KNACK Magazine #17

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KNACK is dedicated to showcasing the work of new artists of all mediums and to discussing trends and ideas within art communities. KNACK’s ultimate aim is to connect and inspire emerging artists. We strive to create a place for artists, writers, designers, thinkers, and innovators to collaborate and produce a unique, informative, and unprecedented web-based magazine each month.

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WILL SMITH co-founder, digital operations ANDREA VACA co-founder, photo editor, production manager, marketing ARIANA LOMBARDI executive editor ARIANNA SULLIVAN editor JONATHON DUARTE design director FERNANDO GAVERD designer, digital operations, marketing

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KNAC K A RT M AGA ZI N E .CO M KNAC KM AGA ZI N E 1 @ G M AI L .CO M

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ARTIST BIOGR APHIES

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CURTIS MUELLER

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CHANTALA KOMMANIVANH

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K ATHAR INE K ELLY

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

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CURTIS MUELLER

CHANTALA KOMMANIVANH

In the first grade, Curtis Mueller won a participation prize in the school science fair. His project worked around the hypothesis that a balloon would inflate after heating the air inside. He proved this hypothesis to be correct.

Ever since then, Mueller has been winning all kinds of participation prizes by augmenting many sorts of things with warmth. In 2008, he won the participation prize of a ‘high school diploma’, and in 2013, won the participation prize of a ‘BA in Creative Writing’.

Chantala Kommanivanh is a high-energy and actively engaged emerging Laotian American artist. He is both a visual artist and has an active role as one half of the dynamic hip-hop duo “Maintenance Crew” with whom he has released 4 full-length albums.

The rap music and the visual work have areas of overlap in terms of their meaning and content. His work has been displayed in three solo exhibitions in the Chicago area galleries and has been included in numerous group and invitational exhibitions in the U.S. He received his M.F.A at UW-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts for painting and drawing and has achieved numerous awards such as the Union League Civic & Arts foundation award and a two time A.O.P Fellowship award recipient. Chantala Kommanivanh is currently working on his solo exhibition in Chicago 2014 and also instructs at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago.

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KATHARINE KELLY Born and raised in Aspen, Colorado, Katharine Kelly ventured to the Santa Fe University of Art and Design to study Fine Art Photography from 2010-2012.

Ever since she was a young girl she always enjoyed taking pictures and viewing the world through the lens of a camera. She prefers shooting analogue as it captures certain original qualities and tones that digital will never possess. She mostly shoots with 35mm and occasionally 120mm film. Working and developing in the darkroom is her meditation.

She finds the photographic processes to be very captivating and enticing.

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NEVERTHELESS, HE DREAMS OF ONE DAY BEING ABLE TO HYPERDRAGONTURBOVERT EXPECTATIONS.

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CURTIS MUELLER C R E AT I V E W R I T I N G

Curtis Mueller intends to subvert expectations, as well as supervert and oververt expectations. It would be nice if he could unvert expectations, or even doublevert them, but he understands to be realistic about his expectations of verting expectations. Nevertheless, he dreams of one day being able to hyperdragonturbovert expectations.

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Kevin Watson pressed his middle finger against his forehead, kneading a small circle. The skin loosened and indented in an easy, familiar way.

“And that's how my potato clock works!” a rosy-cheeked girl said, holding her abomination. Behind her stood a cardboard display featuring several photos of a potato in varying stages of becoming a clock. MY SIENCE FARE PROJECT beamed across the top in orange bubble letters. “Ain’t I clever? Ain’t my potato clock clever, Mr. Watson?” she said.

Watson found a headache. “Did you come up with this idea yourself?”

“I found it in this book!” The middle-schooler held up a book titled 101 Science Fair Projects. Watson noticed that her hands were far too small for her arms, and looked like something large had chewed on them.

“You were required to conceive the idea yourself. This is unacceptable.”

The girl smiled. “My momma said it was okay!”

Watson sighed and tried to lean against the air, stumbling. The swarm of parents and students had filled the school’s gym with a cube of dull sound that made the whole science fair feel to Watson like a solid mass.

“You do realize that you spelled both ‘science’ and ‘fair’ incorrectly. Did your mother have anything to say about that?” Watson pressed his pen hard against his clipboard, leaving dozens of liquid trials for the air to desiccate.

“My momma told me that science ain’t that important anyways.”

Watson rolled his eyes and turned to walk away.

“But Mr. Watson, what grade do I get?” she said, reaching out her stupid-looking hand to stop him.

Watson snapped back to the girl and snatched the potato clock. He squeezed until his fingers were stained with a starchy, temporal goop.

The girl crouched by the remains of her beloved tuber, lost in its defeat.

The next project was titled The Subtleties of String Theory. A dark-haired boy stood nearby, short for his age and thin.

Watson approached the boy. “Let’s see it.”

