KNACK Magazine #55

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Editors & Staff Andrea Catalina Vaca

Co-Founder, Publisher, Director, Photo Editor, Subscriptions, Artist Coordinator, Marketing, Advertising, Digital Operations

Jonathon Duarte

Co-Founder, Creative Director

Ariana Lombardi

Co-Founder, Executive Editor, Writer, Artist Coordinator

Jake Goodman Design Director

Fernando Gaverd

Digital Director, Designer

Chelsey Alden Editor, Writer

BFrank

Designer

Juraj Gagne Proofreader

Rufino Medrano Design Intern

KNACK Magazine is dedicated to showcasing the work of artists of all mediums, and to discuss trends and ideas of art communities.

KNACK Magazine’s ultimate aim is to connect and inspire emerging artists, working artists, and establishes 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 art magazine each month.

Andrea Catalina Vaca

Cover Photography, Spread Photography

Jake Goodman

Cover Design, Magazine Design

Submission Guidelines

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Photographers, Graphic Designers & Studio Artists 10–12 high resolution images of your work. All should include pertinent caption information (name, date, medium, year).

Writers

You may submit up to 5,000 words and as little as one. We accept simultaneous submissions. No cover letter necessary. All submissions must be 12-pt Times New Roman, single or double-spaced, with page numbers and include your name, e-mail, phone number, and genre.

KNACK seeks writing of all kinds. We will even consider recipes, reviews, and essays. We seek writers whose work has a distinct voice, is character driven, and is subversive but tasteful.

All Submissions

KNACK encourages all submitters to include a portrait, a brief biography, which can include; your name, age, current location, awards, contact information, etc. (no more than 250 words). And an artist statement (no more than 500 words). 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 your work is to be displayed please include them.

Please title files for submission with the name of the piece.

This applies for both writing and visual submissions.

Formats Images

pdf, tiff, or jpeg

Written Works

doc, docx, or rtf

Knack Needs Your Help!

Email

knackmagazine1@gmail.com

Subject

Submission [Photography, Studio Art, Creative Writing, Graphic Design]

KNACK Magazine is requesting material to be reviewed. Reviews extend to any culture related event that may be happening in your community. Do you know of an exciting show or exhibition opening?

Is there an art collective in your city that deserves some press? Are you a musician, have a band, or are a filmmaker? Send us your CD, movie, or titles of upcoming releases which you’d like to see reviewed in KNACK Magazine. We believe that reviews are essential to creating a dialogue about the arts. If something thrills you, we want to know about it and share it with the KNACK Magazine community—no matter if you live in the New York or Los Angeles, Montreal or Mexico.

All review material can be sent to knackmagazine1@gmail.com. Please send a copy of CDs and films to 4319 N. Greenview Ave, Chicago, IL 60613. If you would like review material returned to you include return postage and packaging. Entries should contain pertinent details such as name, year, release date, websites and links (if applicable).

For community events we ask that information be sent up to two months in advance to allow proper time for assignment and review.

We look forward to seeing and hearing your work.

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Contents

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Matthew Bednarowicz

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Skylar Fray

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Pascal Janssen

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Seigar

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Ritam Talukdar

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Plus Comets and other drifting bodies, Melody Chebrellan A Music Review by Chelsey Alden

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Featured Artists Matthew Bednarowicz, born in 1990, once lived a life of great pain and inner suffering.

He allowed himself to feel happiness only through the abuse of psychedelics. Mr. Bednarowicz previously attended a school called InVision, where he took classes such as Meditation, Energy Healing, and Clairvoyance, and participated in psychic readings. After many years of yo-yoing between severe depression and attempts at healing himself, he started writing poetry again and started believing in himself.

Pascal Janssen is a mixed media artist from Hasselt, Belgium.

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Skylar Fray is an actor and poet based in Manhattan, NY. In the past year, Fray has been a member of the Academy Company at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, NYC. She is currently a proud member of the nonprofit theater company Gnome Haus. In her free time, she likes to spend afternoons at the High Bridge skatepark in the Bronx.

Featured Artists

Seigar is an English philologist, high school teacher, and a travel and street photographer.

His aim as an artist is to tell tales with his camera. He is a fetishist for reflections, saturated colors, details and religious icons.

