What Are You Working On?
Writers on their works in progress
Molly Crabapple
illustrator, instigator
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Molly Crabapple (website) is the pseudonym of Jen Caban, an illustrator who lives in Brooklyn. Her work has been seen in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Screw. her work can be seen at Bamboo Lane Gallery, The Coney Island Museum and The Museum of American Illustration. She has also had solo shows at Jigsaw Gallery and Phoenix's Perihelion Arts. She has written on the art business for Art Calender, Teeze, Coagula, Horizens, and NY Press. She "once was a pinup model," and was selected by fleshbot.com as one of the "Top Ten Hotties of 2005." A year ago she created Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, a biweekly burlesque/life drawing session which has spread to eight cities including Phoenix, Ariz. and Melbourne, Australia. In this "shotgun marriage of cabaret and art school," burlesque performers pose in costume, and attendees participate in "wierd contests and drinking games."
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In May, Sepulcultures DIY Publishing approached me to do a Dr. Sketchy's book. The Dr. Sketchy's Official Colouring Book will be is half-activity book for adults (those paper dolls get naked), and half scrapbook of my "decadent" figure drawing madness. And there are lots of illustrations! I'm writing it with John Leavitt, who's been my best friend since art school. On one hand, there are dirty paper dolls, mazes, and colouring book pages. On the other, it's a history of how the session started, and how to do your own. Thrown in are drawing tips, drinking games, sordid stories of working as a nude model, and the exact results of drinking 24 cups of expresso. It will express everything I like about Dr. Sketchy's itself.
Since your regular work is as an illustrator, what's it like doing a book that depends heavily on text?
Since college, I've been making my money drawing. What writing I have done has been confined to snarky journalistic pieces and art biz how-tos, so writing un-superficially has been a real challenge. I lived through the standard heartrending years of poverty and ramen, and working through university as a low-budget nude model -- think sitting in a furniture factory in the Bronx covered in yams while a married dentist clicks away. Since these parts of my life, especially my modeling, influence how I run Dr. Sketchy's, I want to write about them. But God, it's difficult not to be self-indulgent doing it.
What is the most challenging thing about working on this project?
Writing and illustrating 200 pages in three months. And making them good.
What was that about the 24 cups of espresso?
Being the caffeine junkies that we are, me and Leavitt decided to include, in the chapter "Bad Ideas', the results of drinking 24 cups of expresso in rapid succession (or, as many as possible before becoming violently ill). We haven't done the experiment yet, but we fear it.
What is the most rewarding thing about working on this project?
Seeing the illustrations pile up in neat paper stacks, and feeling myself get better with each one. Rereading stories about my past, which feel like embarrassing anecdotes about a stranger.
What comes next for this project?
Dr. Sketchy's Official Colouring Book is due out in December. Besides a sure-to-get-us-arrested release party, with naked dames, colouring book pages and a piñata, I'm showing all the original art from the book at Philly's Trinity Gallery in January.
After that, I don't know -- Hitching rides around the East Coast with a bundle of books on my back?
Links
An even more extensive interview by the wonderful Rachel Kramer Bussel (who was interviewed for the What Are You Working On? series earlier this year). Rachel also published a piece about Dr. Sketchy in the Village Voice in June.
More interviews and articles are on Crabapple's own website's press page.
She also has a livejournal blog and a MySpace page.
See more What Are You Working On? interviews.
published 1 Aug 06 on Too Beautiful. email copyright 2006 Mark Pritchard, Bernal Heights, San Francisco