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KNACK’S ULTIMATE AIM IS TO CONNECT &
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we are 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 &ARTISTS INSPIRE & INSPIRE EMERGING EMERGING ARTISTS we strive to create a place for artists writers designers thinkers + innovators to collaborate and produce a unique, informative, and unprecedented web-based magazine each month
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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 12pt, 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
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SUBMISSION
10-12 high resolution images of your work. All should include pertinent caption information (name, date, medium, year).
acceptable formats
G U I D E L I N E S
photographers, graphic designers & studio artists
KNACK encourages all submitters to include a portrait, brief biography including name, age, current location, awards, contact info (no more than 200 words), as well as an artist statement, with their submission (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.
KNACKMAGAZINE1 @ GMAIL.COM subject: Submission Photography / Studio Art Creative Writing / Graphic Design
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KNACK is requesting material to be
@ = at
reviewed. Reviews extend to any culture-related event that may be happening in the community in which you live. 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. 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 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 North 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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andrea catalina vaca co-founder, director, photo editor, marketing, digital operations jonathon duarte co-founder, design director ariana lombardi co-founder, executive editor, writer fernando gaverd designer, digital operations, marketing chelsey alden editor, writer jake goodman designer jacob bewley editor ryan masching production, artist coordinator noah pool editor bFrank designer subscribe theknackmagazine.com
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submission guidelines
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f e at u r e d a r t is t s
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jim franks
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alexander binder
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m e g a nok e
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cover + spreads mark s.l. williams
album review
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jim franks Jim franks is the author of several discarded novels. He is a founding member and contributor of the online poetry collective many mistypes, and he will write, basically, anything any body asks him, too. He’s currently preparing to release his second poetry book and wondering if he can crash on your couch for awhile.
KNACK 41
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alexander binder Alexander Binder was born on Halloween night 1976 in the Northern Black Forest / Germany. He’s a self-taught photographer using vintage lenses, prisms and optical toys. His work is rooted in the history of Symbolism and shows a strong passion for the occult and the surreal. Alexander’s photos have been exhibited internationally (Germany, France, UK, Poland, US, Canada, Northern Ireland, Italy, Netherlands). The images were published in VICE, LODOWN, SLEEK, TUSH, TWIN, GUP, Clark, Fotografia, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin and many more. His artist books have been shown at the ICP Triennial Photobook Installation – and they are held in the collections of the National Art Library, British Library, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Salford Zine Library, Indie Photobook Library, The Library Project and the Médiathèque André Malraux de Strasbourg.
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KNACK an acquired or natural skill at performing a task an adroit way of doing something a clever trick or stratagem
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yes, we review music
LITTLE HERMIT THANKS MANGLED BRAIN
guinea pig chelsey alden
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for listeners of Ingrid Michaelson, Regina Spektor, The Weepies best paired with Baking up some pumpkin bread, making a macramé plant hanger, the changing of seasons w h y i t ’s w o r t h l i s t e n i n g t o Hitting PLAY on the first track of Little Hermit’s debut LP, Thanks Mangled Brain, introduces listeners to playful lyrics and a mass of ukulele. This fun female duo, made up of Caitlin Cook and Melody Chebrellan, charms their audience with humorous verses (take a listen to The Procrastination Song for instance), while simultaneously giving us a simple and honest description of the fundamental human struggle that is daily life. Thanks Mangled Brain proves that each and every one of us is faced every day with the conflict between our grand fantasies of ourselves and what actually happens, choosing to relay this information with flippancy and wit. Even if you aren’t into indie-folk music, heavy on the uke, take a listen and Little Hermit may surprise you. favorite tracks Close To, Beans release info 2016, USA track list 1. Close To
CAN I KEEP IT? CAN I KEEP QUIET? B R E AT H E I N, B R E AT H E O U T K E E P I T AT B AY SILENCE, BE STILL
2. Sock Sock Shoe Shoe
STRIKING MY BALANCE
3. The Procrastination Song
RISE TO THE CHALLENGE
4. Stolen Time
D O N ’ T. . .
