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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 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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secote 12 22
qu ick l o ok skylar fray
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wom e n of t he wor l d emily brouwer
cover jonathon duarte
victor motaĂąez
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m usic spreads a.c. vaca
chinarose 44
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secote Secote is an artist from Orono, Maine, currently residing in Maine. They hold a BA in Social Change Through Artistic Exposure from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. They work at an arts program for adult artists with varying abilities.
KNACK FORTY TWO
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victor m. montañez Victor M. Montañez was born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico in 1963 and lived in the border town, Juarez, until the age of six. His father, a US citizen, lived and worked in Illinois, and the family, with eight kids, resided in Juarez. Victor’s depiction of life in a drawing he made— musicians, soldiers, thieves, hookers, with his brothers and sisters playing alongside them—alarmed his father, enacting the uprooting of the family to the Midwest. At six, Victor realized the power of art. He has been an artist since. Victor has been a cultural figure and doer in Chicago since the mid 80s and East LA’s, Boyle Heights, artist community. He promotes cultural wealth through workshops, talks, exhibits and live painting. He has been showcased with international touring acts in Navy Pier, The House of Blues, and other significant cultural venues. Some of his works are currently being held at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago City Colleges, Center for College Access and Success, Pedrozo Center, El Centro, Spanish Coalition, and several public high schools in Chicago and the suburbs. His work is in private collections including Borg Warner Automotive.
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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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S E CO T E
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Secote’s work explores the body as a manifestation of the mind and heart. The work delves into moments of communing with nature, airing out culturally rigid ideas of gender, and juxtaposing the abstraction of emotion and depth of a person with the shortcomings of socially appropriate modes of communication, language, and behavior.
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BLOWING THE CANDLE OUT BONES, LACE
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CHIMES ENOUGH FUCKING SMALL TALK DEAR RACHAEL
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KEEPER LETTING THE SPIRITS IN HEX
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SEPERATING THE DELICATES SPOON UNTIL YOU COME HOME
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UNTITLED CFS20 ALL IMAGES: DIGITAL OCTOBER 2016
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VICTOR M. M O N TA Ñ E Z _
Art and leadership are different names for the same process. Art is a process that is ongoing, participatory, and situational. Its contexts and works are documentation that, in traditional paradigms, are called painting, sculpture, installation, stories, or music. I believe that the lifelong role of an artist is to take the lead in creating a new collective vision and voice for the local and global community, which have been historically oppressed and disenfranchised. Art is not the face of false gods or the voice of corporations. “True Art,” is the documentation of the struggle that is completely counter-cultural to the establishment. I create anti-establishment art by any means necessary. I employ mediums depending on the situation. I use industrial waste materials, tools for mass consumption and consumerism and strip them of their original intent and purpose in order to provoke thoughts that lead to actions and questions about how we relate as human beings who challenge the status quo. I believe that my life and contributions are just a link in the chain of events that began long before I was born and will hopefully continue long after I’m buried. That is the main reason I do not sign my works, and why they have tribal or ancient patterns and colors, while addressing universal themes of justice in contemporary, often abstract, contexts.
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B R OT H A F LY
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clockwise, from below FINAL EXIT KITCHEN DRAMA ESCORT EYES
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counterclockwise, from below LIT FOR MILES SHE’S A WARRIOR PIECES
HONORS + I N N O VA T I O N S
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Victor Montañez is the author of a cutting-edge organizational development tool titled, The Agricultural Model (AM): A Process Theory for Systemic Change. AM is used by high performing organizations in the public, non-profit, and private sector. He has led workshops on AM at numerous institutions including the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Northeastern Illinois University, Malcolm X College, National Louis, Wright College, Daley College, Columbia University, University of New Mexico, New York University and The Borg- Warner Automotive Corp. Victor Montañez was featured in, “Americanos, Latino Life in the US,” an award winning documentary film produced by actor/activist, Edward James Olmos for HBO. The documentary featured 14 stories including greats like Carlos Santana and the late Tito Puente. Victor was chosen based on his advocacy in promoting peace among all races through art and multicultural gatherings. In 2009, Victor Montañez’ life became the inspiration for one of the lead characters in a play written and performed by The American Theater Company’s, “Chicago Chronicles III.” He has worked with youth for more than three decades and was declared a hero on separate occasions by the youth leadership of East Los Angeles, Logan Square, Berwyn, and Cicero. He was the recipient of the Cesar Chavez Legacy Award, an honor bestowed by the Student Leadership Council of Brighton Park in Curie High School.