He has participated in several exhibitions, and his works have been featured in international publications. He writes for The Cultural Magazine Spain and for Memoir Mixtapes based in Los Angeles. He has collaborated with VICE Spain and WAG1 Magazine.

seigar.wordpress.com f: /jseigar i: @jseigar

Ritam Talukdar is a freelance photojournalist and a storyteller who likes to tell stories through various visual narratives.

After working as a product photographer and child photographer, he left his job and began to document the emotions and expressions that build up a human life. He has been featured in The Edge of Humanity Magazine (UK), Private Photo Review, and in the Fstop Magazine Gallery Exhibit.

ritamsphotocreation.wordpress.com i: @ritamtalukdar_88

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Matthew Bednarowicz

Meditate; the darkness beckons.

55 11/22 I am grateful for life and beauty within.

Understanding that no man walks without sin.

With proper balance and fierceness of sight we wield our shadow to amplify light.

Silent contemplation sets new ambient goals.

Striving with each step as our journey unfolds.

I give thanks to my past and send it on its way so that others in darkness may find grace this day.

11/29 If you sit and listen I would show you the way.

But to those who know everything I have nothing to say.

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Matthew Bednarowicz

11/30 Today I sit and remember the other worlds I’ve been.

The heaviness and sadness, the twisting depression within.

If you have traveled to this land then you truly know the apathy and loneliness and lack of inner glow.

Happiness around me only worsened this malaise.

The lack of joy left me feeling abraised.

To those who are still here or entering this world, time and observation is how you come out bold.

You are in fact a warrior to travel through this place.

I wish you courage and divine luck, survival is the race.

12/3 King connection: listen to your people.

Be in no judgement, see them as equal.

Maintain your boundaries and speak from your truth.

It is through this process your resistance comes loose.

The greatest help you can give is to witness expression, and through that simple act receive your lesson.

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55 12/4—Command, Centered Fully autonomous, and pleasantly so is how I begin my days.

I have solid structure, forward momentum and security in my ways.

I speak out my desires clearly and am willing to compromise without overstepping or selling myself short— perfectly just, in my eyes.

Things are moving nicely.

I am grateful to be free.

Happy to be ruling, autonomous as can be.

12/5—Fear of Success Creeping doubt of past trauma, what power have you?

I am aware of my ability.

There’s no more pain to latch on to.

With each day, my goals approach as I move and clear any old resistances and residual fear.

I have achieved my greatest success: happiness and peace within.

So when fear tries it’s best to twist I sit back and grin.

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Matthew Bednarowicz

12/5—Mourning Good Mourning, America!

There truly is a lot.

I welcome you on your latest journey: to clear the Karmic Plot.

I compassionately smile and send you love and hope.

If you swim in tears of darkness, know there is a rope.

This rope is in the center.

It runs both up and down.

Up leads to a ceiling, below to fears you’ll drown.

Take a breath and dive deep!

Follow it down and you’ll find there is a plug at the bottom to leave the sorrow behind.

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12/6 Healing is a process that requires patience and time.

It takes much courage and honesty and perhaps a few sips of wine.

Whatever it takes to get you there, know you must be bold.

To let past wounds reopen, to help your story unfold.

For this pain was held with purpose: to deliver understanding and truth, to remind you where you left your power when you were just a youth.

Release this pain and heal yourself with forgiveness and love.

Find out what it feels like when you bring your spirit up above.

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Matthew Bednarowicz

12/12 Speaking with my higher self, I listen and I wait.

I feel the greatness from within and this is what I state.

“Be strong and remember please, the places that you’ve gone.

Through that tunnel you went, was room for only one.”

Only One could give you strength.

Only One could get you through.

Only One could transform the tears.

Only One, and it was You. On this side you stand alone, empowered by your light.

And the gift you have received is that you now have clear sight.

You see the world with joyous eyes, no longer clouded by pain.

No longer lost in other worlds, in power you sustain.

12/13 Empowered by light yet riddled by fear, anxiousness questions and creeps.

With a humorous smile I nod to my shadow and I begin to breathe deep.

Thickness ensues and tightens my legs as I begin to relax.

Peace and prosperity flow with every step as I release my past.

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55 12/20 Feeling stuck?

Or out of the new?

Give your mind silence.

