaust hostel and wet breathe in a drunk framed still i gather in her apron of instruments to preserve the gold tums for the winter months— a coward with a mouth of broken glass ‘ for months when nothing else but lonely, yet lovely warm motions are known.
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reid’s there and forgives the woman next door who’d led the parrot awry— into the bed spray
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MAXIMILLIAN POLLIO Moun
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SAM DE POTO Mixing Fuel
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ARTISTS IN CONVERSATION WRITTEN BY LINDSEY SIEBER PHOTOGRAPHED BY ERIKA FULTON INTERVIEWED BY LINDSEY SIEBER AND KAMAL BASSMA
Everyone loves a perfect plate of pasta. A simple, satisfying staple meal that gets the job done. While pasta cook-time is a relatively well understood phenomenon, adding the optimal amount of pasta sauce (or Italian gravy) has been a topic of heated debate since twelfth century Sicily, though this time and location has also been widely contested. For this issue of Submissions Magazine, we met up with Painting and Drawing majors Xuan Zhang and Ian Byrne, two friends who claim to have discovered the perfect amount of pasta sauce for one serving of rotini pasta. After extensive conversation covering everything from pasta to anime, we finally got the duo to open up about their own work. Given their educational
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An inside look at Xuan’s and Ian’s studio.
backgrounds, Xuan and Ian seemed more qualified to discuss the visual arts rather than the culinary, so we tried to steer the conversation in that direction. XZ: I’m trying to make paintings into like childish worlds that we all want to live in. I’m currently working on a painting of a kid playing keyboard. I feel like I always wanted to play keyboard, but
I never had a chance to play keyboard. I never probably did (want to play), but it’s my ideal interpretation of everyone’s childish dreams. Like, “I want to play keyboard.” I just say it like this as a kid. “Yes, you guys wanna play keyboard.” IB: Like a symbol of childlike wonder is playing a keyboard? XZ: Yeah. Trying to be professional about this, but
IB: Yeah. Oh, yeah, that’s that painting you’re starting to work on now, right?
IB: This is a universal experience, everybody as a child craved those keyboards.
XZ: Yeah, I want to have a lot.
XZ: Yeah. I also want to paint a bunch of paintings about what people want to have. That’s actually not true, it’s actually things I wanted to have as a kid. I wanted to have a room full of anime posters.
IB: And there’s a Digimon poster! Isn’t there? LS: How about the works you submitted? Are those recent? XZ: I think all the works I submitted are from last semester. I was trying to make
different paintings at the end of last semester because I didn’t want to put too much of myself in my paintings. Because it was like, too upsetting to paint? Because it was almost like painting a self-portrait of me every single day, even though they are so different. So, I was trying to paint different things in those later paintings in the semester. So it felt like I wasn’t putting too much of myself into them. It felt really great, but at the same time, they don’t feel as important to me as other paintings I was painting. SUB MAG NO. 61
yeah, really my idealized thought is: “Yes, you guys want to play keyboards.”
Ian discussing his Digimon painting.
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XZ: I don’t know, I feel the same way because I just want to draw myself all the time. I can’t stop, I have so many self-portraits of myself that I’ve never shown to anyone, I just keep to myself. So many drawings and pins of myself. They’re all over my backpack if you guys have ever noticed. IB: I mean, I’ve got a whole stack of self-portraits right in the corner of my studio, you know. XZ: Maybe I was influenced by you. “I Ate Bad Fries” by Xuan Zhang.
IB: All the paintings I submitted were from last semester too, except for… well, actually, I guess some of them were from the end of the semester TWO semesters ago. And then there’s one from Painting II, which was like, first semester of my sophomore year? Uh, The Geese are my Nippled Servants? I feel like that’s a really important…that’s like the painting I want to show to people the most. So, I was like, If I can get that in SubMag, that’d be great.
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LS: Oh yeah! We all loved that one. IB: Really?! I just feel like it’s really important that I get that image out into the world as much as possible. XZ: It’s so funny, it’s so selfabsorbed. IB: Yeah! Yeah. I guess sometimes I feel like a narcissist and I just like, but I hate it, you know?
IB: Maybe. Yeah. Maybe our narcissism feeds into each other. What a concept, right? Maybe this is just me, but I always feel a certain kind of like healthy rivalry or competition with you? It’s like, when Xuan’s in the studio making a bunch of paintings, I’m like, “Aw man, I gotta get in the studio and make a bunch of new paintings.” XZ: Yeah…sometimes I feel like I want to make a lot more paintings because you’re making a lot more paintings.
XZ: Yeah, sometimes I do that too. I’ll just text you to let you know, “Hey, Ian, I’m not in the studio, so you’re not supposed to be in the studio either.” IB: I feel like sometimes we kind of lift each other up and sometimes we keep each other down.
