A few of you have asked what kind of art supplies Molly uses, so we wanted to give you a peek at what’s on her drafting table right now.
Right now Molly has been using Ecoline inks for a lot her illustrations, and as an ambassador for Ecolines parent company Royal Talens, she’s gotten to test quite a few of their products before deciding that these are the absolute best.
When it comes to acrylic paint Molly prefers Amsterdam for their opacity and flow, and their ability to stay vibrant on paper as well as canvas.
You’ll see a lot of Ecolines liquid watercolor brush pens in Molly’s court illustrations. They’re not waterproof until they’re dry, giving her lots of time to play with the image before the ink is set.
And no Molly Crabapple illustration would be the same without buckets and buckets of Talens black waterproof drawing ink. It’s in most of her work, and all over her drafting table. It’s such a lusciously opaque high-quality ink, it’s easy to get so lost in a drawing that you don’t even notice you’ve anointed your face, hands, and desk with it. But it’s worth it.
Last week at NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near-Eastern Studies, artist in residence Molly Crabapple and her students released their zine “Al Andalus in New York”. The event featured a performance by Syrian-American rapper and poet Omar Offendum, speeches by Molly, Algerian-American film-maker and journalist Assia Boundaoui, and Columbia University professor Hisham Aidi.
“Al Andalus in New York” is the culmination of Molly’s workshop at NYU and is a reference to the eight hundred year period of Muslim rule on the Spanish peninsula, resulting in a multi-cultural series of kingdoms that was one of the most prominent economical and cultural centers of its time.
The zines were printed by Radix Media, a worker-owned union printship based out of Brooklyn, NY.
“Mac and Smith delineate the problems of sex workers in all their prosaic complexity. “A sex worker may describe a bad experience as a labour-rights violation, sexual abuse, or simply a shitty day at work,” they write. Against the stereotypical Happy Hooker, they talk about the “unhappy hooker,” forced, like so many other workers, to do work she loathes in order to earn enough money to survive, and “who reminds us that capitalism cannot be magicked away” by a jail cell or a self-help book for aspiring Girlbosses—and that capitalism reigns most brutally in criminalized markets. Precisely because the safety net is weakest for marginalized people, they are more likely to become sex workers”
On Thursday May 9th at 6PM there will be a launch party for Al Andalus in New York, a zine produced by Molly Crabapple and students at NYUs Kevorkian Center. The event is free and open to the public and will feature panel discussions, readings, performances and more.
There are over 12,000 high-risk chemical facilities in America — and roughly 40% of U.S. residents live within three miles of them. The Natural Resources Defense Council teamed up with Rashida Jones, Molly Crabapple and https://comingcleaninc.org/ to tell the stories of these vulnerable communities — disproportionately black and Latino — that live every day with the threat of chemical leaks, spills, and explosions that threaten families’ health, their livelihoods, and ultimately, their lives. Learn more: https://on.nrdc.org/2Via8ZA
The Intercept just launched the newest collaboration between Molly Crabapple, Kim Boekbinder, and Jim Batt, narrated by Alexandria Ocasio-Corez, produced by Naomi Klein, and written by Avi Lewis and AOC.
On April 16th Molly will be a special guest the The Intercept’s five year anniversary event at 8pm at The Bell House in Brooklyn. Celebrating five years of “fearless, adversarial journalism”, Molly will be joining several regular contributors to The Intercept for an evening of story telling and discussions about journalism.
Monument Lab said “Syria in Ink brings together literature in the form of memoir and visual art in the form of ink drawings. It invites viewers to experience the words and images of a young Syrian coming of age during the turbulent last decade.”
From April 1st to May 1st, if you buy any print from the shop that includes a charity donation you’ll receive this free 8.5×11 May Day mini-print. The shop currently has prints for sale that benefit Chelsea Manning’s legal defense, charities in Puerto Rico, PEN America and several other amazing causes. Make your order anytime before or on May 1st and your free mini-print will be automatically included!
Molly’s portrait of James Baldwin will be on display in his former home, Les Amis de la Maison Baldwin, in Saint-Paul de Vence, France along with several other portraits of the beloved writer and activist. The show will run for the next year with an opening reception on March 28th.
Molly Crabapple & Marwan Hisham: Syria in Ink
March 22–April 26, 2019
Molly Crabapple & Marwan Hisham: Syria in Ink presents vivid images and words of the Syrian conflict and the country’s partial occupation by ISIS, and the besieged consciousness of a young Syrian man finding his voice as a writer. The exhibition includes over fifty original drawings by artist Molly Crabapple and the voice of author and journalist Marwan Hisham. With pen and brush, together they capture Syria from before its precipitous fall to its current state of crisis and mass displacement.
