Molly Crabapple At Jigsaw Gallery
Coagula Magazine- "The Low Down on High Art"
Molly Crabapple has many fans -- from art directors and art buyers to devotees of New York's burlesque revival, where she strips and dances in a manner not unlike the Victorian tarts featured in her work.
For Crabapple has long blurred the distinction between artist and subject, between creator and muse. Deciding artistic impoverishment wasn’t for her, Molly made a ruthless debut in 2003 into the world of pinup modeling, appearing (scantily-clad, if clad at all) on Nerve.com and SuicideGirls.com, and shooting with renowned photographers on both coasts.
As proof, perhaps, that the crabapple doesn't fall far from the tree, Crabapple illustration work is characterized by hyper-detailed Victorian damsels -- plus, as the artist hastens to add -- plenty of tarts, strumpets, ingenues, and just plain whores.
Molly’s technical proficiency with drawing the female form has led to an illustration career that has risen at least as fast (faster, if her latest show is any indication) as her ascent in the modeling world. She has exhibited at CBGB's Gallery 313, , been printed in the Playgirl, and painted covers for the infamous Screw -- Al Goldstein's hardcore porn magazine.
While Crabapple’s artistic career has escalated over the last two years, she has long disdained the world of conventional galleries. But this boundary-defying artist hasn't found a home in the underground either. She has designed posters for famed New York burlesque troupes and thrown art parties where "clients could buy kisses along with paintings," but the bohemian art scene is, according to Crabapple, fraught with a lack of technical discipline. In contrast, Molly’s female figures and their nineteenth-century attire and accoutrements are meticulously detailed, evincing a technical proficiency honed over years of pen and ink work.
Crabapple’s upcoming solo show, "Ink! Babes! Irony!", showcases her multitudinous and varied wenches and damsels -- in this case, all rendered in pen and ink. Concurrent with New York 's burlesque revival, Victorian-style pen and inks have come in vogue. Crabapple, however, laments that neither burlesque nor ink work are lucrative in proportion to their popularity, and hence has billed the show as her "goodbye to pen and ink."
"Ink! Babes! Irony!" runs at New York ’s Jigsaw Gallery ( 526 E 10th St , Manhattan ) from February 24 to March 10. Intrinsic to the Jigsaw Gallery’s mission is offering work that is affordable to average art lovers – as such, the maximum price of any work in the gallery is $200, making Crabapple’s pen and ink babes an accessible acquisition for any admirer of the curvaceous female form.
The February 26th opening featured go-go dancing, booze, costumed artists, and a wealth of hot babes- from the artist herself to those of the pen and ink variety
The content presented on this website is copyright Molly Crabapple © 2005 or earlier. All graphic and web work by Malloreigh Antithesis.