Ask, “Is there something to do?”

“What can I do now that will ease the next day?

Is there a step I can take to move a barrier away?”

Upon listening closely you’ll surely hear “Yes!” And with each step you take comes greater success.

12/23—Balance Two extremes in each event yet three sides to every coin.

Tonight I sit and contemplate rigidity which keeps on going.

People who contend one side only need wait long enough to see the error of such blindness.

The fate of Karmic destiny.

It is with this notion, I speak before you now.

Please be understanding and compassion do allow.

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Matthew Bednarowicz

12/24 I am a majestic being, centered in truth and light.

I am Empowered by the great observer, bringing forth my heart’s delight.

I wield my true power on this journey of wonder and strife.

I create everlasting abundance and greater prosperity every night.

In my days to come, my power will truly grow.

Becoming all I have imagined; more than I could ever know.

12/31 This year I invite appreciation and for me to be received.

I invite joyous relationships and prosperous company.

Releasing all that would hold me back, I step into this year optimistically, enthusiastic, abundant, and sincere.

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Skylar Fray

When people stop showing up to your pity party, it is time to start planning the celebration.

55 Afternoon on the Deck Yesterday, I told the green hen I had nothing to write.

I saw her eyes change from a fogged up window to alive.

The leaves are green now.

The leaves are green, “I don’t have the technique,” said the green hen.

“Yes you do,” said the rabbit.

Yesterday, I told the green hen I had nothing to write.

A look of…judgement from her eyes.

The thought, a thought, one thought.

It sounds like this “That is not true & you know it.”

The leaves are green now.

The leaves are green, “It is just a matter of stanza breaks. I’m no genius,” said the rabbit A look.

“I wrote it down somewhere in a book,” said the green hen.

“You’ll find it,” said the rabbit.

“And we’ll do it tomorrow, together,” the rabbit added.

The leaves are shadows now.

Shadows, dark, black, inky shapes, against dusty evening sky.

Yesterday, I told the green hen I had nothing to write.

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Skylar Fray

Are you Sleepwalking in Broad Daylight?

We live on this planet and each day we get older.

We have the chance to reach out and touch.

Fight to touch the stars, we have the chance.

We live on this planet.

At a point we are an idea, in a moment we are conceived, we multiply.

We form we form we form we form we form.

We move.

She feels she feels.

We live on this planet.

We are born alone, we die alone.

The chance to touch, the chance to taste, the chance to smell, the chance to hear, the chance to see.

The option to listen, the option to play, the option to follow, the option to speak, the option to choose.

The option to have a voice.

We live on this planet for one fleeting moment.

Where do we go once we leave this little blue dot?

Do our souls float on into the swirly, endless strange?

The entity that is the universe?

We live on this planet.

Some of us are awake.

Most of us are dead men walking, so, to answer the question, I hope so.

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55 Cracks Upon the Shell of Meat You can’t break my joy cause I’m already broken.

You can’t break my joy cause I’m already broken.

They touched me and I can’t shake it off, They touched me and I can’t shake it off.

Deal Accept Forget You can’t break me cause I’m already broken.

As I lay in bed, I’m realizing this.

A soul that walks around.

A soul that comes off alive, cheery, and well if you look closer Took some of your precious time to converse you will see—teeny, tiny, microscopic Michelangelo—like cracks Worn, riddled, wrung, and at times filled with rife cracks.

Dark and humorous in the corner laughing type of cracks.

That smile and wave in the faces of adversity.

The faces that question my strange joy.

Whether they know it or not Just wanting to be loved— so selfish.

This shell, this sack of meat never satisfied so full of joy this flesh, blood, and bone.

You cannot break my joy because I’m already broken.

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Pascal Janssen

My oil paintings represent the aesthetic features of the many subcultures surrounding contemporary music genres. My niche as a designer is creating album or poster designs for bands, producers, and labels. Elements of my paintings are intertwined with other textures and photography I create with digital collage techniques in which I use geometric and symmetrical compositions.

This new series consists of surreal landscapes with architectural aspects, inspired by ancient Arabic monuments. These psychedelic designs are based on lucid dreaming and are an escape to solitude and serenity.

