Pensacola Independent News

ART | Vol. 6, No 46, November 16, 2006
(Gift Guide 2006)
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Skin Trade

by M.E. Seeley

UPS AND DOWNS OF SKETCHING NUDES

Brandon Delles' downtown loft has been the home of Pensacola's Sketch Club, formerly Art on the Tracks, since September. Delles sleeps in a small space by the window, which overlooks Palafox Street, while the rest of his loft is set up as a studio. Easels surround a red-orange platform where a spotlight shines on a model in blue boxers. He's posed on one knee, with one hand on his hip and the other held out rigidly.

"OK … switch," Delles says after the set time. The model changes his pose. The artists sketch the model's form in quick, seemingly daring strokes, with charcoal or pen or pencil. Bob Kennedy has a hand on his hip, a focused gaze and a backward lean like a swaggering Klaus Kinski. His stroke against his easel is confident and masterful.

Kennedy is a co-founder of Artel Gallery and a longtime advocate of sketching nudes. He and some of his colleagues started Art on the Tracks in 1986 to expand the opportunity for local artists to practice sketching with a live model. PJC had been offering nude sketching to its art students, but Art on the Tracks wanted to offer nude sketching to all artists in the community.

"Nude sketching, or life drawing, is one of the most difficult subjects an artist encounters," says Benjamin Read, an adjunct professor in the UWF art department. "Using photographs to practice drawing the human figure has a tendency to make the rendering appear flat. That's why live models are a must in the classroom."

According to Sketch Club, despite the importance of having live models for figure drawing, nudes are still frowned upon by the Pensacola art community. "I had a triptych, a religious triptych, and on one of the panels, I had a nude. It was a woman crouching over," recounts Kennedy, crouching with his arms over his head. "You couldn't see anything, but she was nude."

When it was hung at a local business, one of the panels had been removed.

Can you guess which one?

"We're all human and we bring our own baggage to whatever art we see," says Kennedy disconsolately.

McKenzie Oerting, a purple-haired artist who's been with Sketch Club in its various forms for about six years, says that Pensacola's Sketch Club is what got her "back into art" when she returned to Pensacola after a brief hiatus. "There's an energy in the group. The time limitations add to it. Sometimes you get some real jewels."

Oerting met with a situation similar to Kennedy's with a sketch that she hung at Pensacola Airport. "It was a male and a female, sitting, facing one another. It's rare you have a man and a woman model together. It's more dynamic with two. There's a tension. You couldn't see much of the man. Just his shoulder. But you could see the woman's breasts," she says.

It seems the breasts were enough. An unknown member of the community called the airport everyday to complain until the sketch was taken down.

"The breasts that I draw tend to be very rounded. The bigger they are the more obscene, I guess," Oerting muses.

The region's somewhat puritanical distaste for nudity, particularly breasts, is only one of the reasons that Sketch Club prefers to remain somewhat anonymous. Delles recalls when the group met at The Belmont Arts Center "Sometimes there'd be someone who wasn't there to draw," he says. "They were there to see the model."

Now Sketch Club prefers to keep things hush-hush. Artists find out about the club through word of mouth. This keeps the meetings well filtered, with only serious attendants. The only desire you'll find at Sketch Club is the desire of artists' to improve their art.

Sketching nudes is an "admiration of figure and a study of anatomy," says Kennedy. "There's a lot of misunderstanding. Maybe people think it's sinful."

The group of artists gathered in Delles' loft have plenty of complaints about the community's conservative reactions. "Sometimes, I paint clothes back onto my nudes so that I can show the work in Pensacola," comments Oerting with a laugh.

However, the clothes will be off at Jack & Ron's Piano Bar when Sketch Club members display their work in an aptly titled exhibit, "Provocateur," for the upcoming Gallery Night 5-9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 17. Hopefully, this rare exhibition of nudes in Pensacola will open the eyes and minds of the community to the skill of the artists involved and the beauty of the human form.

Or, at the very least, it'll get a rise out of someone.

What: Gallery Night's "Provocateur"
When: 5-9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 17
Where: Jack & Ron's Piano Bar, 104 S. Palafox Place
Cost: Free
Details: 504-339-3117 or www.jackandrons.com

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Skin Trade