Paper Opera

Posted on July 17, 2014 by lksukany

The creation of Paper Opera

Once I came up with the name Paper Opera – which took a couple of years to define what the art, music, and writing that M and I were doing – I went ahead and purchased the domain name through Reg123. This was August 2012. I knew what I wanted the Paper Opera website to offer (full art gallery, audio and video space for the Damsels in Distress with purchasing options, ebook capabilities, a full shop, and a news or blog update area). After researching my options, the general pricing to build something this significant was about $5,000. With no money in my art account I decided to use the free options and connect them all through one location.

The online components of Paper Opera

ART: The art gallery I built in Wix in February 2014, and used the L.K. Sukany artist name. Although M will create an occasional painting, he doesn’t really work too much in the fine art medium. I wanted something professional, like an online portfolio. It took me applying for a job I really wanted to actually build the online portfolio. After not getting the job, I reworked it, and am still finding pieces I have not photographed to add. I am still not 100% satisfied with the artist site, and am open for suggestions.

Music: For the Damsels in Distress site we went with Bandcamp in May 2014 because it was the easiest to understand and least complicated for others to use – anyone with internet access can use it. Because the free bandcamp doesn’t have video capabilities, we created a Paper Opera Youtube channel in May 2014 for videos.

Stories: With the ebook/self publishing, Lulu was the most recommended and we opened an account in March 2014. We have many projects in the works on this front, so all I can say is “coming soon” for this feature.

Shop: The Paper Opera shop is on Etsy and was started March 2014.

Paper Opera: All of these are linked from the artist website in Wix as well as the Paper Opera site in WordPress. We transferred the domain from Reg123 to WordPress in February 2014 because there was a better free interface.

The Logo

I wanted to design a logo for Paper Opera that had whimsical qualities and that would express the themes of art, music, and writing. I also wanted a design that would look good on the web (website banner) and in print (for business cards).

I knew I wanted to have an instrument in the logo from the beginning. I played with the tambourine or drum using the “O” for “Opera” and working in the name “Paper Opera” somehow. It turned into a cello and paintbrush. But the only thing I could see the cello as was a woman’s body and then she was playing herself, and it just kind of got weird.

So I transitioned from the cello to the accordion. There is something so whimsical and quirky about the accordion. I started playing with the accordion buttons as maybe a paint palette.

I designed this amalgamated object (accordion, paper, and a watercolor tray).

It just didn’t work in portraying the playfulness I really wanted in the logo. It also seemed really stiff – the design did.

I thought about how whimsical my damsels drawings are and thought about using that approach.

I took The “Dancer” and created this type of layered image with a circle to define the space and the accordion as a embellishment.

It just felt too forced, too clean, and I didn’t really want to use “The Dancer” for the paper opera logo. But I really liked the format of a figure in a circle and the logo words in the circle. I thought about the Dreamworks logo of the boy sitting on the moon and fishing. I really liked how the image evokes the idea of using imagination and has an element of being carefree.

I wanted something similar to that idea. I thought about it for a while and made this sketch during a sermon at Grace Church. The boy playing the accordion and sitting in the circle as if it were a swing, and a girl dancing while simultaneously writing or drawing with a feather behind the circle. It just seemed too busy for a logo.

I liked the bones, and decided this was something I could work with. I drew M sitting on a bar stool playing the accordion.

Once I had my drawing, I took a photo of it, and opened in Photoshop. I put a lot of texture effects, changed the figure a bit, and added the circle and key words – art, music, stories – within the logo. I admit, typography is not one of my strengths, but I like the look of cursive quite a bit, so that’s what I used for my text.

M and I have been doing Paper Opera the whole time we have known each other – over 8 years. It has been less defined and more abstract at times – sometimes floating around in our heads and our hearts – other times in a simple melody. Paper Opera is the online version of our art, music, and stories that we can share with you!

A Wedding Song

Posted on July 15, 2014 by lksukany

The Damsels in Distress were asked to play a song at the Lockehart wedding at Grace Church. M and I decided to play “Mr. and Mrs.”, from album, “Spinning Plates.”

“Mr. and Mrs.” was originally titled “Mr. and Mrs. Epperson.” We wrote the song in response to being asked to play a song at the Epperson wedding. We later shortened the title to “Mr. and Mrs.” so that it could be used in a more general sense for many wedding lovers.

“Mr. and Mrs.” is about the wedding and the marriage of two lovers.

Mr. and Mrs.
Your lovely heart’s bold
To love someone like me
Who sees this life in the only way to be free.
“I do” forever.

We’ll make the changes.
We’ll say what needs to be said.
And then we’ll do them in our hearts and our heads.

With this ring, I thee wed to be true love to be true.
With this ring, I thee wed to be true love to be true.
To be true.

So would you join me?
Soon our flesh will be one.
We’ll live together forever and forever.

“I do” forever.

Our friends Doug and Sue Mary from Family Life took this video and sent to us. Thanks Doug and Sue!

Printmaking Workshop Part III

Posted on July 10, 2014 by lksukany

In the Printmaking Workshop Part II, we left everyone’s linoleum block carved, stored, and ready to print.

I covered the tables with paper and handed out (with my lovely assistant Barbara Jones) printing paper, envelopes, palette paper for ink, ink, brayers, wooden spoons, paper towels, stamps, and an ink pad.

Everyone put their aprons back on and I gave an inking and printing demonstration.