5. Remnant
6. Beans
—beans
we
weren’t kidding
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JIM FRANKS _
Jim franks is the hollow crumbling shell of a confused pansexual narrative. He is standing before you now, pleading to remember the good times you once shared. It wasn’t all bad. Don’t rewrite history simply to justify this. If it’s over, it’s over. But, lets not wax over the fact that this was once something beautiful, something we shared. He knows it’s over, but he just had to see you one last time. And now that he sees that look in your eyes, he can see this is really it, that you don’t love him anymore. Well anyway, he hopes you’ll be happy. He really just wants you to be happy. Honestly. **The poems featured are from his forthcoming poetry book, The Fall of the House of This Guy. Illustrated by Talya Modlin
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— dear capricorn with moon in virgo today is a five today is about anger today is about remembering who you are letting go the demons and knowing when to keep your mouth shut also tell your mother you love her you may only get this chance
— you know i’ve always had this thing about wet hair and i’m not talking about shower fantasies or just wet women or anything as simple or lustful as all that i’m talking about the girls in sweaters and sweat pants who who went out on a cold day an hour after a shower their fading blonde highlights disappearing in the diaspora of a black raven’s nest of molasses dripping
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ya know when you think you’re in love but really it was just your first blowjob in four years and you had that sam cooke song stuck in your head
and i’ve always loved the clingy and casual beauty of wet locks but the sexiest thing is when we make eye contact for the first time and she looks at me like i’m dirt o don’t give a fuck
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— when picking a coffee shop there’s alot of things to consider
you can say — well i don’t wanna spend my money here maybe every day or the coffee’s good here i remember a moment or maybe you like the bench out front when the sun set in our window and who walks by and the whole world was half dark but itsbrown important to remember and every perfect yellow and and there was silence till what you’re really looking for is i noticed for the first time a sort of harmonic convergence point in the universe how hair could look messywhat i like to do is leave wherever it is i’m currently staying and sexy and walk around and how a strand for maybe three or four hours gets ingrained in a forehead until i find the newest and with one breath prettiest girl i’ve ever seen i could take my finger and then i follow her hook the lock to whatever coffee shop she inevitably works at and brush it back and then i get coffee tracing a line behind her ear and then i think about breakfast and she put her lower lip forward and huffed and i know i know i know she said something but i couldn’t for the life of me tell you what it was
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— well i was tellin him i been to l.a. before but it was before instagram so i imagine it doesn’t count and i lived in new york for the last three years but really i never paid rent so i imagine that doesn’t either and i’ve been to all fifty states except Washington and Oregon Alaska and Hawaii and i never took a shit in Montana or went north of San Fransico so i’m told i have to go back but i’ve seen alot and i can tell you one thing people are people and everything’s everywhere so you’ll never truly be happy until you realise you just can’t be happy all the time
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she’s wearing a black blazer and slacks but it might as well be a bathing suit and she’s wearing bright blue neon runners but her toes might as well be in my mouth while i bring her thighs together and closer under my forearm and she’s typing on her laptop but it might as well be a list of my greatest fears and ambitions cause i’ ll never see the other side of it
— somebody told me that Bukowski didn’t know he was famous till he got dragged to a u2 concert by some girl bono made an announcement and Bukowski cried and slacks and hing suit i don’t think i can be okay e neon runners with this world any more e in my mouth
ether
op but my greatest fears and ambitions
— he tells me all ab like i don’t alread he tells me he’s a and i wonder if i then he tells me he doesn’t work cause he broke h and i feel better f and i remember t when he slugs h and i remember t and i mean he re i remember his fu and my boss rew he was so proud and i remember h and the cop told but really it mean i fucked your sis and i wonder if that was right and what does it and who fucking
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bout himself dy know a carpenter had him wrong —
it only gets worse
the older i get
the trees
from the car
look like the first time
the older i get
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it only gets worse the older i get
the trees f rom the car look like the f irst time
the older i get the prettier it all seems
t matter now g cares
the prettier it all seems
now his arm on his bicycle for a little while the bicycle his colt forty five the day my boss threw him out for stealing a bottle eally threw him ull lips split winding the tape to show me again d he used to call everyone cuñado me that that’s like brother in law ns like ster
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see he’s a scorpio and so is she which means they ’re kinda wild and he’s a libra which is more balanced but most of our friends are geminis and cancers which are ver y good together and you’re an aries and i’m a capricorn which means i’m an idiot and i’m totally fucking in love with you
— i try to shave clean every day i try to go for a walk and feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face i try to find a beach a park drink good coffee house a croissant notice the clouds notice how green the grass is how grey the sky is i try to experience my past through something other than nostalgia or lust i try to ride the train at night and read and not write a poem about how i can see most of that girl’s breast through her unbuttoned black blouse and the forest of her dyed dirty blonde hair i try to see the forest for the trees
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— listen i’m a dumb animal and when you stretch like that in the morning and you say you know you’re beautiful but you’re just not as strong as you used to be i wanna throw you off the porch cause i wanna hold something again — i was gonna say cause I want somebody to be aswell crazy about me that Henr y Miller as you are in general and Anais Nin
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i used to know a girl and she always said when i was taking pictures that sometimes you just have to breathe it in as if well as if she knew something nobody else did as if no one existed before cameras or saw cool shit they wanted to show their mom
proved that ugly people have way better sex than you but an image search has revealed that actually they were both quite fetching even traditionally speaking but i will say you don’t know what passion is because you’re wanted and adored and so you can never really know the way it feels to wanna eat someone’s grace because they ’re so beautiful and you wanna be a part of that even if only for the length that it takes to pass through you
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ALEXANDER BINDER _
sator arepo is an ongoing photo project,
in cooperation with the Faust Museum, about the place where Johann Georg FAUST (the protagonist of Christopher Marlowe’s play and Goethe’s Faust) was born around 1480. It’s a tiny village in Southwest Germany which, to this day, has a very unique aura‒thanks to its timbered houses and old buildings. Despite making a traditional photo documentary about this site, I tried to capture the transcendental quality of the place via self-made pinhole lenses, longtime exposure, crystals and color filters.
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sator arepo
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MEGANOK AUSTIN, T TRIP-HO WW.MEGANOKE.COM SCRAP YRD by Meganoke / DJ Hanzerelli (Austin, TX) released 11.17.16 meganoke.bandcamp.com/track/scrap-yrd
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KE TX OP M
photo by @loghry _photography clothing by NEO (No End Of)
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