Yucca Magazine #9

YUCCA art magazine issue #9

CONTENTS 6

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Irma Gruenholz

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Nicoletta Ceccoli

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Omaraqil

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Mark Conlan

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Vicki Ling

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Atelier Olschinsky

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Ralph Gräf

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TO THE READER “Everything you can imagine is real” Pablo Picasso

The Gift A howling wind accompanies the soft patter of snow-covered boots, before the slam of a door returns the previous stillness. A young girl shivers as she dusts off the snow and lowers her hood, eyes wide as she takes in the vast entrance of the old castle she stands in.

“Hello?” She calls out, her voice echoing through the cold halls. “I’m sorry to barge in like this, but the storm…” she trails off.

Silence responds.

The old castle resonates with emptiness. It stands, ancient, cold and alone in a field of snow as far as the eye can see. A shiver rolls down her spine, a ghost of a warning, yet she cannot turn back. The wind howls through the cracks around the oak door behind her and she shivers again. She steels herself, and ventures forth into the dark halls.

“Helllooo?” She calls again, a faint smile dancing across her lips as her voice echoes down the halls.

With soft, furtive movements, she darts through the halls and rooms, searching for the inhabitants. As she searches, she begins to imagine the time the castle teemed with life.

The chatter of court as the king listened to his people, the hurried bustle of the maids as they ensured every inch of the old stone building remained spick and span. The warmth of the fires that would keep out the cold of the storm, the smell of freshly baked pastries, a banquet for every meal…

Something tickles her nose. She slows her steps. Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, she inhales. She can smell the pastries.

Perhaps the castle is not as abandoned as she’d first thought. The scent of honey and berries crosses her nose and her stomach rumbles with an urgency she didn’t know she had.

She sets off after the elusive scent. The girl finds herself in the kitchen, and there, atop the counter, is a platter of freshly baked tarts, stream curling from their golden crusts.

“Hello?” She calls once more, slowly shuffling up to the food.

Silence answers her call, but her stomach grumbles in rejoinder.

The girl considers the platter. She knows it’s wrong to steal, but there are so many tarts surely whomever made them wouldn’t miss one? With tentative hands, she reaches out to pluck one from the plate, Her mouth starts watering as she brings it close, and with delicious relish, takes a bite. Her eyes light up with a sparkle as crumbs and jam smear her face.

“I’ve never tasted anything so good!” She can’t help but exclaim, greedily taking another large bite. All too soon the tart is demolished, and the others are far too tempting to ignore. One tart becomes two, then three, then four… until before she knows it, she’s eaten the whole platter.

“Uh, none left…” she mumbles sadly, then gasps, remembering herself. “Ah, I ate them all!”

Sticky hands fly to her face as she worriedly looks around.

A quiet giggle suddenly bursts from the room, echoing around her.

“Who’s there? I can hear you, I’m sorry I ate the tarts.”

The giggle grows louder, then beads of light dash across her vision. For a moment, she wonders if she is dreaming as the lights whizz around her. “Fairies” she whispers to herself in an awed hush.

“Now you can see us!” The tiny voices cheer as the girl stares.

“Do you like them?” They chant and sing, dashing about.

The girl is stunned, silent.

“Did you not?”

“No. I mean yes, I liked them,” she stutters.

“Hooray!”

“I’m sorry,” she suddenly cries, bowing her head. “I didn’t mean to barge in, and steal your food, please forgive me.”

“It’s okay!”

“We haven’t had a visitor in ages!”

“It’s been so long!”

“Really?” The girl blinks. “You must have been lonely; this castle feels so abandoned.”

“The people left a long time ago.”

“But we stayed.”

“So, we look after it now.”

“How can I thank you for the food and shelter?”

“We don’t need anything.”

“There must be something I can do…”

“Well...”

“There is one thing.”

“Really, what?” The girl brightens.

“You could give us a gift!”

“The best gift!”

“The gift of a bond, of a warm heart!”

At the girl’s confused face, they giggle and cry as one. “Be our friend silly!”

“Oh!” The girl chirps, grinning wide. “I’ll be your friend!”

The fairies dance and spin as the girl feels a warmth grow inside her chest.

Her heart beats in time with the fae dance, and suddenly, the castle doesn’t seem so cold and empty anymore.

Outside, the storm stills.

And a new day dawns.

Sanyera Alator

IRMA GRUENHOLZ deplastilina.com

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Hello!

I am a three dimensional illustrator and sculptress based in Madrid, Spain.

My work process involves creating hand-sculpted illustrations with clay and several materials which allow me to work in three dimensions. I love to explore the possibilities of each project and experiment with new solutions and textures.