The printing process just took some getting used to, but everyone did a great job! They rolled the ink on the palette paper (which next time, I would just use cardboard strips instead of palette paper because the palette paper is pretty thin and shifts a lot when rolling out the ink). They rolled the inked brayer evenly onto their carved linoleum blocks, and transferred their image using a wooden spoon (rubbing the back of the paper on top of the block using the flat of the wooden spoon).

Once the prints were a bit dry, they stamped inside of their cards.

I had 4 out of 12 participants finish their blocks the whole way through.

Some of the finished prints!

We took our “artist” picture together.

Photos: Courtesy of Jessica Zimmerman Belote

Printmaking Workshop Part II

Posted on July 8, 2014 by lksukany

I made it to Romania with my suitcase full of supplies.

In Printmaking Workshop Part I, I talked about the supplies needed for the printmaking/artisan card making workshop. Now I had arrived, and I was ready to teach how to make prints, and had willing and eager participants. I even had some guys in my class, which was a great surprise!

I (and my assistant Barbara Jones) handed out everyone’s aprons (courtesy of Sara Bowyer, Stephanie Sue McDonald Baker, Beckie Sudduth, Maryann Baroody, Anita Davis, Mindy Clark, and Denise Nesbitt), drawing pencils (2b), erasers, pencil sharpeners, transfer pencils (6b), sharpie markers, drawing paper, tracing paper, linoleum blocks, and linoleum cutters.

I instructed participants to draw the outline of the linoleum block and to draw an image inside of the block outline on their drawing paper. For those who were not comfortable drawing, I had some drawings made up that they could trace.

Once they drew their images, they transferred them to tracing paper.

They flipped the drawing on the tracing paper to transfer the pencil marks onto the linoleum block.

Once the image was backwards on the linoleum block, they went over their image using a sharpie marker.

At this point I demonstrated the proper way to cut (away from your hand and yourself at all times). I assisted in cutting.

Once everyone’s blocks were cut, we cleaned up our work space and stored the finished blocks for the next session (the printing).

Photos: Courtesy of Jessica Zimmerman Belote

It’s uninteresting, but is it…art?

Posted on July 1, 2014 by mattersaurus

Damien Hirst
The Dream, 2008

When one thinks too long about art, the act of writing or painting or composing for an audience, even if that audience is never manifest, the act itself assumes all of its oddity, and embodies its queer position as both foundational to existence and utterly irrelevant. There is no question that, without art’s dialogue in chronological time, life as human subject could not exist as it does. We would have no record of our language in past epochs, no idea what conflicts our ancestors faced, no appreciation for manipulation of material to make buildings, technology, or even medicine. Art has been used as a catch-all term for the things which comprise the collective consciousness of a community. Without the memory function enabled by our cultural production, then, we would be a people without a past, and because artists construct reality, without it we would be a people with no future (in the temporal, narrative-based way we understand that term).

And yet, despite art being the vehicle for “culture” in the broadest sense (of human-centric life), the individual instances of art can appear so arbitrary, non-sensical, and even boring to most people who don’t know or care to know what it is. Indeed, even to someone literate in one of cultural production’s many artistic dialogues, if presented with an unfamiliar work out of context, may find it uninteresting, silly, and worthless.

I recently overheard two adolescents on a first date debate whether women should be allowed to wear baseball caps. Art can sound like that. Not every conversation is relevant or mature. Additionally, an academic once spent 45 minutes explaining to me Deleuze’s concept of the rhizomatic. Not every conversation is necessary. We can fool ourselves into thinking certain topics are important, but they quickly become dated. Not every pop song endures. It depends on the power of expression, and the relevance of the articulation.

These problems of art are metonym for the awkward, and even humiliating, position of human life: Can we honestly say that our culture, which is foundational to human existence, is worthwhile? Is it worth the time and effort it takes to preserve and perpetuate it?

Take a look around at the people today. Not the ones you hear about or idolize, but the ones you know intimately. Consider the things they do—make money and spend it, like things on facebook, take pictures of food at restaurants, throw plastic into the ocean, yell at customer service representatives, play games on their phones, buy dogs with smushed faces, protest at abortion clinics, sign petitions for legislation, wear make-up, get hair cuts, try on clothes, get tattoos, drink beer, visit monuments, comment on YouTube, and talk about people they know. Consider all of it and more: humanity as it is, of the things they spend time on, what they talk about, murders they commit and reasons they give for committing them. Think of yourself living with them, and take stock of all the ways you spend your time. After long contemplation, which person would like to tell me humanity—not in the abstract, but in its everyday actions—is indispensible or important? Who wants to bleat at me that our culture is worthy of preservation, perhaps so we can enjoy its excellent shopping?

If you aspire to more than present humanity can give, you must work for it. Not just in art, but within specific and local communities, engaging the people in your everyday life.

For let’s not pretend that art can do more than the culture it arises from. Human beings are condition and will, and though the will is strong, it cannot completely dismiss its surroundings. If art appears silly, it could be that you are looking at the expressive equivalent of the adolescent debating women in baseball caps. But, equally, it could be that you are that adolescent, and maturity will make the object in question more meaningful.

Matt Siemer

Contributor

Paper Opera

Art, music, and stories.

Category Archives: Paper Opera

Paper Opera

A Wedding Song

Printmaking Workshop Part III

Printmaking Workshop Part II

It’s uninteresting, but is it…art?