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Straight from io9, who said it better than I could:

Big, beautiful, lusty women. Gorgeous, gigantic, muscled men. Fantastic animals and larger-than-life settings. This is the wonderful world of Molly Crabapple: the woman who married art and burlesque and watched them make beautiful music together with Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.

Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School is an amazing event. Roughly twice a month (in the NY location) artists come to sketch live models, but not just any live models, actual cabaret performers. Skits, performances, music, all kinds of festivities. So much more than just a bunch of artists sketching models.

The World of Molly Crabapple contains artists and performers from all walks of life. Her vibrant images capture happy, smiling people that we’d like to get to know. Not just the most beautiful women around but also circus performers, muscle-men and lots of other interesting characters. You will notice that many of these pieces show their subjects on stage, with adoring fans surrounding them.

As you can see… Molly likes to put lots and lots of characters into her work. An image is packed with detail. You can look at these pictures all day long and still not see all the cool touches in them.

Pretty flippin’ sweet.  Be sure to check out more of Molly’s work at her personal site,  and learn more about Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School.  Mad shoutouts to io9 for this one!

Lady Gaga fascinates me.  She makes me think.  I often find myself wanting to defend her, to whom I’m not sure.  I think she puts me on edge, makes me wonder why she does what she does, and I always come up with a self-satisfying answer.  Take her fashion statements for example.  They’re often… weird, to say the least.  They are revealing, bizarre, and often unattractive or even kind of hideous.  She does not dress like we typically expect our pop star/sex icons to dress.  And in an avant-garde, art club/theater kid misfit kind of way, that’s cool.  But I think it’s more than an angsty rebellion.  Lady Gaga’s fashion choices often make statements about how our society dictates female beauty.

Lady Gaga is thin, white, blonde, hairless…  She’s got the body of the pop star/sex icons of the last decade (Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, P!NK, Fergie, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, Gwen Stefani… you know the mold), so she’s not scoring major points by presenting us with a new body type.  But what she does with that body is unusual.

Exhibit A: Body Shape

Despite having that “perfect” bod, Lady Gaga frequently distorts the way we see her body, using sharp angles, increasingly large shoulderpads, and poufs or wings to accentuate her hips.  Each of these things in moderation have been considered attractive/fashionable at one point or another, but the extremes to which she takes them have a distracting effect, creating a mismatched, unnatural body shape.

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A few weeks ago, my partner and I took a trip to Denver and were able to visit the Denver Art Museum.  We had a fantastic time, and were exhausted after spending four hours on our feet examining the art.  Of the art that we saw, the pieces that have stuck with me most were the lipstick sculptures created by artist Rachel Lachowicz.

One Month Late

One Month Late is a sculpture of red lipstick and wax, displaying a single woman in a man’s world.  A single pair of high heels is surrounded by hanging business ties.  Upon closer inspection, a bent wire clothes hanger is suspended above the shoes – a symbol of a do-it-yourself abortion.  To me, the piece represents the burdens and sacrifices that women carry alone in a world where women are considered “equal” to the men around them.  The trials women experience, from the discomfort of a pair of sexy business heels to the anquish of carrying the responsibility of reproduction, are separate from the experiences of men.

Untitled (lipstick urinals)

The second piece by Lachowicz at the DAM was an untitled lipstick sculpture of urinals.  Are the masculine objects sculpted in feminine material ironic?  Political?  Silly?  What does this piece say about the status of men and women?  I don’t have the answers, and don’t even have organized thoughts about the piece, but found both works to be intriguing and worth sharing.  What are your reactions?