The boy motioned towards a small device, two small boxes connected by three strings.

Slowly, the strings wound together then unwound, releasing a quiet whine.

“Well?” Watson said, waiting for an explanation.

The boy snapped his fingers and the machine’s whining sharpened.

Watson tried to cover his ears and turn his gaze away from the winding strings. He could not move.

“Well, well, Mr. Watson.” It was the boy’s voice. “It seems you’ve found yourself a little tied up.”

Watson watched the strings.

“A few weeks ago you decided that my biology presentation, Be There or Be Punnett Square, deserved an A minus. An A minus.” The boy slowly circled Watson. “At first, I

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told myself you meant no insult, that you had no idea what you were doing. How could a teacher know the pain of a student?” The boy leaned in close to Watson’s ear. “But, you knew exactly what you were doing.”

The strings wound and unwound. Watson no longer heard the boy’s words.

“Today, Mr. Kevin Watson, I show you no mercy.”

Watson’s skin began to shift and bulge. The indentation on his forehead swirled.

“Today, I show you the best science fair project you’ve ever seen.”

A flap of skin around Watson’s wrist tore free. The piece dove backwards, spiraling up and unraveling his arm. Another piece lifted on his chest, and another on his knee.

All the flesh spun away from Watson’s body like a cartoon mummy, then siphoned off into a gaseous, whispering smoke. The remaining Watson wobbled with organs.

The first sighting of the new Watson was by Sharon, a middleweight mother who had sacrificed her favorite soap opera to oversee her pointless child’s ascent into the scientific community. Rays of light, reflecting from Watson’s condition, soaked into her retinas and moved to the occipital love at the back of her skull. Repulsed that it wasn’t daytime television, the lobe discarded it down into the body. The image of Watson’s pulsing corporeality ricocheted through thick tissue until, by pure chance, it clanged against vocal cords. With no knowledge of her own fear, Sharon screeched.

Eyes sparked toward Sharon and then Watson, watching as his organs dripped into a dark puddle. The heart continued to thump and did not stop even as a liquid, producing a rhythm of ripples in the red pool. More screams ignited. Waves of hysteria crashed against the door of the gym as students and parents fell through like sand in an hourglass. Sharon was the last to exit, though purely out of conformity, as she still had no concept of the situation.

Watson’s skeleton stood bare, dripping pink with organs. Only the boy, and the girl with the smashed potato, remained in the building.

“Did you do this?” the girl said.

The boy rubbed a circle into his forehead. “He was just supposed to pee his pants.”

The machine’s strings wound and unwound once again, and the skeleton glowed pale orange.

“I think he’s turning into plasma,” the boy said.

The girl clasped the boy’s hand.

“Oh, Jesus, don’t do that.” The boy said, recoiling. “Your hands are gross.”

The air around the shining form hissed and buzzed as heat soaked outwards.

The boy decided that it was time he joined the others outside and left the girl sulking by the now sizzling remains of her potato. The immense heat melted the gym and caused the entire school to explode. It was at this point that everyone died.

In Watson’s mind, he could see vast oceans of emptiness and towers that stretched the universe, for these are the thoughts of stars.

SCIENCE FARE 11

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KNACK Present Day: A husband and wife enter a crowded art exhibition. It is a blank white room intermittently punctuated by white pedestals. On each pedestal is a piece of a tree branch.

After some time perusing, the husband turns to his wife.

“They’re just sticks,” he says.

“Yes, but they’re these sticks,” she says.

“So, what?”

The wife smiles. “The artist chose these sticks specifically, as if they are pieces of a puzzle. It’s our job as the viewers to put the puzzle together.”

“I hate puzzles.”

“You love puzzles.”

“I love Sudoku. This isn’t Sudoku.”

“Think of it as a way to see the artist’s perceptive capabilities. Only the artist could have gone into the woods and chosen these specific sticks. If you or I had gone, we would have chosen different sticks, for different reasons. The sticks here represent the reasons for which they were chosen, they represent the thoughts of the artist, the mind of the artist. To stare at this specific set of sticks here is to stare directly into the artist’s mind as he walked through the woods focused on the ground that specific day. Here we can become a different person. Here we can travel through time. But we have to choose too.

If we choose to disregard the sticks, they will be nonsense, but if we choose to watch the sticks, then we will come to understand their gatherer.”

The husband turns to the white pedestal in front of him. On it sits a small piece of an oak tree, calm and sterile. Beyond are more pedestals and more parts of trees and the mumblings of the crowd. The wife continues.

“Here, it is as if the forest is removed, replaced with emptiness, white space. The sticks are the only accents, and as a result the emptiness in between begs to be filled. Our minds fear gaps, they fear falling into nothingness, forever lost. So, our minds create a new mind in this emptiness, the artist’s mind.”

