SWEAT ISSUE ± 10
SWEAT has made it into double digits!
Welcome to the very first issue of SWEAT with two numbers after the plus minus. Is it the dawning of a new era? Is it a leap into a new found maturity? Well, we’re only 10. In issues anyway. Against the backdrop of spring lambs, newly opened daffodils & newly wedded royals, we present A FREE PULL OUT & KEEP WEDDING POSTER PLUS some lovely wonderful poetry, prose & art. SWEAT.LOVE.
CONTENTS COVER vintage stamp AFTER SYLVIA by Karolina Burdon CAR WRECK REVERIE by Shanna McCloud ROYAL WEDDING PULL OUT by Jaymie O’Callaghan ART by John Garcia LADY BUG by Jess Bunyan COMIC STRIP by xkcd.com
AFTER SYLVIA BY KAROLINA BURDON “I used two quotes by Sylvia Plath, out of context, after I had eavesdropped some teenage girls mentioning Plath’s name on the tram.” “My illos are more ‘popish’ than I would normally illustrate Sylvia’s words or poetry, however, listening to those girls I thought about how they might receive SP’s poetry or books. I decided to use the impression on first love and what it brings: kisses and first despair.” Karolina Burdon’s work is amazing. That’s pretty much the extent of it. Her cartoon-esque illustrations are a beautiful twist on traditional portraiture and her portrayal of popular culture figure heads like Vivienne Westwood and Woody Allen are both original & true to the characters they portray. There’s also something about them that reminds me of textile art, applique and embroidery, but with a huge dosage of painterly edges & bright colours to eradicate any notion of twee. Basically you need to go & look at more of her work. Right now. Head over to her blog: karolinaburdon.blogspot.com her flickr: flickr.com/photos/burbi for more of Karolina Burdon’s work.
CAR WRECK REVERIE
The sight made the world slow down, and my eyes took snapshots in rapid-fire succession. Off the road on the grassy ground was a mass of black metal, wrapped around an unmoved pole, embracing it fatally. My head became a beehive. My thoughts were humming loudly NO ONE MADE IT OUT ALIVE. The hot sun was beaming down. The car cushions were light brown. Thoughts are strange in moments when gunshots breed no violins. A thought had occurred to me: death looks like a crushed beer can, bent and broken, thrown away.
By Shanna McCloud For more head to: thelunalily.deviantart.com
JOHN GARCIA Spanish born John Garcia makes bright visceral illustrations that show a delicacy rare in what can sometimes be blunt images. At the moment he’s based in new York working with the type designer Jessica Hische and it shows in his appreciation of words and type. For me though it’s his portraits and sketchbooks that show someone not only with real technical skill but real emotion and something new to say as well. For more John Garcia head to his website: johnillustration.com his flickr: flickr.com/photos/53066974@N07
LADY BUG She woke up to her alarm at 6.06. Showered and dressed, she ate her breakfast as always. A piece of toast, grapefruit and a cup of tea; accompanied by a rather worn version of Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, though she could recall large passages of the thing and had thumbed the exact same copy since she was fifteen, she read it again more out of habit than enjoyment. At exactly 6.36 she left her modest flat for work. Being out before seven meant a particular selection of society would be about, and although she recognised her role in it, like all areas of her life she would remain by an observer. Nothing of drama or intrigue had happened between the 6.36 she left the house and the 7.02 she sat at her desk; not once in the nine years she’d been making the trip to and fro. In fact, the one time she had arrived at work eleven minutes late for no discernible reason she had felt off kilter and unable to work adequately all day. She acknowledged the colleagues she passed and once in her office, closed the door placed her bag on the floor, took off her coat and sat down to begin where she’d left off the previous day. She was reading a research paper on a particularly precocious variety of trichodes alvearius, a striking member of the cleridae family with red and black striped along it’s body. The irony of a single middle-aged women working with something as undesirable as insects was not lost on her. As a child she had always been more interested in poking bugs than plaiting hair. As an adult she was not consistently alone, but had found that analysing another human being was a far superior task to that of insects, and one in which she did not excel. She was happy in her own way however, she had got a job she enjoyed, in a city that was pleasant and she had a few people others may refer to as friends. There was something though, that she often lost days thinking about. Sometimes she would suddenly freeze with one thought and that thought only: who would ever love a bug lady?
xkcd.com
xkcd.com
xkcd.com
xkcd.com
SWEAT ISSUEÂą10 e-mail: sweat.zine@gmail.com website: sweatzine.blogspot.com