This Friday January 26th, Art in Ad Places will be celebrating the launch of their book compilation of last year’s campaign. 

Please join us at the LUCAS LUCAS Gallery in Brooklyn starting at 7pm.
57 Conselyea Street, Brooklyn, New York 11211

More info at the facebook event page here.

Molly’s work will be featured in the book and copies will be available for purchase right in the gallery space.

Fireside Fiction presents, Thunderstorm in Glasgow. A Poem by Amal El-Mohtar with Illustrations by Molly

 
Rattle my heart, four-chambered sound
loosen my language from my teeth
tumble raaed out from a fallow throat
and a forgotten year
when hunched in barracks beneath the rain
that gushed from gutters, corrugated roofs
one sister clutched her mother’s hand
and one strained, strained against her grip
wanting the wet, the loud, the dark, the bright,
to shake hands with that searing flash
and make it her friend.

Full piece here: https://firesidefiction.com/thunderstorm-in-glasgow-july-25-2013

During Molly’s most recent trip to Puerto Rico’s Mariana neighborhood to document the ongoing recovery process from Hurricane Maria, she installed three new wheatpaste murals.

Kevin and Louisa Capitilo

Three men from the neighborhood playing dominos.

These join her earlier mural portrait of  Julia de Burgos

The next entry in Molly’s Puerto Rico Sketchbook series with the Paris review is up.  This entry in the series focuses on the small artist collective AgitArt. 

Casa Taller was just the sort of iconic, authentic DIY arts space that gentrification had smothered in New York City. Like all of San Juan, its power was off, but it had a luxurious layout—a small garden, wide white rooms filled with papier-mâché masks, Punch-and-Judy-inspired prints on the walls, battered couches on which one could peruse its small collection of books, and teetering piles of manikin heads, arms, alligator maws. 

Full article here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/10/puerto-rico-sketchbook/

On this episode, Crabapple explains how her experiences with Occupy transformed her career, leading her to cover life at Guantánamo Bay, Syria’s civil war, architecture in the West Bank, and beyond. -VICE

Listen to the podcast here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3k5pvv/vice-meets-molly-crabapple-podcast

Following the success of a special promotion this past September, Molly is offering, for a limited time, to provide copies of Drawing Blood with unique hand-drawn illustrations on the title pages. Below are some examples of past ones we sent out. 

Order copies here while they last!

-Posted by AC the assistant

The next entry in Molly’s Puerto Rico Sketchbook series with the Paris review is up.  This entry in the series focuses on the large elderly population on the island: “The wrecked economy and closed schools have forced countless younger people to the mainland, but the older men and women stay.”

In many cases, after Maria, it was the Puerto Rican elders who saved their neighbors and rebuilt their barrios. When the bridge collapsed at Utuado, it was men in their sixties who waded through the waters and strung a wire across the river. For over two months, a shopping cart slid back and forth along that wire to deliver food to the people still in the barrio. 

Full article here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/03/puerto-rico-sketchbook-elders-island/

Just added to the shop: Domino King: portrait of the guys of Barrio Mariana, Puerto Rico.

$10 from each print goes to Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo Mariana, a collective kitchen/community aid center in Humacao, Puerto Rico

Print is 17″x22″ on fine art paper in Archival ink. Limited edition of 25.

https://mollycrabapple.com/product/domino-kings/

Molly is featured in Vogue India’s upcoming publication. Here’s a sneak preview:

Frida never denied pain. Instead, with her art, she looked it frankly in the eye, and said, yeah, I see you, you ugly beast. You think you’re all powerful, but you’re just my raw material, same as my brushes. I’ll polish you and paint you, and make you serve me. You’ll be my most beautiful weapon of all.

Full article here: https://www.vogue.in/content/excerpt-from-dress-an-anthology-celebrating-clothing-style-vogue-india-book/ (note: requires member login)

The next entry in Molly’s series with the Paris Review is live.

The text in the drawing reads: “They say these people at El Local aren’t ‘Puerto Rican’ but this is what Puerto Rico looks like to me”.

“Before Hurricane María it was kind of hard to be an artist in Puerto Rico and now it’s almost impossible,” she continued. “Our art scene thrived on ‘underground’ cultural spaces and galleries willing to give a chance on nontraditional art. Now those spaces are closed, inaccessible or like El Local, repurposed for worthier causes. I have no doubt these spaces will be open once more, but it might be too late.

Full article here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/22/puerto-rico-sketchbook-comic-book-artist/

The next entry in Molly’s Puerto Rico Sketchbook for the Paris Review is live.

Puerto Rico was colonized before the United States, and by the time U.S. gunboats boomed into its harbor in 1898, it had enjoyed its hard-won autonomy from Spain for several months—not that this helped the island in the eyes of its new overlords. In the opinion of many U.S. politicians, Puerto Rico was populated by members of the deficient “Spanish” race, too lazy and primitive to be granted either independence or statehood. How little some attitudes change.