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NICOLET TA

CECCOLI nicolettaceccoli.com

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I was born and still live in my native Republic of San Marino. I graduated from the State Institute of Art in Urbino (Italy) in the section of animation.

I’m working as an illustrator of children’s book since 1995 and I illustrated numerous books with USA, UK, Italian Swiss and Taiwanese publishers, among my clients: Random House, Mondadori, Simon and Shuster, Barefoot Books, Greem Press, Fabbri,

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Arka, Fatatrac, Europacorp, Macy, Diesel, Houghton Mifflin, Henry Holt, Mc Cann Lowe, United Airlines, Vogue.

In 2008 I worked as character designer for a 3d French animation project “La mecanique du couer” with the direction of Mathias Melzieau and the production of Luc and Silla Besson.

My works were shown in prestigious collections throughout the world.

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OMARAQIL behance.net/omaraqil

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MARK CONLAN markconlan.com

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Hello, I’m Mark Conlan.

I am a multi disciplined Illustrator from Dublin, Ireland. I am currently working and living in Melbourne.

I develop conceptual based illustration for products, editorial, publishing, advertising campaigns and one off commissions for clients all around the world.

My style focuses on a strong use of character and composition empowered by whimsical and emotional situations.

Incorporating rich and vibrant colour palettes, my aim is to produce atmospheric imagery that surpasses the brief. You will often see little happy characters or an array of plants and foliage making an appearance throughout my work :)

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This little four part series is all about being able to find certain things that you never knew existed.

Its just a mater of shinning light on to the subject. Maybe then you can truly see a whole new world.

I think its about time we all started to try get on and work together.

All there seems to be is tension, bitterness and hatred towards each other these days. This is not good for any of us.

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The New York Times - How to Buy a Home

ToneDen is a friendly social marketing platform that gives you the power to reach and sell to the people who matter.

ToneDen came to me to create a series of illustrations that connected with their users on a human level. We used a series of animals in a human context interacting with various devices.

An Post (Irish Post) - Readers Wanted

VICKI LING vickiling.com @vickilingart

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Vicki is a visual artist and illustrator currently based in Chicago, USA. She has a strong eye for detail and a unique ability to convey emotion through her fictional imagery.

Labor Intensive Editorial illustration for Trix Magazine

Vicki received her MFA in Fine art from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, 2013. Her works have been exhibited and published internationally.

Homage to the tragedy of the Goddess Diana and the Hunter Actaeon in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In this series of drawings, Diana’s story is reinterpreted as a transformation between the person being watched and the observer.

The theme I am exploring with this series of work is the feeling of insecurity brought forth from the potential catastrophes of modern life.

Contemporary lifestyles tend to obscure various crises that spontaneously erupt, from privacy invasions to public health issues and from climate change to personal emotional disorders, etc. I’m interested in surfacing that sense of tension and insecurity and raise these issues to our collection consciousness in this collection of work. Each composition leverages a red string as a visual device to represent the tension of modern life. Fragile objects interact with the string in an almost impossible way to create a direct challenge to the balance and harmony of the overall scene.

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Hidden and Exposed This project is about the feeling of insecurity that relates to the privacy crisis and transient lifestyles in today’s contemporary life

Is this about our material possessions, or are we being possessed by material things?

In this series, growing material desires are represented by a female figure, superficially pretty plastic flowers and a palette of daily objects that are often aspired to in domestic life. In the confined internal space, the presence of material objects is constantly expanding in volume and the remaining space for individuals is getting squeezed smaller.

The narrative follows the objectification of this female figure, her body gradually transformed into a piece of furniture or interior decoration, and placed in these seemingly comforting and pleasant illusions. Finally an ambiguous conclusion appears between self-comfort and self-loss in the obsession with material consumption.

ATELIER OLSCHINSKY olschinsky.at

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Atelier Olschinsky, founded in 2002, is a creative studio based in Vienna, Austria.

Peter Olschinsky and Verena Weiss work in various fields such as graphic design, illustration, photography, and art direction. In addition to their jobs for clients, they

also run several independent projects, always trying to develop and refine their work. “It is just so important to work as much as you can, to learn and to be open to new things. The journey is the award.�

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RALPH GRÄF graef-photography.de

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Ralph Gräf In fall 2006, my scientific career as a cell biologist brought me from Munich to Potsdam near Berlin. Photography has escorted me through my whole adulthood. Yet, it was my move to Potsdam that triggered a more intensive involvement with photography, since here I found friends in the local photo club who gave me a great creative environment to spend a considerable part of my spare time for my creative talents that I have to neglect at my daily work. Together with ten of my friends I am organizing the “Fotogalerie Potsdam e.V.”, a successful gallery project to promote contemporary artistic photography. With my photos I want to stimulate the imagination

of the viewer and to tell a story that emotionally touches him, since sensing emotions is the prerequisite to keep pictures sticking in the viewer’s mind.

