Sketch Ball
April 9th, 2007 by Lola
Tassels and fringes and pasties, oh my! At Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, less is more. The twice-monthly art gathering is a destination for art aficionados and amateurs alike who want to move beyond the cold, sterile art studio and into a titillating drawing room right in the heart of Williamsburg.
Founded by Molly Crabapple, a Brooklyn-based illustrator and former life drawing model, the school started as an antidote for the “weird and dehumanizing” environment of your average academic life drawing class, says Molly. The Dr. Sketchy’s prescription? One part burlesque babe, a regular drip of saucy music and a couple injections of crazy contests that inspire the “art monkeys”—as Molly calls the sketchers—to incorporate items like tangerines and woodland creatures into their sketches. The winner is inoculated with a double shot of tequila that keeps the creative juices flowing.
Molly’s cure for the curious seems to have taken off. Since opening in December 2005, Dr. Sketchy’s has opened up 18 locations around the world in cities such as Melbourne, Austin, Boston, Rome and Helsinki.
The Saturday I checked into Dr. Sketchy’s, the exotic Lola Pearl donned a sexy matadora costume and disrobed to the sounds of “Lonely Bull” by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass. In front of a fire-engine red wall, she lithely shifted from one sultry pose to another, each lasting between one and 10 minutes, while the soothing sounds of old-school ditties like Doris Day’s “Quizas Quizas Quizas (Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps)” played in the background. In addition to a young crowd of hipsters, camera crews from Germany and Canadian Sex TV were in attendance to document Dr. Sketchy’s, proving once and for all that sex sells, regardless of the language or location.
Molly just returned from a month-long road trip when she pimped Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Colouring Book, which she co-penned with Dr. Sketchy’s creative director John Leavitt. Never fear, intrepid art monkeys-to-be, you have plenty of time before the next Dr. Sketchy’s event, featuring Lucy Buttons, on April 14 to brush up your art skills and prepare to get sketchy.
Photos taken by Ryan Roman