Molly Crabap­ple checked in to a hotel room in a secret loca­tion this week and started cov­er­ing the walls with her draw­ings. By the time she checks out five days later, she will have cov­ered nearly 300 square feet of wall space with her ren­der­ings of fish, a giraffe, a tree­house or two, octo­pus girls, and even por­traits of friends who have stopped by to visit. At the mid­way point of her explo­ration into cre­ative and phys­i­cal endurance, she seems slightly manic and says jok­ingly, “I only have break­downs at night.”

These five days are Molly Crabapple’s Week in Hell, a dream project for her whose fund­ing came via a Kick­starter page. Molly told me that the con­cept she wanted to ful­fill was the idea of draw­ing in a pub­lic square, where observers could watch, as though she were in a fish­bowl. And she has achieved this, vir­tu­ally. Molly’s 745 Kick­starter sup­port­ers track her progress, men­tally and artis­ti­cally; they request cer­tain ani­mals or char­ac­ters; they even com­plain to her about her choice of music, via a Livestream feed which is open for a few hours each day. The Inter­net is such a crit­i­cal part of the project, Week in Hell is a vir­tual public-​art instal­la­tion. Iron­i­cally, though, the Man­hat­tan hotel where she’s stay­ing has no idea what she’s up to.

I vis­ited the secret loca­tion on Day 3. Molly has gone through at least three dozen black mark­ers and seems to have cov­ered more than half of the suite. My hunch said she’s ahead of sched­ule, but she asks me to sit down next to her to ask my ques­tions so that she can con­tinue to draw and talk to her Livestream audi­ence at the same time. The Inter­net is com­mend­ing her change of playlist. On Day 2, she’d been play­ing “three French songs and my friend Kim [Boekbinder’s] album all day,” and they rebelled. Also, the Inter­net wants more platy­pus. “Platy­pus?! I put three fuck­ing platy­puses into this thing already,” she argues. One of her friends who is vis­it­ing jokes, “Platy­pus are the new octopus.”

Every­one in the room laughs, the Inter­net laughs, and the mood is light. But Molly keeps quickly mov­ing from left to right on her Doom Wall, the 20-​foot-​long sec­tion of the hotel suite’s liv­ing room. She’s mark­ing broad strokes in pen­cil on 2-​by-​7-​foot sheets of Can­son paper, then turn­ing the marks into char­ac­ters and scenes with Dick Blick mark­ers – while con­tin­u­ing to choose music, answer my ques­tions, video-​chat with her Livestream audi­ence, and talk to pho­tog­ra­pher Steve Prue, her assis­tant Melissa, and her friends. At the moment she seems to me a mul­ti­task­ing mar­vel, but there is a ten­sion to her swift move­ments, and sit­ting next to her I start to feel a lit­tle ner­vous energy myself.

After a while, Molly decides to go into the bed­room and work on a new draw­ing by the win­dow. Her friends fol­low, keep­ing the Inter­net in the loop. Car­ry­ing the lap­top in front of him like an infant in its baby Bjorn, Molly’s friend Den­nis nar­rates for the Livestream audi­ence, “We’re going on a mag­i­cal jour­ney to the other room!”

And he’s right: there is a mag­i­cal feel­ing, despite the mis­er­able rainy-​day world out­side today. Friends are crowded into the tiny bed­room, sur­rounded by Molly’s char­ac­ters. On those pages, as in the room, the girls out­num­ber the boys, and as every­one watches Molly stand­ing bare­foot on a mahogany side­board to draw near the ceil­ing, there is gig­gling. A lot of gig­gling. Some­one brings cup­cakes. Cham­pagne opens. Girls lounge on the bed. There is more gig­gling. Steve Prue is tak­ing pic­tures for a Week in Hell book, a photo-​essay about the project that was pos­si­ble in part because the $4,500 Kick­starter project received more than $25,000 in dona­tions. Another pho­tog­ra­pher has set up a time-​lapse cam­era for a video that will be released after the project is completed.

Molly takes a break from draw­ing on the wall to draw on our friend, Kate­lan Foisy, an artist (rather, artist-​model-​writer-​tarot reader-​publisher-​and-​so-​on) who is no stranger to per­ma­nent marker. (In one of Katelan’s ongo­ing projects, Lie & Indite, pho­tog­ra­phers cap­ture poet Mike Lala writ­ing poetry directly onto the beau­ti­ful Kate­lan.) Molly tells Livestream, “Inter­net, there are cute girls every­where doing things.”

This project is an explo­ration of endurance – in cre­ativ­ity and phys­i­cal endurance. But when I arrived I’d asked Molly if she thought this was “social-​media-​art” (if there is such a thing). Through­out the week, updates are posted to her Tum­blr, her Face­book page, her Twit­ter, and of course her Livestream audi­ence (that feed is acces­si­ble exclu­sively to back­ers). But she didn’t seem to think so. “When I do an art project, it includes social media, because that’s how we com­mu­ni­cate. But I con­sider it an art project.”

There is no doubt, how­ever, that social media is chang­ing the way artists make art and the way they con­ceive their projects. Sup­port­ers who donated just $20 will receive cuts from Molly’s Week in Hell draw­ings: tan­gi­ble 4x6-​inch abstract pieces of an expe­ri­ence in which they were par­tic­i­pant, cura­tor and wit­ness. Since prices for her orig­i­nal works typ­i­cally start at $800, it’s easy to see how the project became quickly over-​funded.

Despite her unde­ni­able accom­plish­ment in art-​per-​hour/​by the square foot, I imag­ine Molly’s Week in Hell has already been more dream than night­mare for her. When it was time for me to leave the mag­i­cal world, Molly even gave me a gift– spon­sor Urban Decay pro­vided free stuff for Week in Hell vis­i­tors. It seemed appro­pri­ate to get a pic­ture of myself with Molly and Kate­lan and the Inter­net. “Oh, Inter­net, we even got you at the skinny angle!,” Molly told her collaborators.

Note: Molly Crabapple’s Week in Hell received sup­port from spon­sors Can­son, Dick Blick, and Urban Decay.

Tags: Katelan Foisy, Kickstarter, Molly Crabapple, Molly Crabapple's Week in Hell, Steve Prue, Week in Hell

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Art, Drawing, Event, installation, Performance Art.
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