In case you’ve never been, Opus 40 is a 60-acre sculpture garden outside of Woodstock, NY. Its centerpiece is a spectacular 6.5-acre bluestone earthwork that looks like a cross between Stonehenge and a Mayan pyramid. We went there over the weekend for, of all things, a poetry reading by Chelsea Hotel friend and fellow traveler Molly Crabapple, now a well known artist and journalist who is also having a show of her paintings in the gallery on the grounds. As the sun went down through the trees at her back, Molly—after warning us that she was “not a poet”—read a moving, and very poetic essay about the legacy of evil and imperialism, stretching from the Arabic world, to Spain, and thence to the New World (and back), declaring, with The Nasirids, the last Muslim dynasty to rule a corner of Spain, that “There is no victor but God.” Molly is a committed activist who was arrested at Occupy Wall Street and has also published a book on the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun, in collaboration with journalist Marwan Hisham.
In 2015, Molly’s fascinating and scandalous memoir, Drawing Blood, came out, detailing (among other things) her early years in New York when she made her living as a fetish model while she awaited her big break. Here’s her account of one such session that took place at the Chelsea Hotel:
One night, I lay on the couch with Vinyl Vivian and a friend of hers. . . .
Suddenly, an older lady barged in, gray curls flying, back straight with all the imperiousness of the well funded. She was someone important, Melli told me, doing a documentary on the hotel, but now she stood over us, ordering me and Vivian into passionless contortions. Startled though we were, Vivian and I writhed around gamely, like professionals. After ten minutes, the Belgian was gone.
Several years later, I saw myself on the cover of an art book, frozen in time with Vinyl Vivian. We were entwined, topless, and intimate as we never were in life. The text inside described an orgy that had never happened, starring nameless girls who we were not. The photographer described herself not as a director of the scene, but an invisible bit of the background.
She never told us we’d be on the cover. Why would she? We were hotel room fauna. National Geographic would sooner notify a giraffe. (p. 98)
In addition to containing a lot of great writing, Drawing Blood is stunningly illustrated by Molly herself. The drawings, many in full color and others in moody sepia tones, range from the whimsical to the risqué to the thought-provoking. Molly was nice enough to inscribe our copy of her book on what was (unsurprisingly) our favorite of her drawings. A more beautiful memoir is rarely seen these days. You can view several of Molly’s larger works, including many moving portraits of proletarian women, at her show in the Opus 40 gallery. In a related project, Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project also has a series of screens depicting worker co-ops displayed in the space outside the gallery.
Speaking of which, I should mention the other readers who appeared with Molly that evening, one of which was, indeed, journalist and author Alissa Quart, who read stimulating essays and poems on abortion clinics, school shootings, and late capitalism. Rodrigo Toscano, a labor organizer for the United Steel Workers also entertained us with his erudite verses. And, in one of the highlights of the evening, Fence editor Rebecca Wolff read a fascinating poem entitled “Halloween” about how a witch gave her a migraine (not exactly what it sounds like, though the poem itself certainly weaves a magical spell, and I, for one, was ensorcelled).
To get back to Molly’s memoir, after her time modeling at the Chelsea, she goes to work at the burlesque “supper club” The Box, where, to our surprise, the Chelsea Hotel’s own Rose Wood makes a cameo appearance, performing in a surreal skit as a transgender prostitute who fucks a banker, stabs him to death, and then sets the bed on fire.
In more recent years, Molly had been living in a building oddly reminiscent of the Chelsea Hotel in its glory days. Though a much smaller building, the 128-year-old 14 Maiden Lane, way, way downtown in the financial district, was filled with artist’s lofts, and naturally became the scene of much creative collaboration and raucous celebration. They had legendary parties, photo shoots on the roof, and projected movies on the wall of the vacant building next door. Sadly, however, that’s not the only parallel to the Chelsea: developers bought the building in January, evicting all the tenants. (As we’ve said before, it’s the same thing that’s happening in building after building across New York with no end in sight and with no one in power willing to do a damn thing. New York is not for New Yorkers anymore; it’s for tourists and rich, parasitical speculators.) No news on where Molly is living now, but doubtless she is busy rising from the ashes of 14 Maiden Lane and having the last laugh on them all.
[Opus 40 is located at 356 George Sickle Rd, Saugerties, NY 12477. The joint show, Molly Crabapple’s “Annotated Muses” and the Economic Hardship Project’s “Bossworkers”, runs through August 8.]
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