The Street Where You Live

All my life I have used Monroe Street as the street I have lived on. Basically it is and was the only street I have set up as my home. I was born and raised and still live on Monroe Street, Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

Now the interesting thing about streets in Two Rivers is that the streets that go north and south are numeric and the streets that go east and West are usually named for Presidents. There are a few exceptions such as Lowell, Viceroy and Buchholz. Granted they are not famous Presidents but apparently famous enough to name a street after. Plus I do not think that Buchholz was named after the 7th member of the Magnificent Seven, Horst Buchholz.

Another funny thing about the streets in Two Rivers, besides the fact that they break off and continue in different ways, is that the Presidential streets do not go in order at all. Washington Street is consider the city’s “Main Street” due to the fact that it led to the old high  public school, Two Rivers Washington High School. So that makes sense to put it there. Right next to Washington, or sandwiched on both sides are the streets Adams Street which is named after the 2nd and 6th Presidents and the one north of it named after Thomas Jefferson, the third President…..hmmmmm. Now it will get confusing…

Adams Street is north of my street, Monroe, named after James Monroe the fifth President and not named after the character Jim J. Bullock played on Too Close for Comfort. So you go off of the Madison Street Bridge (named for the 4th President and the Father of the U.S. Constitution) and you can turn onto Monroe Street or go to Adams Street or Washington or a little farther and go to Jefferson Street. You see the numbered streets are in order but not the Presidents.

Once you go farther to the North the Presidents are really jazzed up.There is Polk, Taft, Pierce, Garfield, Jackson and Johnson Drive. Not to mention Zlatnik Drive who was not named after any President at least American. Somehow it seemed that if someone on the street that was unnamed picked a President regardless of the order of which they came. On the Southside there is a Roosevelt Avenue which could have been named for the 26th or the 32nd President. So needles to say most visitors do get lost or confused by our city and our streets even if they knew the order of the Presidents or not.

I remember as a kid sitting on the bus going home and talking about the streets where the kids lived. One boy said he lived on Jackson Street named after Reggie Jackson or Michael Jackson. Another boy lived on Garfield who was named after the popular cartoon cat. I lived on Monroe and I could only think of that character from the Ted Knight show mentioned above. We had a clue of who the streets were really named for, but it was fun to think that there are other people with the same names as our Presidents.

In fact after discussing these names, one kid mentioned he lived on Jefferson Street and that he was “movin’ on up” to Jackson Street to live with the Drummond brothers.

“Whacha Talkin’ ‘bout, Jimmy?” was the quick answer and it made us all laugh. In fact the bus driver had to stop the bus and scold us for causing a ruckus. Which was an everyday occurrence. But that is another story for another time.

Why did my parents send me to BAND camp?

As I was perusing my schedule, it dawned on me that this was about the time of the year that I began to dread as a 10-13 year-old. No, it had nothing to do with fireworks ( that happened when i was 4-9 years old). It had to do with the Summer deportation of youngsters 45 minutes away to UWGB for the annual Summer Band and Choral Camp.

Oh how I hated it and feared it too.

You see, I did not like spending the whole day playing music, learning music, listening to music, rehearsing music and especially hanging around other kids who thought the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, the music was fine. It was the dealing with the kids my own age that I had a problem with and their attitudes….maybe that was a precursor of things to come later in my own life?

Anyway, for those that did not know, my Dad is an accomplished musician, so everyone in the family took music lessons. Everyone payed in the City Band. Everyone (except yours truly) took piano lessons…more on that later on a different blog. So at some point of a young Konop’s life, you had to go to Band Camp in Green Bay. It was a learning experience, or so it was said or more likely drilled in our brains.

Back then all the schools in the Lakehore area had a Band Boosters Club that joined all the middle schools together to get funding for instruments, music and the chance to win an all-paid scholarship to spend one week on the campus of the University of Green Bay-Wisconsin with room and board and meals! Wow! The rest of us had to pay our way in. Or sell candy bars to defray the cost.

To the young person, I thought that it was a waste of my valuable Summer experience time. Stuck inside a stinky concert hall or crammed into a sweaty classroom with a bunch of kids that want nothing to do with the music but are stuck there because “it will do us good!” As I look back on the experience I wonder how many of those hundreds of kids still have an instrument and if they still play it? I think I am one of the few.

To begin the week, we have to schlep up to UWGB and register. Then we have perform or audition. What do we perform? Usually a sight-reading of music that a section leader listens to see where we sit in the three orchestras. The Choral people had it easy as they just had to move from one area to another and not have to haul his or her instrument all the way through campus. Pity the tuba, bass saxophone players, and other big instrument players. I had it easy at least. I just had my faithful Reynolds Cornet. It was light and I could handle it. My nerves on the other hand, not so easy to handle.

Besides auditioning, each student had to take a musical written test to show aptitude and ability. I did okay on this for the most part, but because I never had more than a few piano lessons, I had no idea about keys or piano sharps or flats….which was part of my downfall. In consequent years, I studied for that test, but it was no use. My fate was sealed, I would be in the Band C (which I would guess to be the remedial band) playing 3rd and fouth chair. How humiliating….