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clockwise, from below GUT FEELING SHE’S SO OVER IT COYOTE VENADO
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The Coward in the Tower
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t was minutes to midnight, and the teenagers of the world were about to find out who their new step-daddy would be. Everyone… well, at least the children who listened to their voice and believed it was real, came far and wide to cast their decision. Oh! And did they find out, and when they did they weren’t happy. They
complained deep sorrow and cried out unending angst. Hoping to God
a Tale by Skylar Fray
that the outcome wasn’t true, that Daddy Donny wasn’t the dude, and oh, was he crude. He told their mommy that he’d poke and pick and show his dick and build a wall cause he was a man with tricks. Yeah, tricks up his sleeves! and his band full of thieves. And he won the title, jumping for joy with a mind that was spiteful. Only to find that the title was stifled, when he saw that the criteria was more than just a title. Yes! the job was more than the uniform, and Daddy Donny was full of
QUICK LOOK
shame, everywhere he went the children shouted out his name. They shouted, full of frustration, reacted uncontrollably, they even broke into groceries. Yes! the teenager of the world was mad, and even more when Daddy Donny hid in incognito or he though- oh…He thought like nelly, oh yes he did! Oh yes, 5th avenue is the place to be! Not when the teenager of the world can see it on Snaps MTV. You silly slimy coward all nestled in your tower. The children will chant your name till kingdom come and when the work starts oh you’ll really see what you’ve done. Daddy Donny you know what you’ve become, you’ve known it all along.
But in the dead of night when you’re up with your thoughts, sleeping
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next to the model with delayed flops, you’re thinking about your flaws, oh yes you are. How dare you think of how human you are, how you fuck up and muck up the systems and diadems. Oh what a travesty! and you look in the mirror saying, I guess I’ve come this far. And you’re not happy Daddy Donny, you know you aren’t. In the dead of the night, that is when, your real comes alive, you’re not on a TV show oh no, you’re not fired. This is life, and a tea-bag told me once that grace is reality, and you don’t have one drop, not even a droplet. And Daddy Donny, you
in your tower, you bumbling orange coward, with your million dollar protection and horrific intensions. You make the teenager of the world look bad at all the JV meets and tournament greets. It’s the ugly truth.
A child changes everything, so be ready to raise it.
oh what a travesty!
know you’re ashamed cause grace man, grace is not in your game. So stay
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WOMEN OF THE WORLD TRAVEL SERIES
featuring E M I LY BROUWER maps by B FR ANK
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Traveling and moving across borders and lands is akin to being catapulted. You prep and you pack. You purge and you plan, and when you are ready for take-off, you nestle yourself into that little cradle. All that tension has built itself up, and you sit still. You breathe. You wait and you brace. Then just like that, flight. You land. Where do you find yourself? This world is wild and mighty, and for those brave souls who choose to pack a bag, sling it on their back and explore it alone—now that takes a ferocity of heart all its own. One must trust. One must listen to that chord that plays and reverberates within. To do it alone, on your own, to dance with it, to create newness and art as a result of it - this is one of life’s treasures. Traveling is the physical manifestation of self-exploration, and self-transcendence. It takes courage. Here at KNACK, we wanted to know how travel has invited and ignited the creation of art for a handful of female artists. This series aims to highlight the experiences, thoughts, recollections of such women.
PL ACE BECOMES PL ACE WHEN WE ENDOW IT WITH E M OTI O N
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T H E R E WA S
a place I lived for f ive of my thirteen months in the States that I found at once so confusing and uncomfortable, but at the same time so inspiring and meaningful – though in what way it was meaningful as always very unclear – I just had to try to write about it. I wrote because I was trying to f igure out my place there, my role as somebody traveling alone and to f igure out the place itself. What follows is a series of vignettes, character sketches and excerpts from longer pieces that came about as I tried to make sense of the place I was in. In a sense, these are views of somebody else’s snapshots prior to being given context. Sometimes you go somewhere with no expectations and everything about it feels like arriving home. Other times, you show up thinking that you know something about the place and you are so struck and stuck that all you can do is make observations. This place was very much the latter of the two .
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T HE F IR ST I MPR E S SION Here, the horizon is one of desertion mixed with occupancy that is both staggered and staggering. Certainly it’s the necessary effect of such ultimate devastation upon such ultimate flatness. Everywhere the plastic beads, torn flags and outdoor fairy lights decorate houses, fences, and are discarded, scattered and broken over the equally broken and uneven sidewalks. They seem in themselves to represent the only two states of being that are particular to this place. Always the sirens, distant until their approach, distant once again after their passing, weave through the traffic and narrow side streets of the city, overlay with other sirens making their way to another emergency like a crescent-shaped palimpsest. Human movement is either unnaturally quick or unbearably slow, but never moderate. It’s as though everyone is always trying to escape or if not, have nowhere really to be.
