Urban Scene: Sketchy Nights
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
When I enter the Hi-Hat nightclub to attend Dr. Sketchy’s cabaret and life-drawing event, the model is ten seconds into a five-minute pose. Under the soft flesh typical of belly dancers, Jamie Lee Fury’s unseen muscles tense, her left arm above her tilted head, her calves and fingers flexed. Her legs and mouth shake slightly from the intense athleticism of holding absolutely still. Around her, equally intent, several dozen artists bend their heads over their sketch-pads and charcoal.
The Providence group at tonight's Dr. Sketchy’s represents 28 of the 35,000 artists who gather monthly across the globe for this anti-art class. In 2005, an art-school dropout named Molly Crabapple began hosting burlesque-themed and deliberately unpretentious drawing classes in Brooklyn—a trend that migrated within a year from a dive bar to venues in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Rome.
Here in Providence, artist and event organizer Gail Schlike heard Molly Crabapple on public radio, and after a few emails, Crabapple asked if Schlike would like to create and host a Providence branch. “Anyone who has been to an art class knows they are boring," Schilke says. "The models are naked but not sexy. This movement is just completely brilliant and there is a great Burlesque community of women here with wit and butts and tits, the things you like to draw.”
There's something about drawing in a bar that welcomes all, not to mention inspiring even the untrained eye. “It’s fun, and soulful, and there’s more energy than a regular drawing class. It’s not academic – none of that measuring,” said Carole Berren, an art instructor at Arts League of Rhode Island, who brought her drawing class here. “There’s always a little bit of an edge.”
Edgy, yes, but everything else is soft--the music, the pencil-sketches, the belly dancer, the lighting, the mood. When Fury breaks her pose, she laughs tinklingly and sways in the boneless way of belly dancers. Around her artists casually clink their glasses, chatting amiably; artist and model both relaxing before their next absorbing sketching session.
Attend Dr. Sketchy's art-event every month at the Hi-Hat, $10. Contact [email protected] or call the Hi-Hat at 453-6500 for more information.
