Drawing Blood
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Art was my dearest friend.
To draw was trouble and safety, adventure and freedom.
In that four-cornered kingdom of paper, I lived as I pleased.
This is the story of a girl and her sketchbook.
In language that is fresh, visceral, and deeply moving—and illustrations that are irreverent and gorgeous—here is a memoir that will change the way you think about art, sex, politics, and survival in our times.
From a young age, Molly Crabapple had the eye of an artist and the spirit of a radical. After a restless childhood on New York's Long Island, she left America to see Europe and the Near East, a young artist plunging into unfamiliar cultures, notebook always in hand, drawing what she observed.
Returning to New York City after 9/11 to study art, she posed nude for sketch artists and sketchy photographers, danced burlesque, and modeled for the world famous Suicide Girls. Frustrated with the academy and the conventional art world, she eventually landed a post as house artist at Simon Hammerstein's legendary nightclub The Box, the epicenter of decadent Manhattan nightlife before the financial crisis of 2008. There she had a ringside seat for the pitched battle between the bankers of Wall Street and the entertainers who walked among them—a scandalous, drug-fueled circus of mutual exploitation that she captured in her tart and knowing illustrations. Then, after the crash, a wave of protest movements—from student demonstrations in London to Occupy Wall Street in her own backyard—led Molly to turn her talents to a new form of witness journalism, reporting from places such as Guantanamo, Syria, Rikers Island, and the labor camps of Abu Dhabi. Using both words and artwork to shed light on the darker corners of American empire, she has swiftly become one of the most original and galvanizing voices on the cultural stage.
Now, with the same blend of honesty, fierce insight, and indelible imagery that is her signature, Molly offers her own story: an unforgettable memoir of artistic exploration, political awakening, and personal transformation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Artist, writer, and activist Crabapple was compelled from a young age by the need to draw because it gives her a sense of self worth. Her struggles as an impoverished artist are rendered here in raw, vivid prose, accompanied by her arresting illustrations. The New York that Crabapple comes of age in is a city in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a freshman at FIT, she finds little work to fund her art supplies. Unable to gain a foothold in galleries, she decides to let her body be a canvas and a commodity via lucrative sex work, first via Craigslist ads and later as a SuicideGirl online pinup. "Naked girl money was my escape hatch," Crabapple explains, as the work gave her the means to get noticed. But sick of the exploitation that she and other sex workers and performers were subjected to, she cofounds Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, a live-drawing workshop that treats its models with respect. When she becomes the house artist for the Box, a burlesque night club, she achieves financial stability and access to the world she's hungered to join; after witnessing the London austerity protests in 2010, however, she realizes she's done drawing for rich club patrons and lends her talent and fervor to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Crabapple has become a powerful artist and feminist, scrapping to make art that matters.