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Pascal Janssen

Fragile

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Pascal Janssen

Nina Kraviz

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On The Level

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Pascal Janssen

Sun Dial

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Untitled (29)

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Pascal Janssen

Polaris

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Untitled (33)

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Pascal Janssen

Eclipse

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Seigar

“Tales of a City III” is the third part of an ongoing, urban, photo-narrative project about London and UK that is made of individual short stories. Each image captures and tells a single tale, like documentary street photography. The favored elements are: plastic people, shop windows, abandoned objects, garbage, food, messages, and street portraits. “Tales of a City III” was shot entirely using a 50mm lens, further confirming the conceptual scheme of the whole project.

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Tales of a City III

Seigar

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Seigar

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Seigar

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Seigar

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Ritam Talukdar

We as human beings are never complete, even if all of our feelings are seen to be. This feeling of “lack of being.� In the year of 2016, I was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and depression. Sudden nightmares and unnecessary discomfort seemed to surround me always. Slowly the happiness faded away as my workload increased and I realized I had no existence of my own. I decided to document it.

I have always looked for ways to express myself through the photographs that I take.

I am showing the state of my mind at an exact moment through a plethora of obscure feelings, how I see my surroundings and nature when I am down with anxiety attacks.

I am searching for eternal euphoria amidst the illusions of the habitat existing between me and my feelings. For which, I have entitled the project Forms of Mental Illness.

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Forms of Mental Illness

Where is my mind?

Can anyone help me remember the unrecalled memories from the extinct oblivion? Sometimes the disorientated mind seems to be lost in considerable confusion.

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Ritam Talukdar

Disturbances have been an affair in the last few weeks.

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Crashed and broken.

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Ritam Talukdar

Prosopagnosia, or ‘face blindness,’ is a disorder which makes an individual unable to recognise the faces of familiar people. They rely on certain nonfacial information like voice or hair color.

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Stains of selfinflicted wounds.

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Ritam Talukdar

Where is the beauty in the life we all are leading? Even the rose can be black sometimes.

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Resonating voices erupt with pain from the long-term effects of disasters in my life.

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Ritam Talukdar

Words sometimes can’t define the way I feel.

It’s only the moments that can define the emotions that run throughout my body.

This sensation of pure madness is what drives me towards the edge making an attempt to end whatever feelings I have for everyone or maybe to end the life that I am breathing in.

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Haunting effect of the sheer madness that tries to engulf me part by part. Is it a dream or a nightmare?

Sometimes I am unable to see the difference.

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Ritam Talukdar

Spiders weave a web which is an intricate and beautiful trap to catch its prey. As such spiders can be manipulative and if seen in a dream it can indicate that the dreamer is being manipulated or the dreamer is the manipulator. It can also make you feel that you are like an outsider in some situation. Or perhaps you might want to keep your distance away from an alluring or tempting situation.

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A Music Review by Chelsey Alden

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Comets and other drifting bodies Melody Chebrallan

Currently based in Austin, TX, singer/songwriter Melody Chebrellan has just released her debut LP Comets and other drifting bodies and I am here for the unmitigated versatility of Chebrellan.

Only exceptionally unique artists can give listeners something as fun and lighthearted as “Upside Down” at the end of an album that begins with a trio of songs (“Sometimes”, “Whisk Me Away”, and “Or You’re Not”) so moody and depressing that they almost string together into an 11 minute melancholic epic.

Comets and other drifting bodies, in Chebrellan’s words, is “an exploration of the spaces between us, the vastness within us, and the little bits of magic that bridge the distance.” There is indeed magic happening in this LP. There is moodiness. There is honesty.

There is a feeling of aloneness and a feeling of community.

Chebrellan’s jazzy piano lounge vibes throughout “Scattered Dust”, “I’ll Never Fall Apart”, and “Losing Touch”, felt influenced by iconic artists such as Norah Jones, Alice Coltrane, and Melody Gardot, while the vocals compare to more contemporary artists such as Morgan James of Postmodern Jukebox.

Despite some similarities in style, each song on Comets can stand alone, holding itself upright with authentic and sincere lyrics, coupled with the diversity of Chebrellan’s vocals in the duration of the individual songs. As a complete album, however, Comets is truly a journey.

Get your copy here: melodychebrellan.bandcamp.com album cover photograph by Thomas Allison