Our Contributors Writers might shudder at the thought, but to GREG SPALENKA, "mixing and matching metaphors" is the key to a successful illustration. He even uses one to describe the components of his work: "It has a foundation, like the foundation of a building. It's strong. The decorative elements are all on top of that; and stylistically, they can be done in a lot of different ways." In his opening illustration for "The Island," a short story about a father-son conflict, Spalenka shaped the characters' faces from a cliff and a cloud, then added their colors and expressions. When he's not constructing illustrations for magazines like Time, Playboy and Sports Illustrated, Spalenka, 41, pursues his own multimedia projects, including The Visions of Vespertina, a "new age Gothic" art book and cd produced in collaboration with fellow artist Michelle Barnes. He lives in Woodland Hills, Calif.   By day, ROBERT GARDNER works at an Army arsenal. By night, he writes. Gardner, whose story "The Island" won our fourth annual fiction contest, is an engineering manager with the Soldier Biological and Chemical Command, making protective gear for U.S. troops. He commutes to Rock Island Arsenal, in the middle of the Mississippi, from his riverfront home in Hampton, Ill. It was a different island, however, that inspired the fiction piece. "A few years ago, I traveled to Corfu--Kerkyra, in Greek. I was one of those tourists in the story," explains Gardner, MS '66 (engineering). "The Island" is his first published work. The 60-year-old father of two is now struggling with a novel, which he describes as "a love story involving time travel."   KERRY SHAW got the idea to profile newly minted Laker Mark Madsen when she saw an article in the Los Angeles Times describing how Madsen, '00, accompanied Shaquille O'Neal on a Beverly Hills jaunt to buy Rolex watches for the entire team. "I thought it was interesting that one of my peers had entered this world," says Shaw, '99, MA '99. She confirms that Madsen is just as nice as everybody says. "He even uses happy faces in his e-mails." Still, it was hard not to be starstruck as she and photographer Art Streiber, '84, followed the NBA rookie around for a day. Madsen fixed breakfast for Streiber--"okay, he microwaved a cinnamon roll," Shaw concedes--and "Art couldn't wait to tell his brother that a Laker served him breakfast." Shaking O'Neal's hand also made Shaw's highlight reel: "It's the size of a dinner plate!" Shaw landed a pretty cool job herself: she's an assistant editor at FilmFestivals.com in Paris.