Besides letting myself down for being in the lowest band and being one of the lowest guys in the section, I was pretty much pigeon-holed into taking remedial music classes so I could learn the notes on a scale and a G-scale and an A-scale and to figure out what key you are in by looking at the scale. Looking back at this I have found not once did I need this and I have been playing in the City band for close to 25 years. I mean really…who gives a crap if the song goes from a major to a minor? All you should care about is if it sounds good. I am not composing the music, which I think I would have liked to do if they would have given me the chance to learn, but no I had to do a B flat scale and I still goofed that up!

My older sisters loved BAND Camp. My brother was Big man on Campus at BAND camp. I hated it cause I was the lowest schnook on the whole campus. Check that. I was close to the lowest schnook. That kid ended up going home because he was homesick. So when he left, the cheese stood alone in a see of flouriscent colored t-shirts and teenagers that I swear had their own kids and mustaches permanantly grown for at least 2 years.

Hardly-peach-whiskered me, sat alone most of my lunchtimes, just watching the clock. I wanted to make sure I was not late for classes and rehearsals because being chewed out by the college-student instructors and directors would be the end of the world for me. I just kept a low-profile and did what they said. In fact I cut my lunches short for two reasons. One, to make sure I would get on class on time, I would walk over to the closed building and wait and two, my stomach could not take the peanut butter sandwich and aluminum-foiled can of soda my Mom made for me that morning. I was too nervous. The whole week was like that!

I really hated the whole experience. The audition, the kids at camp, the snotty girls, the guys you thought were your friends but by Wednesday they cut you out completely, the short shorts I wore which was not a good thing at the time. I had no fun whatsoever at all from Sunday to Thursday. Friday was the worst.

Friday was the night that the whole campus had a big dance to commerate the end of the camp. The University thought this was a great way to have the boarding kids mix with the bussed-in kids. Normally you would have the bussed kids leave at 3 and then activities for the others would inclide a movie or something like bowling to keep the snots busy. Musicians are fine but it was those choral kids that got off scott-free because they only had to freaking sing! But I digress….

Now, I don’t know about you, but I was in no mood to dance the night away. I was petrified of girls, they made fun of me and basically spending a long evening in a place where I did not want to be was not my idea of a relaxing night. But the buses stayed there or left us on that forsken island and we had to fend for ourselves. “We” meaning the “not-suave lothario teenage boys”. Needless to say it was a long night and by the time we got home we had to sleep because the next day we had our big concert.

If you ever had to sit through a junior high concert for 4 hours, I will give you credit. But this was a 8 hour concert that my parents wanted to see the WHOLE thing! My Dad figured it would be a smart idea to get there earlier and stay late to avoid traffic. It was bad enough when I had 3 siblings in this show and I had to watch, now I had to do the same thing for kids I could not stand to be with for another day…but here they are performing not just my band but the whole stinking show. So it was not only the whole week that was lost but the Saturday too. Listening to off-key versions of Aaron Copland and Italian composers…mmmmm sounds like fun!

It was not until my younger sister Dawn, actually had the chance to go to Band Camp that my deepest feelings for that week were actually voiced. She hated it as much as I did. Maybe it was a generational thing? Maybe it was not the time to be social butterflies but all I know if the three older Konop children loved it and the two younger ones hated it.

So I guess I have to end this by saying one thing. With all the kids who went through UWGB Music Camps….how many are still involved with music? I look at my class alone and I think I am one of the few that still plays an instrument, and I was the last guy in our section! That still bothers me. Thanks alot UWGB-Wisconsin Summer Camp!

Well I am published, again....

Do you remember the movie Forrest Gump? Almost over 15 years ago it won the hearts and minds of  generations of people. It was about a slow-witted man with a big heart and how he somehow saw the history of the world unfurl right in front of his own eyes.

Now I am not a slow-witted man, at least I don’t think so. I did graduate college (so did Forrest Gump) and I have held a few jobs here and there(Gump did too…man, I am not winning this argument.) But I am a real person and I grew up in Wisconsin with a brother and 3 sisters and both a mother and a father to support my endeavors, whatever they areor were. I also have not seen the change of the world as close as Forrest Gump has, but I can say this…”Well, I am published…again.”

Now looking back I can remember many times of how I was in the local newspaper for winning a poster contest or dressing up as an Indian for Thanksgiving or whatever. Big deals at the time, but remember it was just the local newspaper. When I got older I was featured in a national magazine (Autograph Collector) and my letter was printed by the the Editor of Entertainment Weekly. I was on the local news twice (for drawing caricatures, not for a heinous crime- give me some credit.) And that local newspaper still knows who I am around here due to my art skills and my affiliation to my old school as their art teacher and what we all do there besides taking art tests. Plus being a pretty good caricaturist, I get some notice once in awhile, too.

Well, I have to say it again, I am published…again. This time on a bigger stage, the Sunday Comics page! That is right! In full color!