The husband puts up his hand. “Yeah, okay, I get it. I took philosophy in college too. But why do I want to see into this guy’s mind? To understand his special stickchoosing powers?”

“There’s nothing special about his mind, or his ability to choose sticks.”

“So, if I went out and got a bunch of sticks and put them in here, people could see into my mind?’

The wife shrugs. Muffled sound startles the crowd. A woman with a glass of wine is tapping a microphone at the front of the room.

“And now,” the woman says, “why don’t we have a few words from the artist?”

Applause circulates as a plaid shirted man approaches the microphone. “Hey,” he says. More applause. “I’m glad you guys like my sticks.” More applause. “Are there any questions?”

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“How would you classify your work?’

“They’re sticks,” the artist says.

“Who are your major influences?”

“Trees and dirt,” the artist says.

The husband leans close to his wife. “Jesus Christ—get a load of this guy,” he says.

“No one’s asking the right questions, that’s all.” The wife raises her hand.

“Yes, you ma’am.”

“How do you think about these pieces in relation to the Jungian collective unconscious and would you consider this project as a way of finding your pre-modern self in a post-modern society?”

The artist grins and glances around the room. “I think the work speaks for itself in that regard.”

The crowd laughs and applauds.

ECTIVES ERNING STICKS Ten Thousand Years Ago: A man who is already in the woods because he is always in the woods begins to pick up sticks, but only sticks with bark on them, and handing them to his daughter behind him. She wraps them in bundles and together they carry the sticks back to their camp, where the man starts building a fire. The daughter notices the bark, and wonders why it is important.

“Gloop boog darl tuk lep chop?” she says.

“Oog jop blog plap.”

“Choog doog?”

The man hands one of the sticks to his daughter. She feels the thin bark crack and listens to the clink it makes against a rock.

“Warb,” she says.

“Warb,” the man says.

The daughter turns the stick over in her hand, then throws it into the fire. She now understands that they have moved from the artistic period of “caveism” to “post-caveism”, and thus it would have been unseemly for her father to have chosen any de-barked sticks.

Ten Trillion Years Ago: God thought about making some stuff.

“Man, it sucks having existed alone for infinite time,” He said. “I think I’m going to make some dudes.”

And so God made some dudes.

“Aw sweet, dudes,” He said.

The dudes were totally rad, and high-fived God. “Yo God, this is tight and all,” the dudes said, “but do you think we could get a universe, or some sort of physical plane in which we can exist?”

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“I gotchu,” God said, and made the rest of everything.

A week later, it was God’s birthday, and He invited all the dudes over.

No one came.

God appeared to the dudes. “What the fuck, dudes?’

“God, there’s no way you even have a birthday,” the dudes said.

God’s cheeks went red as He remembered His own infinity. “Aight, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll turn myself into a dude, and from now on today will be my birthday.”

“Yeah, whatever,” the dudes said. They were busy doing Sudokus.

So, God made Himself a dude. “Let’s celebrate my birthday!” He said, but the dudes had gone off to do more Sudokus. God was angry and went to smite the dudes, but found his powers gone, as he was now also a dude.

The dudes still see God from time to time. He’s always trying to show them some stupid branches saying He made them or whatever. They mostly ignore Him.

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THEY ARE UGLY, BUT THEY ARE ONLY CHILDREN

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CHANTALA KOMMANIVANH STU DIO ART

Segmented Real[ISM] represents bits and pieces of my childhood experience. I am interested in reinterpreting the past as an attempt to document my history. The paintings are derived from personal and found photographs representing a pivotal time and place in my life. I grew up in a very diverse immigrant community in Chicago.

At home, I was raised with tradtional Lao customs, but actively engaged in hip-足hop culture outside my home. This body of work embodies a cultural hybridity; it blends my Laotian up bringing with urban American imagery.

With the guidance of photographs, I am re-足experiencing familiar places and visiting familiar faces by the act of painting them.

Through this process I am activating one experience to intensify another. These paintings are of children affected by cross-足cultural conflicts and tensions that create issues of personal identity. They are of single and multiple standing figures and they are at times confrontational. I handle paint loosely, with a mix of soft and aggressive marks layered with lush drips of diluted paint. The intense, vibrant colors and broken, aggressive marks are used intentionally to disrupt the balance between normalcy and discomfort. The figures in the paintings are treated crudely. Their faces are melting, their mouths are crooked and their eyes are staring right into you.

They are ugly, but they are only children.

In this body of work, I am pulling inspiration from my experience with graffiti, both as a spectator, and as a former participant.

As a painter I am interested in decaying surfaces that are activated with graffiti. I am intrigued by its complex layers and textures. In these paintings I am reaching for the same effect, a palimpsest of marks on top of marks that build up a history, leaving residues and memories of the past.