XZ: I really wanna say one more thing to the people at Purchase: if you really want to be a painter, you really gotta consider if you really wanna be a painter. It’s really hard to be a painter and you really need to think about it before coming to a painting and drawing program. IB: I feel like, with my paintings, theres a lot of writing that goes
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IB: Yeah, I mean, I feel like pretty often I’ll just text you and be like, “Hey, Xuan are you in the studio?” Just hoping that you’re not in the studio because I’m not in the studio. And then you’re like, “Yeah, I’m in the studio, I’m working,” and I’m like, “Damn it! Now I have to go in there and I have to make some work too!” Just to stay on the same level, you know?
“The Geese are my Nippled Servants” by Ian Byrne.
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into it. Like writing the narrative and then writing the title, it almost feels as important as the actual image itself. And sometimes I feel kind of weird about that because it’s like, am I just going to tell everyone what to think when they look at my paintings? I guess I like telling people what to think when they look at my paintings, so that’s what I do. Like, if I wasn’t here speaking these words, somebody could look at my work and get something out
of it anyways, but if I have a voice, I like to use it. There’s one painting in there called The New Association of Trained Ornithologists Takes On its Greatest Challenge Yet: The Irritating Quail. I just think it’s really fun, with a title, to set up this world. Like, a new association of trained ornithologists? What the heck? Who asked for that? How did that come to exist? So I guess narrative is just really fun for me.
XZ: For me, a lot of times I try to make funny paintings. I’ll think of some things that would be funny and I try really hard to be funny painting those paintings. They just come off really, well, I don’t know if they’re even going to be funny anymore at the end because I try hard to be funny. You can’t really think about it when your making it, you just really gotta believe that it’s going to be a funny painting. You kind of feel really weird about it afterwards, for
“Untitled” Acrylic on Panel, 2015 by Xuan Zhang.
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me sometimes I feel really sad. Painting a painting’s almost an excuse for me to be sad. Almost a third-person medium for me to listen to my stories. But I’m still not being honest, I’m still lying in my work.
XZ: Yeah, I also feel like it’s almost too personal to tell my own personal story. Basically I create another narrative to fit into a story for other people. It still feels like my own story, but it’s another entirely different story that’s lot more simple for other people. “The New Association of Trained Ornithologists Takes on its Greatest Challenge Yet (Irritating Quail)” by Ian Byrne.
LS: Do you think you try to make it something that people can relate to upon looking at it, or is it mostly reflection? Is it a priority that someone looking at it will understand that narrative? XZ: It’s really interesting that the audience interprets totally different content from my painting. Because some— a lot of the time it comes out really funny but the work might be really serious and sad. It’s a totally different read, and I don’t think it bothers me. I think it’s a really interesting perspective to me too. I remember Ian’s dad looking at my painting; he felt really sad. He didn’t want to know about the story behind my painting.
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IB: I feel like that’s something that we both do, we don’t feel like, maybe this is not how you feel, but I feel I don’t really have the license to feel some emotions sometimes so I just wrap it up in this little narrative and put it in a painting and think, “Oh, thats a way I can
kind of feel that way without actually having to deal with that.”
IB: Yeah, that’s right, I forgot about that. Spirit of the Dog Watching (Me Showering) by Ian Byrne.
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XZ: Yeah, I always think about this, it’s like, do I really want to tell him the story or should they [the viewer] have their own interpretations about the story? Because through their experience it almost becomes their painting and their story, instead of my painting. So I really like that about my paintings. IB: I think I really enjoy telling the story. And I think a lot about, kind of entertainment with my paintings. I guess the
most important part when I’m making a painting is to entertain myself but I’m so much more happy if it’s entertaining for other people too. I think humor is a really important part of it. I guess I just kind of hold on a little bit to the story, and really try to push my agenda a little bit and hope that it makes people laugh or entertains them in some way. XZ: I really like your paintings that you have to explain a lot more yourself, but you never
write about them. It’s like for almost all of your paintings you need to be in front of it to explain it each time. It’s always the same story, but more entertaining. And all the stories behind the paintings are so long it’s almost your own story. It’s almost like a comic strip, but one you have to explain. IB: Yeah, I guess a lot of times my paintings are just excuses for me to talk somebody’s ear off. It’s like, “Hey you wanna look at my painting? Now do you want me to tell you a half-hour long story that goes along with it?” Like, “Oh, it’s a Digimon painting, but, uh, it’s based on a pillow case that I’ve owned since I was 7.” XZ: It’s like you’re forcing the narrative to make other people see a set narrative on each painting. So there’s a specific narrative for each painting and you have to accept it. But it’s like you could have another whole new story for the paintings.
“Woods”, Oil on Canvas,2015, by Xuan Zhang.
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XZ: It’s really…douchey IB: Yeah, it’s kind of douchey, yeah. (both laugh) XZ: It’s pretty good.