I entered an idea for Dan Pirarro’s Bizarro cartoon. Every so often, Dan asks for puns from his readers and one day as I was checking in books and movies at the library, an idea struck! After the millionth time, some person checked out the Twilight stories I thought about the original Twilight series…the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone starred almost every actor from the early 1960’s and its host was Rod Sterling. Rod smoked on television and spoke in an unusual manner, but he was the narrator and guide to the macabre, weird and unusual world where fact meets fiction. In fact Rod Sterling’s personification would not be a big sell in today’s market. He does not come off as a Jeff Probst-type.

Anyway, I thought of the Twilight Zone and how pizza Hut has a Pizzone, a knock-off of a real Italian cuisine, the Calzone! Put the two together and voila! you got the Twilight Calzone. I even had an idea of a cartoon: Rod Sterling, standing in front of take-out place, and discribing his order like so… “Picture if you will, a man orders a deep dish pizza filled with anxiety, despair and extra cheese, turned and flipped into a self baked pocket of it’s own doughiness…The Twilight Calzone!”

I thought that was a pretty good idea and sent it to Dan Pirraro. He agreed and then asked how I came up with it and I wrote that I was just doing my duty at the library when lightning in a bottle happened. He liked the idea and said it would be in an upcoming edition…. and so I waited.

The waiting took a bit longer but today I did see the final published cartoon. I am happy with it, but Dan did change it to a different idea but he did give me credit and I am very happy for that. I can see how he could not cram in my idea as two other people had their own stuff to deal with also. I was just glad to have that spark of influence in creating this piece.

So like I said, unlike the fictitious Forrest Gump, I have been published in a wide variety of ways and I hope to do more of it in the future. Hopefully this is a way to have my art seen by more people. The more people that see my art, the more people might like my art and if they like it, they might buy it, too. There is always that first step, and hopefully with the experiences I have had, good things will come together for me.  

Caricature and Art Appreciation....what do they have in common?

Hello everyone, first off I am sorry for the delay in writing. I had a family emergency to attend to, but all is working well. In fact I was working on two projects this week that seem to have no correlation except for the fact that I worked on both. Well I think there are more similarities then you may think….

For most of you out in cyberspace, you know that I am a caricature artist. You also know that I teach art at the grade school level  (Kindergarten through 8th grade). Now during the spring of the year, the older kids get antsy. The younger ones do too, but their energy can be corralled into other art projects. The older kids? Not so much…they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

To keep the focus going I have taught a simplified version of Art Appreciation to the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders. All the students have to learn about the famous artists, the paintings that made them famous, and the style they painted or created their masterpieces. It not only gets the student to learn about art history, but I like to think that it inspires young minds and makes the brain expand to more than the required 2% that the human brain usually uses. Plus it also gets the student back to the basics of fundamental learning, memorization.

Somehow we overlook the skill of memorization in today’s world. We have all the technology of today to do just about anything without actually using our brain. We don’t have to remember how to spell, do math, remember basic names, phone numbers, etc. Now we have spell checkers, calculators, blackberries with internet, etc. But we still need those skills to remember and know how to do things without looking on a screen for guidance. 

Now with caricature, you may think that it is just talent and a special way of looking at a subject. That is true. But there is a bit of memorization too. Surprised? Well if you think about it, the basics of a caricture style is repeated over and over that the skill can be put on autopilot for a good caricaturist. You usually do not see an artist pacing back and forth, doing just about anything except finishing the subject’s caricature. Sometimes I take a break, sometimes I try to figure out exactly what I what i want to accomplish, but soon thereafter, i am back on my drawing table cranking out a caricature. How is that done? Simple answer is memorization of basic composits of caricature design.

I know that my face starts first and I try to fit all the details in a way that makes the caricature appealing. i know that I do not have to add the eyes right away, but I have to make sure I get the right eyelid shape, the correct distance to the nose and the right spacing. That is just the eyes. There still is the nose, mouth, lips, ears, hair and chin to deal with too. Lucky for me i do not usually draw individual teeth as I don’t see the need to.

Both caricature and an appreciation of art can work together as I may set up a caricature to a famous art masterpiece. I could also use a style for a background that would otherwise look dull and boring or even worse…blank. It is no wonder that in my classroom I have 20 famous artists looking at my students in caricature. It helps to show an image of the artist who painted the masterpiece that a student will study. That way, a student will see a scruffy red-headed man with a beard and immediately remember that he painted Starry Night. 

It may seem like two totally different concepts but caricature and art appreciation are two of my better strengths and I hope I can make them strengths for my students too. Not only for a potential career in art but in the grand sceme of life.  

Something a Little Different...

In years past, I have had the eighth graders at St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Grade School (where I teach) create and build a mini-golf course out of cardboard and found objects. The theme was similar to the Putting Around the World, shown in the Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell 1985 movie Overboard. Granted the movie’s budget was bigger then mine at school, but we did quite well and the rest of the school was entertained too.

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