suicideblonde: I don’t think everyone got the...

I don’t think everyone got the gist of the awesome thing Molly is doing here, bucking the gallery system, supporting anti-capitalism, creating amazing art, being smart, savvy and self-sufficient and just her general bad ass self. So I’m posting about her Shell Game art show again with the info from her kickstarter, where if you contribute even a buck you’re helping make this happen.

Shell Game: An Art Show About the Financial Meltdown by Molly Crabapple on kickstarter

Last fall, Occupy Wall Street happened outside my window.

I’d spent the last few years making my living drawing for ferociously swank nightclubs, while watching the world crumble and people from Tahrir Square to Athens to London take to the streets. “Americans are too apathetic for that,” everyone said. But they weren’t.

I’d wanted for some time to make art that dealt with politics. But I was afraid of being hypocritical, propagandistic or boring. 2011 taught me that political art was anything but, and it freed me to do the best work of my career. Drawings I made then turned up as protest signs around the country.

Now I want to make something bigger. I want to make big, fancy, impressive art, about the ways in which big, fancy, impressive entities have profoundly screwed us up.

Shell Game is an art show about the world financial collapse, and the people who have risen up in protest against it. I’ll create nine giant paintings about the different parts of the collapse and the global movement fighting back (including Goldman Sachs, Greece, and Occupy Wall Street), but filter them through my lens of burlesque, surrealism, satire, and symbolic animals. Then, I’m going to rent a storefront in New York city, rig it out like a gambling parlor, and invite the city and the Internet to check it out for a week.

It doesn’t seem right to make an art show about the way financial elites screwed us up and only sell things that financial elites can afford. So I’m turning to you to create an art show that anyone can be a part of. Your support in this project will help me cover the cost of creating spectacular art that’s meant for everyone to enjoy. And help me do it without asking the permission of rich people.

Because art is awesome. And big, splashy, gold encrusted, glittering things are awesome. But so is populism. I want to see how they look together.

What Will The Money Go Towards?

Each painting in Shell Game takes, from study to final glaze, a month to complete, including 100 hours in front of the easel. I’m asking for your help to afford creating the work, renting a New York storefront, paying for supplies, staffing, gambling chips, girls to bathe in bathtubs of fake money, and six-foot-tall panels to paint.

In return, you can get access to every aspect of making these giant paintings.

While I’m making Shell Game, I want you with me. I’ll be keeping a backers-only blog, and livestreaming my painting sessions. Kickstarter rewards include prints, studies, watercolor drawings and concept doodles — plus fake money, prints, cameos, poker chips, brushes, studio visits, and a VIP opening to experience the art with a select cast of my favorite reprobates.