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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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andrea vaca co-founder, photo editor, production manager, marketing will smith co-founder, digital operations ariana lombardi executive editor jonathon duarte design director miljen aljinovic editor fernando gaverd designer, digital operations, marketing jake goodman designer, photographer spread photography by a.c. vaca k n a c k m a g a z i n e1
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artist biographies 4
knack cydney hallahan 9
diego suarez 19
shelbie loomis 27
yellow bird 35
submission guidelines 38
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cydney hallahan
diego suarez
Cydney Hallahan is a student at the Santa Fe University of Art & Design. She previously attended New Hampshire Institute of Art, and is originally from the Northeast coast, Southern Connecticut and New Hampshire areas. She is currently in her last year of school, preparing to receive a Bachelors of Fine Arts and complete her thesis by December 2015. At the moment she is diving into more ideas of creating activist/political art. In the future she plans on possibly pursuing a curatorial career in the arts and becoming a yoga instructor, while continuing to make and (hopefully) sell her own works. She makes a living working with awesome humans at Second St. Brewery in Santa Fe, NM.
Diego Suarez is a Visual Artist, Aesthete, and Venusian from Santa Fe, New Mexico and is currently attending Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, Washington. He is studying Fine Art and utilizes the realms of analog photography, video, painting, drawing, text, and theory. Through observation and reflection he uses these mediums to give an aesthetic to his personal experiences. saintdada.com
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shelbie loomis Born in Austin, TX, Shelbie Loomis lives and works in Santa Fe, NM. She graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2014 from Santa Fe University of Art and Design with her BFA. She currently works as a Gallery Associate at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art Gallery and is preparing for upcoming exhibitions through SITE Santa and others. Through her drawings Loomis describes and reinvents natural occurring forms found in nature, both literal and conceptual using collage, ink, graphite and charcoal. Her focus on describing ‘form’ stems from an interest in pattern, agricultural sciences, with an interest of muscle fiber structure and function. Loomis received support via Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Governor Scholarship and was selected as a SITE Scholar 2013. Her work has been exhibited at throughout New Mexico and internationally; including SITE Santa Fe, the Rail-Yard Santa Fe, Silver City, and Chile. She is currently working on group shows that will be announced later this year. shelbieloomis.com
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the process of knowing yourself then losing and finding yourself again— a reoccurring struggle
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cydney hallahan STUDIO ART
This body of work was created over the last year and a half. It incorporates adventures and experiences I’ve had over that time, moving from the Northeast to the Southwest, as well as living in the Southwest and everything that has come with this change. A lot of the pieces are self-portraits, although the intention was only that I needed a figure, and the most convenient person to use was myself. I recently realized that the self-portraits were very much about myself, as are all of the paintings, an over all theme I would say is the process of knowing yourself then losing and finding yourself again—a reoccurring struggle I have found in life. I use subjective colors to portray emotion. I use only pallet knives 95 percent of the time I create a piece. I have three or four different sizes and I constantly go back and forth with using each one, as well as sometimes using brushes. Since moving to Santa Fe the scale of my work has gotten much larger and as a result, building frames and having the exact sizes I want for my paintings has become very important to my work. When my work is viewed I hope for that viewer to make up their own story line, emotions, and put themselves into it. It is about myself being the artist, although that is beside the point because in the end of it, I hope others can put themselves in those places as well.
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FEELS LIKE 4’x5’ oi l and acr y l i c on un - s t r et c hed canvas hung with grommets
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R E M B R A N DT M A S T E R C O P Y: B AC K TO T H E F U T U R E
YO U S E A 21’ ’ c i r c l e c a n v a s , acrylic and oil
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OR ANGE STREET MARKET 30 ’ ’x40 ’ ’ acr ylic and oil on canvas
GO WHERE YO U WA N N A G O 5’x5’ acr y l i c and oi l on canvas
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M A K E I T YO U R S E L F 6’ x7 ’ x7 ’ ’ a c r y l i c , o i l , and charcoal on stretched canvas
EASY COME , UNEASY GO 7 ’x5’ acr y l i c , oi l , c har coa l , pastel on un -stretched canvas hung with grommets
EAST OF HERE 2 0 ’ ’ x 24 ’ ’ o i l a c r y l i c o n c a n v a s .