Molly Crabapple and Marwan Hisham: Syria in Ink is curated by Cora Fisher and organized by the Arts & Culture division of the Brooklyn Public Library, BPL Presents. Support for its presentation at Haverford is provided by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Last month Molly had the honor of speaking at the ZEE Jaipur Literary Festival in India.She spoke at both The Travel Panel with Carlo Pizzati, Eliza Griswold, Isabella Tree and Ramita Navai, and at speaking event on Brothers of The Gun with William Sieghart.
Tonight, Monday February 11th at 6:30, Molly will be accompanying Deborah Brown, Julia Farrington, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, and Nancy Schwartzman for a panel entitled “Pervasive and Personal: Observations on Free Speech Online” at Theresa Lang Community Center at The New School. Admission is free, but you will need to register online beforehand. Click here for more info and registration details!
“Technology has linked much of the world together, but in its complexity and ubiquity, technology also has deeply personal qualities. It has helped us build relationships and has become a part of our daily lives, something we carry in our pockets wherever we go. This duality of tech and particularly the Internet—its ability to be vast yet intimate—has enabled people to express themselves in unique ways, but also brought with it some serious challenges. Where open channels into each other’s lives exist, the spread of harassment, abuse and vitriol can be equally pervasive and personal.”
“Luchadora” is now available as a limited edition print in the shop, with 20$ from each sale being donated to Taller Salud, a womens health clinic in Loiza, Puerto Rico.
And from now until Valentine’s Day use code BLOODBATH to save 15% on your entire order!
Check out Mollys cover art for the latest book by Warren Ellis, Dead Pig Collector, available now at Subterranean Press.
“Mister Sun sees the world in unusual ways—clocking a flight from London to Los Angeles on business at forty thousand seconds, for instance, instead of in terms of hours. But then, he’s in an unusual line of work. His business is death and disposal. Taking a room at his favorite hotel, he ensures all is in order from his latest client. It seems to be…Until he arrives at the intended target’s home to find a different mess to clean up than he expected.”
“To those who knew him, Raid Efendi is a nonentity, a German translator as gray as the Ankara building in which he toils. They never suspect he conceals a secret… the diary of a decades-old romance in Weimar Berlin.
An art school dropout whose shyness isolated him from other people, Raid ends up in Germany in 1923 for the same reasons as did the author Christopher Isherwood, who wrote the novel on which “Cabaret” is based. The Reichsmark is worthless. Foreigners can live cheap. At a gallery, Raif spots the self portrait of a beautiful Jewish woman, Maria Puder- the “Madonna in a Fur Coat”- and falls awkwardly, worshipfully in love.
“I had read enough ideas into that pale face to fill a library” Raif thinks, but Maria is no blank page on which to write the hero’s journey. A painter who sings at a cabaret, she is as blunt as Raif is cowering. To her, men “are the hunters, you see, and we their miserable prey. And our duties? To bow down and obey… but we shouldn’t”
“Madonna in a Fur Coat” is the story of two young people finding themselves in each other while the wold hurtles to ruin.
Published in 1943 by Sabahattin Ali, a writer who is believed to have been murdered by the Turkish State, it shows that the doors to freedom slam shut quickly, but are only opened by courage, nonconformity and love.”
A lot of very exciting things happened in 2018. After three years of hard and dangerous work, Molly and Marwan published Brothers of The Gun through Penguin Random House in May.
The book has been getting amazing reveiws from around the world, is a New York Times Notable book, and was a semifinalist for the National Book award.
The book tour has taken Molly to speaking events and literary festivals all over the US, and to London, Paris, Istanbul, Delhi and Mumbai. Syria In Ink, an exhibition of the original artwork from the book, opened at the Brooklyn Public Library, with simultaneous exhibits at Amnesty International HQ in London and BANT Havuz in Istanbul. The show is currently on tour.
In a collaboration with Ms Saffaa, Molly installed new murals at The Owls Head wine bar in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and in Barrio Mariana, Puerto Rico.
And some of her art was even wheatpasted up around NYC
Molly and the lovely folks at Sharp As Knives also release this video about the money bail industry, narrated by John Legend. They also worked on several short films for Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum.
In Jakarta, Molly collaborated the the Indonesian feminist collectiveHouse of the Unsilencedto do portraits of refugees and women who had had abortions.
Molly spoke at the Chicago Ideas Festival, Tata Literature Live!, the Zee Jaipur literature Festival in Boulder, and will be speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India in January.
The book tour has taken Molly to speaking events and literary festivals 
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