SPE A K I NG MUSIC I always wish that I could write the way that people here speak, with the sort of musicality to their tone that makes it difficult to know if they are speaking or singing, that variance of registers that denies written representation, the way the voices with which they speak sound like singing voices too, a throaty softness irrespective of volume, the way you can’t tell if people are arguing or merely conversing or even joking when you overhear them. Perhaps they are always just singing and are never speaking, or perhaps they are always just speaking and never singing, but this is something that you will never know. [The tall trombone player with the pink bottom lip who I kissed, who warned me on a midnight walk to D-Mac’s Monday blues jam to be careful of buku mud, said to me: You’re smart. You use words like “perhaps”.]
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A DV ICE When in a foreign country, even if it’s an English-speaking one, it is very important to always look people in the eye and speak clearly when you do, softening as many vowels as possible so to be very easily understood. But understand that this is something that you have learnt from being here and from being misunderstood, and that they do not hear their own accent, and so are unlikely to offer you the same courtesy.
WA R N I NG Here, it seems culturally uncharacteristic to look at the person to whom you are speaking at all. You wonder, how does that person know they are being addressed? There must be something in the tone that is indecipherable to you, so that the person just knows, because they don’t look at their addressor either. [On the streetcar two men sit, one behind the other, both looking straight ahead, and they have a full conversation without looking once at one another. The man behind isn’t even looking at the head of the man in front – both of them are looking ahead, at not an awful lot, just the tracks as the streetcar moves over them.]
W H AT DOE S I T ME A N T O BE HER E? ISM A EL L OOK S AT 21 A N D F IGUR E S I T OU T You’ll find everything you’re not looking for. It’s called the Big Easy because it’s easy to get things here, but it’s easy to lose everything as well. If you come here with any preconceived idea of what it is that you want, you’ll always be disappointed, but surprised, too, by what you’ll find. The people here are difficult to characterise: those who grew up here are well-mannered yet highly inappropriate; those who have made this place their home are determined to help you do the same. They all say: “the worst day here is still better than the best day anywhere else” and that has some truth to it, though I suppose it depends on your definition of “the worst day”.
the worst day here is still better than the best day anywhere else
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[Kenny wears a skivvy and jeans every day and has a bushy grey beard. He says, Well, if you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery’s all the same: Furry buttholes.]
T HE A F T ER M AT H Perhaps there are stragglers along the parade route, leaning against one another for balance, exhausted, but determined to press on into the late bright night, bruised from falling jewellery and trinketry but adorned with it too: pearlescent colours and flashing lights. If you look down, scattered across the wide road and footpaths are debris of a similar nature, but largely these items are broken. Stationary confetti, empty plastic or polystyrene cups, the waste of the masses’ latest fix. Other objects include: paper, cigarette butts, puddles of liquid, unidentifiable. The crowd has mostly dispersed now, but only minutes before there were thousands, lurching towards a central float lined with costumed and painted people tossing plastic knick-knacks into open, waiting hands or with some force at unsuspecting bodyparts. But most have fled the scene with some urgency, following the final decorated vehicle, to find another stimulus. It is the aftermath of the parade, the rejected leftover evidence of the old ritual, that you might have mistook for a hallucination had nothing remained in its wake. Should you look up, not so distant as the sky but only to the trees, you’d see beads in the branches, hanging lowly, beyond reach, like some hardened and brightly coloured species of Spanish moss. [Inside the door of a 24 hour dive, a heavily tattooed bouncer sits at the bar watching local alcoholics as they chain-smoke and take shots of whiskey with their bottled beer, talking at length to anybody who will listen about the impossibility of colonising outer-space.]
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T HE M A N W HO H IR ED ME AN EXCER PT One evening I look at the face of The Man Who Hired Me and the expression on it is as though he is in the grips of some horrific nightmare. I realise that this is the expression on his face most of the time. I look at him a lot when he isn’t looking at me. He is usually standing still, and when he speaks his tone is often very calm but somehow – perhaps it is that look on his face - you can still tell he is wound up so tightly you could flick him and he might shatter. One night in the middle of service we ran out of butter ramekins so I was making up more, and as I was smoothing their tops into their expected flat uniformity, a glob of butter landed on my sleeve. The Man Who Hired Me saw this and chuckled – I don’t think I had ever heard him laugh and I don’t think I had ever seen him smile except for at guests, so I don’t know what it was about me getting a glob of butter on my sleeve that cracked him. Other times when I look at The Man Who Hired Me he is hunched over and looks as though he is trying to shake something off his face. His hair cut confuses me because it makes no sense – it is at once so deliberate but while parted on the right hand side the front flops over to the left, and while the back is neatly cropped bits stick up from the part down the right side of his head and this gives him a slightly dishevelled appearance, and combined with the heavy, puffy bags that sag beneath his ageing blue eyes, dragging his cheeks in layers down to his jowls, were he not wearing a suit you might easily mistake him for a punk-rocker in the wrong generation. The Man Who Hired Me is difficult to describe well.