Full article available here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/20/puerto-rico-sketchbook-houses-still-standing/

Molly’s next entry in her Sketchbooks from Puerto Rico series with the Paris Review, There Are Dead in the Fields, is up now.

Sugeily, Rocio, and Augustin sang together now, tenderness replacing the mockery in their voices, and the crowd joined them. Fuerte fuerte como hacha y machete. Strong, strong, like machete and axe. When the last chorus finally ended, the whole cantastoria had lasted only five minutes, but it felt far longer, and hit far deeper, too. 

Full article and illustrations here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/18/puerto-rico-sketchbook-dead-fields/

These greeting cards feature reproductions of murals Molly painted at the Karam House this past year. This is the first time the paintings have been reproduced in any print form. Each card includes an English translation of the individual’s quote and a short biography. The collections also include a blank envelope for each greeting card.

The Karam House is a community innovation workspace where Syrian refugee youth turn their passions and ideas into realities. It is a place where they can build strong relationships with peers and mentors. It is a place where they can learn competitive skills in science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics that are essential to advancing their educations and futures. Most of all, Karam House is an inspiring, safe, and healing space for Syrian teenagers – who have lost so much through the trauma of displacement and war – to be teenagers.

Cards and more information about the Karam Foundation are available here: https://www.karamfoundation.org/karam-gear/innovative-leaders-greeting-cards-limited-edition

American illustrator Molly Crabapple’s Scenes from Syria, published in 2015, is the result of a remarkable collaboration and a vivid exchange undertaken clandestinely in 2013 between her in New York, and Syrian journalist Marwan Hisham, in his native Raqqa. The duo later worked on Aleppo and Mosul and is putting together an 82-page memoir about their work, to be published in 2018. According to Hisham, “more subjects, such as refuge and the idea of homeland, will be included.”

“Our first collaboration was about Raqqa,” Hisham, now based in Turkey, recalled. “Molly (at the time a Twitter acquaintance) suggested if I can take photos that give an idea about the general life in the city under ISIS occupation. The idea, we both knew, was risky but was also very tempting. We agreed to make up to ten illustrations. Since it was my city, I knew exactly where to go, and in some cases, what to capture. We were in daily contact exchanging ideas. Molly ended up drawing all my photos of nine scenes. We had one thing in mind: Depicting civilian and human life in Raqqa and other cities away from stereotype.”

Full article here: http://www.syriauntold.com/en/2017/12/illustrations-graphic-journalism-create-alternative-narratives-historical-documents/

During the #J20 protests, a small group of demonstrators smashed the windows of Starbucks and Bank of America, spray-painted cars, and overturned several newspaper boxes. Importantly, the prosecution has made no attempt to claim that the defendants were among them. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff has instead argued that the defendants were “playing a role” in the violence. That’s right: The government is trying to set the precedent that if you’re at a protest and someone else smashes a window, it’s your fault.

See full article here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kdb3a/dystopian-sketches-from-inside-the-inauguration-protesters-trial

Yet these artists had done something that neither Puerto Rico’s neglectful colonial overlords nor its governor had bothered to try. After the hurricane hit, they loaded their cars with donations from Defend PR and the Puerto Rican diaspora and drove into the mountains, determined to find out what people needed.

Read full article here: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/12/04/puerto-rico-sketchbook-artists-shovels/

This Puerto Rican sketch artist returned to the island to document hurricane recovery pic.twitter.com/fflCyl3fGW

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) November 16, 2017

November interview and studio tour with Nylon Mag.

Crabapple takes us through her studio and talks about her career path and, below, read our conversation about the devastation in Puerto Rico, the problems with Democrats, and how George W. Bush ushered in the Trump era

Article here: https://nylon.com/articles/video-molly-crabapple-studio-tour

The efforts of the islanders are matched by help from the diaspora of which I am part. In the Bronx, a Puerto Rican boxing gym and cultural center named El Maestro has collected and distributed a hundred tons of aid. On one of the gym’s walls is a mural celebrating the independence fighters: Lolita Lebrón, the Macheteros, Ramón Emeterio Betances, Pedro Albizu Campos. Organizers for the New York arts collective DefendPR have toured the island with solar-powered movie screenings, and are helping rebuild the Paloma Abajo neighborhood in Comerio.

Read the full article here: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/11/17/puerto-ricos-diy-disaster-relief/

Jibaro Soy print, limited edition of 25.
Printed in archival ink on heavyweight acid-free fine art paper. 17″x22″

Half the proceeds go towards supporting Proyecto de Apoyo Mutuo Mariana, which provides daily free meals, children’s classes, wifi and a weekly health clinic to Barrio Mariana, a small town in Eastern Puerto Rico.

Print is available here in the shop.