PSFK Talks With Molly Crabapple Of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School

PSFK has previously covered Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, an interesting hybrid between art school life drawing classes and a burlesque performance. Molly Crabapple, the illustrator behind Dr. Sketchy’s, is speaking at the upcoming Social Media Art Camp in Manhattan and has offered to share some of her insight with us below:

What projects or ideas are currently inspiring your work?

I’ve always been inspired by the transgressive energy of nightlife. My muses stay up till 4AM singing and contorting and doing splits, covered in glitter and feathers, firmly rejecting a “normal life.” I’ve spent several years chronicling the goings-on at The Box, a notorious club in the Lower East Side. I draw my inspiration from the intersection of sex, ambition and artifice, the places where painted-on beauty meets monied grotesquerie.

As a creator, what is your take on the idea of our culture as organized primarily to consume inspiration rather than create it? (Do you believe this is the case?)

Online, I think this is increasingly the case. It hurts my heart to see the kind of overwrought and angsty but personally written blogs of my youth give way to blogs that are essentially just galleries of uncredited images. However, the culture that I’m part of (which is a small bubble really) is filled with some of the most ferociously creative, no-excuses, DIY people imaginable.

What is your take on how technology and social platforms are changing the way art is created and consumed?

Technology is creating an unprecedented dialogue between artist and audiance. I find projects like Amanda Palmer’s ninja gigs (free, public, flashmob style concerts announced only on twitter), and Johanna Basford’s huge drawings (composed entirely of ideas suggested to her on twitter, and created while being live-streamed) incredibly exciting uses of new media. Social media is also enabling a broader category of people to become art collectors, and allowing artists to sell directly, getting rid of a gallery’s 50%.

Thanks Molly!

Molly Crabapple