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ONLY BUILT FOR CUBAN LINX 2013 47’’ x 48’’ mixed media on canvas

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PORK CHOP SANDWICH 2013, 48″ x 64″ mixed media on masonite

Only Built For Cuban Linx, 2013 47″₺ x 48″₺ Mixed Media on Canvas

Pork Chop Sandwich, 2013 48″₺ x 64″₺

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DAMN...WISH WE HAD SKEEZ 2013, 48″ x 61.5″ oil and spraypaint on canvas

Damn…Wish We Had Skeez, 2013 48″₺ x 61.5″₺ Oil and Spray Paint on Canvas

SNOW BEACH AND SPAULDING 2014 96’’ x 96’’ oil and spraypaint on canvas

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Snow Beach and Spaulding, 2014 96” x 96” Oil and spray paint on canvas

4934 2011 7’ x 7’ mixed media on canvas

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THIS IS MY MAMA SWAG, BITCH YOU AIN’T ON THIS… 2013 60” x 48” oil and spraypaint on canvas

4934, 2011 7’x7’ Mix media on canvas

This is my mama swag, bitch you ain’t on this… 2013 60” X 48” Oil and spray paint on canvas

TING NOI NOI 2013 20” x 20” mixed media on panel

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Ting Noi Noi, 2013

A.JO 20” x2013 20” 24” x 48” mix media on panel mix media on panel

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A.JO, 2013 24” x 48”

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La>asima, 2012 36” x 24 Mixed media on archival paper

LATTASIMA 2012 36” x 24” mixed media on archival paper

MIGHTY HEALTHY 2014 48” x 48” mixed media on canvas

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Mighty Healthy, 2014 48” x 48” Mixed media on canvas

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Off the wall, 2013 55” x 49” Mix media on panel

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opposite page: OFF THE WALL 2013 55” x 49” mix media on panel

Found Forever, 2013 60” x 87” Mix media on canvas

FOUND FOREVER 2013, 60” x 87” mixed media on canvas

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ON THE OFF-BEATEN PATH AND ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR, PHOTOGRAPHY BRINGS ME BACK TO A PLACE OF SERENITY.

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K ATHARINE KELLY P H OT O G R A P H Y

In recent years I have found myself to be utterly lost and confused on this journey of life. On the off-beaten path and on the road to nowhere in particular, photography brings me back to a place of serenity. These images are rather serendipitous and, at times, random; shot around cities in Colorado, Arizona and California on my iPhone. Someone once told me, it’s not about the camera you use, but how you use the camera you have. I am drawn to architecture, abstract forms in both nature and urban city-life settings, geometry, high contrast and, of course, light.

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PHOTOGRAPHERS, GRAPHIC DESIGNERS & STUDIO ARTISTS Up to 10 high resolution images of your work. All must 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 K NAC K se e ks writing of all kinds . We will eve n conside r re cipes , reviews , and essays (although we do not prefe r any thing that is ac ade mic). We se e k write rs whose work has a distinc t voice , is charac te r drive n , and is subve rsive b ut tastef ul .

We are not inte reste d in fantasy or ge nre f ic tion . Yo u may submit up to 2 5 ,0 0 0 words and as lit tle as on e . We acce pt simultan e ous submissions . N o cove r let te r n e cessar y. All submissions must be 12pt, Tim es N ew Roman , do uble -space d with page numbe rs and include your nam e , e - mail , phon e numbe r, and ge nre .

ALL SUBMISSIONS: KNACK encourages all submitters to include an artist statement with their submission. 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 an image is displayed please include them. A brief biography including your name, age, current location, and portrait of the artist is also encouraged (no more than 700 words).

*Please title f iles for submission with the name of the piece.

This applies for both writing and visual submissions.

ACCEPTABLE FORMATS IMAGES: PDF, TIFF, or JPEG WRITTEN WORKS: .doc, .docx, and RTF

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

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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

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ISSUE 20 4.13.2014

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ISSUE 21 5.11.2014

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KNACK 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

All review material can be sent

know of an exciting show or ex- to hibition opening? Is there an art

knackmagazine1@gmail.com.

Please send a copy of CDs and

collective in your city that de- films to 321 Tesuque Dr., Unit A, serves some press? Are you a

Santa Fe, NM 87505. If you would

musician, have a band, or are

like

review

material

returned

a filmmaker? Send us your CD, to you include return postage movie, or titles of upcoming re- and packaging. Entries should leases which you’d like to see

contain pertinent details such

reviewed in KNACK. We believe

as

name,

year,

release

date,

that reviews are essential to cre- websites and links (if applicable). ating a dialogue about the arts. If

For community events we ask

something thrills you, we want to

that information be sent up to

know about it and share it with

two months in advance to allow

the KNACK community—no mat- proper time for assignment and ter if you live in the New York or Los Angeles, Montreal or Mexico.

review.

We look forward to seeing and hearing your work.

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