IB: Yeah, it’s kind of totalitarian, you know? It’s like, “This is what my painting is!” (claps hands for emphasis)
Follow Xuan and Ian on Instagram @pickle_juice_boi @estamosenfuego
XZ: Yeah, I thought about whether I should call you douchey or not, but I was like, “Ya know what? Those paintings are pretty douchey.”
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“Untitled”,Drawing on Paper, 2015 by Xuan Zhang.
IB: Um, I kind of like the idea of the interview ending with you calling me douchey.
Ian’s Rotini Pasta for One Ingredients: -One serving of rotini pasta -Less pasta sauce than you would think
“My Dolphin Painting” by Ian Byrne.
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Impulses
Loisa Fenichell
1. (Sin) I take steps now to ward off those who creep nakedly into my bed like Charybdis. I can still hear the old loves, violent as whirlpools, from where I stand in the kitchen, feeling nauseous and lightheaded as a marriage. 2. (Responsibility) The doctors ask me where I feel my undesirability the most; I think it is inside of my throat. When I was young I formed circles at the bottom of my throat, felt I was drawing my own myth. 3. (Flammability) I still seek to be held like the sunburn that moves across the bridge of my nose, cradled by a brutality so subtle it could be called no more than nightfall. Instead I rock myself into a loneliness, curl myself into a lump, watch my pelvis turn a deep shade of singed tin. 4. (Youth) I have been visiting the family cemetery for years. I should be used to the lack of whispering that comes from the headstones, but even now the silence is like a shove of unsteady bullets. It used to be that at the cemetery my father
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would hold my hand as I drew eyes at the sky, the two of us watching as the sky grew into dark shades of night. Now my father yells more often.
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I cannot help but miss how we used to move, slowly and languidly as kelp.
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MATTHEW CAPERS Severed Head on a Platter (left) & Beauty Queen ll (right)
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MAGNUS GITTHENDERSON Me + U
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He Makes New Beginnings and Marvelous Ends Toniann Chianese I was dead I no longer thought I was alive You looked up at me When your salt water eyes drenched my dress and I felt no pain because I was nothing I could not believe When your broken words sounded out I love you Your undying attachment to me Shattered and I was suffocated by My lack of hope The pinhole of light in your eye Was not enough because of The overwhelming darkness There was a daily high tide of fear but I did not know how to swim and The island beneath my feet sunk Hate me I was terrified you would At 8:06 on my favorite Thursday (Years later a toddler with golden-brown hair sat at my feet and read it from the bottom to the top the way he reads all of his favorite stories.)
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apology
Avery Morgan
Bent up that red staircase again as sky tried to get in. A voice cracked open the door, hurried her through. This a singsong apology, interlude of then & Now, when two necks crumple like swans against the window, one soft mirror call calling for breathy applause. Again she says. This again a bedsong, bluesong on the ceiling : backdrop for sin as creepcrawling in
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JIA-LIAN LIN
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Guerrero, Mexico
Forty-three missing students crawl to burn on the outside Mothers can now see how clean they have kept their bones in this hemorrhage of violence No government No drug lord scarecrow can negotiate sorrow or nurture the cactus of penetrating systems that keep us howling at the moon who drips over our buckets ready to claim back their blood
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Maria Valle
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Heist with Perforated Scenery Chris Sommerfeldt
An intruding sun brushing against the perimeter of unfolding lips. You’re still sleeping and the restless foot dangling off peels the sheets. Invariably you breathe heavy syntax into pillowcases; fold yourself into a well overflowing within dreams of morning light. You steal a gust of air visiting too early, draw me into it to complete the picture, while rhubarb hymns are sung outside your window. The innocuous trees wag their branches like dogs their tails. When you rise we dream of morning light. Still, as we wake. And your foot keeps peeling. It turns and snoozes; wakes up the morning after to an unforeseeable car crash. (I missed the tram on purpose, so as to not rustle or upset the foliage you’d woven) Only the day can do that on its own accord. Each speckled moment fortified by memory. Taking a break without anyone watching. Usurp pool water with a straw in your mouth. A cry when alone – better, healthier than public visibility.
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We heed to our own advice, meant for each other. When we are about to exit, we are locked in iron arms. Have to fill time with…something. Now we laugh at our promiscuous exile.
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MAGNUS GITTHENDERSON Untitled
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SUBMIT EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LINDSEY SIEBER ART DIRECTOR TESSA GOODE SENIOR EDITOR ALANA BRASCHOWITZ COPY EDITOR AlEXANDER CHAMORRO LAYOUT EDITOR JESSICA DEANGELIS PUBLIC RELATIONS CHRISTOPHER STEWART FACULTY SPONSOR STEVE LAMBERT
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PFBYM SAF
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