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EASY COME , UNEASY GO 4 ’ x7 ’ x 5 ’ ’ free -standing wall
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above EASY COME , UNEASY GO 4 ’ x7 ’ x 5 ’ ’ free -standing wall
right EAST OF HERE 18 ” x 2 0 ” o i l a n d acr ylic on canvas
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EAST OF HERE 18 ” x 2 0 ” o i l a n d acr ylic on canvas
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the poetic nature of a sea of nonsense mimics that of ephemeral intimacy
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diego suarez STUDIO ART
I am constructing an analysis of the past. Encounters seem ephemeral, but they live on in the subconscious. The act of cutting a seemingly banal image and placing it on a surface becomes a way to assign meaning onto said image, through projections of self and experiences. Lovers, in retrospect, become like the vapid images that transform into concepts once assigned a meaning, a place, a purpose, an intention. The poetic nature of a sea of nonsense mimics that of ephemeral intimacy. Text that references a place, a lover, sparks conversation within the images and with the self; an intimate experience made aesthetic. Dadaist collages emerged as a response to war, and so, I mimic the same intention. Though, I am responding to the wars in my head—in my heart perhaps. To critique the systems of past flames, I turn to collage as a confessional of the unspoken.
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emotional metaphors that are described with composition, dark lines and movement
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shelbie loomis STUDIO ART
My drawings reflect natural development of all living things that interest me, from real to invented forms that can be found in the wild or within human bodies. I like to depict comparisons and relationships between nature and man by proposing reoccurring forms and patterns in different configurations or simplistic structure. My drawings also reflect emotional metaphors that are described with composition, dark lines and movement that can be aesthetically appealing to the eye. These imaged drawings are intuited when coming together but are drawn from observation of physical form and emotional expression.
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alicia mor r is on /in l ove
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The question is, how do you know when you know? And the answer is: you will never know how you know, until you do know. You know when you know. It’s different for everyone, but I can tell you how I know. It was easy for me. We met almost 10 years ago, and not long after that we kissed for the first time. I remember how it felt, I remember we were watching that Czech movie “Alice” by Jan Švankmajer. I remember it made me feel dizzy and drugged like nothing had ever made me feel or has ever made me feel. All of the dopamine. I knew then that it was something. didn’t know what, but I knew it was something big. After we “parted” several months later, I didn’t forget her, and I always thought about what it might have been. Every other person was a comparison, whether I was consciously aware of it or not. Many years went by. Eventually I thought she may be didn’t feel the same. I had another longtime lover. I remember at the very beginning telling this one that I couldn’t give it all to her, that I didn’t have it to give. That may or may not have been, at least partially, from an idea imprinted on me from the book that SHE (all those years ago) left in my car for me to read, one of the first few times we were together. The Passion. Either way, it was true. I wasn’t being melodramatic, I was being very honest. I ended up being with that person for three years, on and off. The one thing that really played a part in my decision to end it, despite all of the red flags, was coming back into contact with this one, this long-lost one. Her. Six years long-lost. She was saying all of the things that I forever wanted to hear from her: I’ve always thought of you and missed you, loved you the most. I knew that there was no way I would give up the chance to try again. And, I knew that the current one wouldn’t/shouldn’t last—I (finally) called it off. For a while it went on that way, talking and not talking. There were many signs, co-incidences. There was this one thing that happened, the greatest co-incidence: I was rereading this Kundera book, “Ignorance.” There’s this part at
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the very beginning, within the first few pages, he talks about nostalgia, “The Greek word for “return” is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return...the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I do not know what has become of you.” I was re-reading that book, and I almost posted something of that part on Facebook. But I didn’t. Within a week she did. Finally, last year (9 years after we first met), she was ready for it. I saw her in November. The 15th. We spent the weekend together in Carolina. I was on my way from Santa Fe back to New York. It was very much like it was when I was 18, but better. She was more open, she let me in, it was perfect. We were up the whole night with “Before Sunrise” on repeat on my little portable DVD player. *[For those who don’t know, it’s a Linklater trilogy- the final film was released in 2013. The characters meet and have one night together and don’t