T HE W I N E WOM A N A N D W E A LT H You tell the Wine Woman at work about a family for whom you used to babysit, and the father of the children was a surgeon. It’s only because you’re talking about small houses and how, regardless of how big your house is, you still only always use the same amount of space. The Wine Woman’s job is to match wine to the dishes at this upscale restaurant
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and then to talk to the customers about their options and choices, arriving back at the table, not just with a bottle, but with a story about the vineyard it had come from, as well as the entire family history of the vintner. That is her whole job – understanding flavour notes, anticipating palates. Telling stories. So you tell her about this absurdly large house, in which you tried to explore but gave up once you got to the third lounge for fear (a very real fear) of getting lost. It’s easy to make conversations deeper here, because you’re from a different country and if somebody is upset or made uncomfortable by how open you’re being they can easily chalk it up to cultural differences. You’d never talk like this back home. So you say something about how you don’t know what the point is of so much space – after all, the children only ever play in one room: the games room, where they hole up and spend hours playing interactive video games. And that room is itself so small, just a screen and a cushion. So, you say, it’s just to show off, a house that size, and she says yes, some people measure success in that way and you say, yes, by acquiring as much negative space as possible.
A BU I L DI NG IS NO T A MOMEN T Every time I pass, less and less of it is there. The first time, the roof may have been absent, but it was an almost whole, though obviously aged, structure, however, a jagged triangle of sky poked through the river-side corner of it. The contrast seemed striking at first, before I realised it was deliberately receding from the roadside into the sky. Every weekend, my quarter-ward walk revealed another stage of its demolition. One Saturday I was struck by the disappearance of one whole half of it; machinery parked unattended at the site of the building’s former occupation. There is always something unsettling about paused demolition: it lacks the evidence of itself. The following Tuesday, anonymous workers were operating cranes and excavators and dampening the structure’s wounds with water, an inadequate salve, from the high top of a cherry-picker. These are not
a jagged triangle of sky poked through the river-side corner of it
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necessarily the images that people associate with progress, but perhaps some do with process. Is it asbestos, or just dust? I wonder about the need for so much water, when there is a drought occurring nearby on this same continent, remembering a time around midnight sitting in Chinatown Park, San Francisco, when the automatic taps sprayed water in the wrong direction and instead of nourishing the garden’s trees just ran directly into the stormwater drain and I am part appalled, part simply enamoured by the enormous beauty of its destruction. But you can see the clouds through the concrete! I think, noting the way the beams still hold up the frame, but the way too that the bricks and mortar are gradually reduced to wet dust and then I think where is it all supposed to go? And also, why does it need to disappear so abruptly? And I am reminded of a little plot on Willis Street, Wellington, that was obscured by boards and scaffolding up until an earthquake shook down the temporary fixtures that masked the construction and destruction occurring inside, the emptiness and visible patch of sky amid the cityscape and the way that the brief exposure of it was terrifying in some not altogether unfamiliar way. But no fixtures obscure this particular scene. Of course, everybody else is thinking ahead or if not, is looking back, at the building that was standing where it stood and standing for what it stood for, which had truthfully more to do with sitting than standing, but in any case, a building is not a moment. But it’s true that the sky looks as though it is coming down at you, wisps of cloud swirling through, in the new absence of those customary corners and lines. Cynically, the locals respond to the city’s new scar: “Coming Soon: Another vacant lot and a failed high-rise construction project.”
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confusing and uncomfortable, but at the same time so inspiring and meaningful
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ChinaRose is a warm-fuzzy-sultry-bluesy-psychedelic-sometimesjazzy, four-piece meal comprised of Stephen Rosenthal (vocals/lead guitar), Kheri Mason (bass), Ryan Rambow (drums), & Alex Martell (rhythm guitar/synth) Based in the Midwest, ChinaRose is a group of musicians that just like to do what they love: make and play music.
photo by
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upcoming shows / 01.31 @ Live Wire, Chicago, IL 02.05 @ Disaster House, Rockford, IL upcoming album release / Feb. / Mar. all music is recorded / mixed / mastered by / RYAN RAM BOW Think Thank Studios / www.ch i n a ro s e b a n d . c o m chinaroseband@gmail.com FB www.facebook.com/chinar0se IG @ChinaRoseband
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