The large brightly-lit room of the Armory at last month’s Monster Drawing Rally was crowded with people—and it was hot. I’m one of the artists participating in this fund-raising event where around 25 artists draw for one-hour shifts, hang the completed work on a selling-wall where all art sells for $75. If more than one person wants the same piece, a playing card is drawn, and the highest card gets the art. I was ready to get to work.

First hour session of selling wall

I was nervous coming in.  I felt claustrophobic and my nerves amplified the heat: Am I really prepared to do this in public? What if I look like I’m trying too hard? What if my drawings look like I didn’t try at all? These thoughts zipped through my brain and became expressions on my face, I’m so sure of it. And judging by what I was seeing in the other artists—I was not alone.

“Am I trying too hard? Does it show? Don’t look at me.”

Taking a look around the room again, seeing artists at their assigned tables making art, gave me comfort and was exciting. Everyone seemed to be so much themselves. Each creation, albeit so abbreviated in its process, offered a direct insight to the artists’ practice, a microcosm if you will. April Street continued to work on several large paintings, long after the first hour had begun. Alika Cooper carried swatches of fabric with her, skillfully representing these patterns in ink and other media on paper. Her use of fabric in this quick and demanding setting—where an artist would choose to use only the most familiar of materials—tells me that printed cloth is as much her subject as the medium in her large paintings.

In the smaller gallery where tacos were crunched and beers were quaffed, I met collector/caterer Tom Peters eyeing the large, sexy drawings by Dani Tull. There were four of them, one was even double-sided. Tull draws the curves of human figures freely and with confidence—like a latter-day Aubrey Beardsley.

Dani Tull

As drawings were completed and brought to the exhibition/auction room, Armory volunteers pinned the works on the walls in plastic sleeves. They were taken down by collectors fast and often enough to make it an exciting place to be.

Back in the “drawing room” Jay Erker was doing her performative, freestyle best to manifest excitement physically and in real time: She smeared white glue and other sticky materials on sheets of heavy black paper and then—moving in time to the DJ’s set—she pressed her hands and feet… and her face into the goo! Creating expressive and somewhat dangerous-looking prints. On the other side of the room, Nils Schirrmacher was methodically scoring stiff paper to make architectural-looking collages. One artist engaged a stand-in (Robert Medina) to draw his “self”-portrait by telephone.

Taco-crunchers and beer-quaffers

My friends, Corrie Siegel and Lee Foley, visited me while I drew. They would report the expressions and body language of the artists at work: furrowed-brows and grins, self-talkers and extroverts, tongue-biters and pencil-chewers. All together, all at once. While some of the artists worked hard and deliberately, some rooted around their materials on the tables. Everyone was nervous and excited, but all were able to take time to engage with the wandering audience in complete harmony.

All photos by Lucas Benitez

Monster Drawing Rally at the Armory, Part 2 – “We’re here because…”

All of the fun we were having – people drawing, people buying, friends chatting, and interested parties who were meeting for the first time – went to the very good end of supporting the Armory’s internationally-based programs, such as an ongoing installation of murals organized by Ecuadorian artist X. Andrade in Highland Park. Working with the Armory and KCET to realize the project begun in 2012 by Outpost for Contemporary Art, Andrade organized four collaborative groups comprising artists, sign painters and local business owners to install murals on storefronts along York Blvd, between Avenues 50 and 52. The murals are on view 24 hours a day, through December, 2013.