meet again for nine years, which is the second film, “Before Sunset.” In the third film, we meet these same characters nine years into their marriage. The characters are also featured in Linklater’s movie “Waking Life.”] Before I even left Santa Fe, I knew, I felt the strong possibility that I would end up moving down to North Carolina to be with her. I generally do what I feel like I should, but there has never been a time that I can recall whereI felt more sure and more focused, as I did when heading in this direction, toward her. She makes me feel more sure of myself, like I can do all of the things that I want to do, things that I have always been afraid to do. I felt afraid of life before, of continuing with the next step, afraid of choosing the wrong direction. I’ve never felt more sure about the steps I’m taking, of the direction I’m headed. And, honestly, those steps didn’t even appear until this thing with her did. It’s like she is a very necessary corner or edge-piece to my puzzle. The blanks are filling in, it’s the end of paralysis, the end of all
things being put on hold. I am not afraid and I am not hesitant. It isn’t that she completes me. It’s that I feel more complete with her beside me, more like an extension of myself. And I love the ways she sees me. I told her once- she is my favorite mirror. The day of our one month engaged-iversary I went to Trader Joe’s. I go often, and it’s often busy, but on this particular day it was busy enough that I had to park in this little overflow area. There’s a table in the grass between that little lot and the regular lot, and lying on the table were two framed pictures. One was some flowery thing, the other was four types of yellow birds. I went in the store, shopped, came back out, they were still there. I sat in my car for several minutes and decided they were there for taking, it made no sense for a driver to remove them from the car, and a walker or biker would take them inside. I brought the yellow bird picture home, an engaged-iversary gift from the universe.
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as:
you’re the yellow bird that i’ve been waiting for
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Urban Dictionary defines the yellow bird
“A person’s true love; the one person they are both externally and internally, both consciously and subconsciously attached to with the realization that those feelings will never die; the one person that they know they can’t live without, if they find this person, they are the luckiest in the world. If not, they are eternally screwed.” “I never thought this life was possible, you’re the yellow bird that I’ve been waiting for.” I know because of all of that, and I know because the way we relate stands outside from how I generally conduct myself. I am not a person who has always wanted to get married, and not someone who believes very strongly in monogamy. She is a game changer. I never care or desire to do things with others when I am with her. And anytime I have, it has reinforced how much I would rather not. I am so attracted to her, and it actually seems to grow every time I see her. It feels like every part of my self is aware of her presence. In general I feel more with her, more than with other people. Actually a lot of the time I’m with her I feel nothing else at all. Sometimes when I’m with her, it’s like the rest of the world disappears. A lot of the time, when we’re out I don’t even see other people around us. It feels like dreaming. With others there was always some kind of disconnect—either in the connection itself, or maybe me or the other. A lot of the time, with others, my mind would end up elsewhere, but with her there’s no elsewhere for it to go. You know when you know. I hope I can say these things are universal. Your decisions or plans inherently/automatically include this person, and not because you feel guilty if you don’t. And if you have to talk to them about something, you never fear their response, it’s okay to feel nervous- if it’s a big deal, but dread has no place there. You generally have a similar idea of how you see your lives. That should be a given—if you know for sure you don’t want
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children, someone who wants five isn’t the one for you. You can sit comfortably with them in silence, and at the same time you never run out of things to say to each other. You can see them clearly and fully, the good and bad, and you take them as is without question. You know when you know because before you had it, you never knew it was possible.
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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 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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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
collective in your city that de- CDs and films to 2732B Agua serves some press? Are you a
Fria St., Santa Fe, NM, 87507. If
musician, have a band, or are
you would like review material
a filmmaker? Send us your CD, returned to you include return movie, or titles of upcoming re- postage and packaging. Entries leases which you’d like to see
should contain pertinent details
reviewed in KNACK. We believe
such 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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S U B M I T K N A C K M A G A Z I N E 1 at G M A I L . C O M
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