I prefer available light and clearly composed pictures with a discreetly arranged motive. I like working with a series concept in mind that makes the photos more suitable for exhibitions and photo books. My photos are taken with digital cameras or analog medium format cameras with a wide range of lenses ranging from extreme wideangle to telephoto and plastic lenses, and often a tripod. Yet, to me the type of camera used to take the picture is rather unimportant. It is difficult to state names of other artists, who have inspired me, since there are many. In principle I could get inspirations by any picture

I’m watching. I’m trying not not copy somebody elses style but to find and create an own one. Among my favorite photographers are Gregory Crewdson, Nadav Kander, Andreas Gursky, Wim Wenders, and Peter Bialobrzeski, just to name a few. Since 2010 I’ve presented my photographic projects in twentysix well-acclaimed exhibitions in Berlin, Brandenburg/H., Potsdam, Munich, Frankfurt/M., Neubrandenburg, Lisboa, Milano and Gorzów Wielkopolski. At the 4th “Kunstallee Potsdam” (an arts fair) in 2011, I won the Arts Prize for my series “The Traveller” in an election of the approximately 4000 visitors.

Several photos won prizes or were shortlisted in national and international photo contests, first of all the Sony World Photography Award, where I won the travel category and the Germany National Award in 2017.

Brandenburg unplugged The series “Brandenburg unplugged” shows the German federal state of Brandenburg in a raw and “unplugged” way, far from the glowing metropolitan region of Potsdam with its famous palaces and gardens. The idea for this series was born shortly after my work-related relocation from Munich to Potsdam in 2006. Fascinated by many new impressions and the obvious rapid changes this region has undergone since the fall of the Berlin Wall, I immediately began to explore my new adopted home with my camera. At first of course, I did this mainly from the perspective of the astonished outsider. As I quickly learnt more about the land’s recent history and got to know the locals, I increasingly adopted the perspective of the insider.

My pictures show many endearing

characteristics of this region. Often they show places telling little stories and also places that are changing or disappearing. To me, even after more than 13 years, Brandenburg is still a land of contrasts not only in comparison with the pulsating capital Berlin, which is completely surrounded by Brandenburg, but also when looking at different districts or quarters within the few larger cities.

While the “boomtown” of Potsdam is now the fastest growing state capital of Germany, many rural regions beyond the Berlin suburbs, which suffered most from the deindustrialization after the reunification, are still plagued by

depopulation. As a result, Potsdam and its immediate surroundings are now home to countless new housing developments. On the other hand, on the countryside and in many smaller towns one can still find dilapidated or abandoned buildings, and also charming curiosities and relics of the GDR era.

In Potsdam’s city center, however, the architectural witnesses of this era have been almost erased and replaced by unimaginative historicizing buildings.

Potsdam’s rapid growth goes hand in hand with extremely contrasting neighborhoods. New buildings, pretty old townhouses, and prefabricated concrete slab buildings, they all reflect,

more distinctly than in the West, the social stratification of this society. with the employees of the numerous scientific institutes, high-tech companies and ministries on the one hand and lowincome earners and welfare recipients on the other. Prosperity is also distributed quite differently between the regions. The administrative district of Potsdam Mittelmark which surrounds Potsdam, now has the highest per capita income in the whole of the post-GDR federal states, and the neighboring Brandenburg an der Havel is also

enjoying growing popularity again. But the upswing of recent years has largely missed out on other regions especially in the north-east of the state, as evident on the face of these disadvantaged villages and small towns. Nevertheless, the last thirty years have been a success story for Brandenburg as a whole. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall three decades ago, the state has grown from the poorhouse of the “new states� into a respectable business location that does not have to hide behind no longer falling short of many of the old federal states.

The photo book (English/Deutsch) is available on request. Limited edition

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HEY THERE! You made it to the end!

We thank you and hope you enjoyed all of the amazing artists featured in this issue.

As our mission is to share art and magic with the world, we would truly appreciate it if you share this issue broadly in social media.

We also kindly invite you to visit the website and subscribe to receive new issues as we release them.

Thanks again and never stop to Love, Create and Inspire.

To the reader story: Sanyera Alator Proofreading: Alex Fogleman Editor: Toma Oma

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2020, YUCCA MAGAZINE non-commercial online art magazine www.yuccamagazine.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. this magazine contains material protected under international and federal copyright laws and treaties. no part of these pages, either text or image may be used for any purpose other than personal use. any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. no part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the magazine.

Photos, illustration and text: courtesy of each author, unless stated otherwise.

Love. Create. Inspire.