See No Evil: Confessions of an Art Model

It's 5:30 Friday night and time to get in gear. I serve my daughter a simple dinner and throw down my food in anticipation of modeling for artists in two hours. Dishes cleared and washed, I go take a shower. Despite knowing that I'll return home later with my feet black from charcoal dust, I want to start the evening as a clean slate. I pull on pants and a shirt, and open a fat manila file in a desk drawer. Flipping through images of nudes I've collected over the years, I make quick sketches of a few I can refer to if I get stuck for ideas. I pack a straw bag with the rest of my supplies for the evening, welcome the sitter, jump in the car, and drive over to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I arrive in plenty of time to watch the room fill. I know these people because I've been modeling every few months on Friday night for five years. We chat with one another and tell each other stories. I've heard about a woman who brought her 8-year-old daughter and they would both draw. For a time, a father-daughter team attended. The daughter, in her 20s, modeled, and the father sketched.Now that I've got a sense of the mood in the room, I start to get ready. On a chair near the front I plop down my stuff: a clean sheet, a kitchen timer, bag of crackers, plastic glass, a loose black dress, body lotion and a newspaper. I grab my purse, the glass, dress and lotion, and head to the bathroom.It is the third day of my period. No cramps or heavy flow to annoy me, but I check that I've tucked the string of my tampon in so it won't show. At the same time I make sure toilet paper or lint hasn't gotten stuck in my pubic, soon to be public, hair. I rub on body lotion so my skin won't itch, and pull on my dress. The dress is all I'm wearing except for thick dark socks (my feet get cold and the floor is dirty from the dust of charcoal and pastels), and my tennis shoes, left untied. Male models often wear sweat pants, and some female models like robes. Robes remind me of home, and I'm not at home. I eat bland food the day before I model, and chew a Tums or two now. I've farted quietly a few times modeling. This embarrassment I try to avoid. I brush my teeth, blow my nose, fill my glass with hot water and start stretching my neck and shoulders on my way back to the classroom.With only a few minutes to go before 7:30 I arrange the stand in front of the room the way I want it. There are white wooden boxes of various dimensions I can use, as well as chairs, blankets, large pillows and sheets. I use my own sheet because I would rather not place my clean body on the department's sheets, which, more often than not, get left in a heap on the floor and only get washed when an instructor decides they look filthy.The poses gradually increase from one to 30 minutes in length. The short, beginning poses warm up the artists and prepare them for the more sustained studies to follow. In the first 50-minute segment, the standard regimen consists of five one-minute "gesture" poses, two five-minute poses, two 10-minute and one 15-minute. Then I get a 10-minute break, followed by two 15- and one 20-minute pose. After a second break I do a final half-hour pose. I bring a timer to let me know when it is time to change poses. As I complete some final limbering-up exercises, rotating my back and twiddling my toes, I keep an eye out for Schomer Lichtner. Lichtner, in his 80s, is nationally known, a household name among Milwaukee artists. He has a broad, mottled face surrounded by shocks of white hair. His eyes are as kind as they are keen. His piercing gaze puts me on best behavior. Everyone likes the heightened atmosphere of a room with a master, although some people won't sit next to him. They get distracted by the thought of Lichtner glancing over and inspecting their efforts. Once I told him how he is occasionally avoided. He chuckled. Lichtner slips his drawings inside his pad after each sketch because he doesn't want to worry about them being good.The minute hand hits 7:30 with a click. I'm really not thinking about anything when I slip off my dress and socks and take my first pose. Should I be noticing 30 or so pairs of eyes on me? It doesn't seem my business and I've been on the other side. As a college sophomore I spent a semester stint as an art major. In one class we had a week of figure drawing. I'll never forget the first model. Tall, with long, lank hair held back in a ponytail, he took positions that shielded him. As I looked and made my marks on paper I wondered why such a shy guy modeled. I wish I'd kept one sketch of him: hunched down, back toward me; you could just see the line of his scrotum between his feet. I wanted that week of figure drawing to go on and on.Before that semester I sniffed at art students. They had it so easy. I had to read and take notes and write 12-page papers. The challenge of my three art classes overwhelmed me. Even when I wasn't completing an assignment, I couldn't stop analyzing the world around me in terms of form, color and light. My absorption with seeing preoccupied me so much that after conversations with friends, I couldn't remember what they'd told me. I'd been looking at them, not hearing them. I switched out of the art department at the end of the term. Every now and then I bring paper and colored pencils to the university on Friday night and straddle a horse. I haven't devoted enough time to art to develop any ease or skill, and I feel more exposed when someone sees one of my sketches than when I model. Stepping onto the platform I place my legs wide, bend over at the waist, weight thrust forward, and fling my arms to one side. The room is kept at 72 degrees, and two spotlights help keep me warm. I adore the quick, gesture poses. I purposely choose positions I could never endure for more than a couple of minutes. You can try this yourself. Stand and raise your arms to shoulder height. Turn your head so you are looking behind you.Even a minute will start to seem like a long time. Next I kneel with my mouth open. I turn so that no one will complain about getting too much of the same view. Backs get boring. Then I stand on one foot, holding the other in my hand, and bend my head down to touch my shoulder.For my first five-minute pose I set one foot up high on a cube with the knee bent, arms folded on top of my head. I slow my breathing and listen. The only noise in this room is marks being made on paper-the scratch of pencils, the squeak of markers, the rub of charcoal, the scrup of pastel, the swish of brushes. I heard a story from New York City art model and art instructor Hugh Kilmer about a model who described for artists the specific sound of their drawings. Sometimes my stomach gurgles. I'm sure everyone can hear.I change positions. Now I squat with my arms out, elbows resting on my knees. I know that with legs spread my vulva is clearly visible and may look suggestive to some.I've checked with other female models to see if they worry when their thighs part. Milwaukee model Sharon McQueen doesn't mince words. "When modeling, I don't consider my genitals any different than my armpits ... It is clear the artist doesn't have time to gawk. I might as well be a bowl of fruit." I agree. At the first break, in dress and socks, I stretch and wiggle while I munch crackers. I visit the room next door where Dick Bacon, former Mr. Nude America and still muscular at 60, has held the same pose for the last 50 minutes. Local model Gene Erasmus once complained to me about the trouble with long poses. He described the growing agony: "First come the itches, then come the twitches, then comes the pain, and then you go numb."Bacon looks undaunted. Maybe he works out more than most of us. I scoot back to get ready for my second series. I've got just enough time to take a brief walk around the room to see what people have been doing. Some of the artists are professionals, teachers and designers, and they confidently capture my form. I have seen one-minute drawings, less than 12 strokes on the page, yet me without any question, different from any other human on this earth. Even the smudges of the beginner, made with painstaking, belabored effort, look like me. During the first of my 15-minute poses I consider what I'll do next, rearranging my limbs inside my head. I don't understand why what my mind conjures up doesn't always match what my body can do.Once I've settled on a configuration I think will work, I mentally cross my fingers and then look out one of the two windows in the room. Although it's dark outside, I can see the vague outline of a building across the way. Light shines from a few windows and forms a pleasing pattern. I focus on the lit window squares. When my timer goes off I'm disoriented, startled to discover I need to change my pose already, and struggle to recall what position I decided to take next.At the second break I leaf through the newspaper while artists pour cups of coffee from a pot in the hall. Two people complement me; they tell me I'm a "good model." I regularly ask artists what this means-to be a good model. Some qualifications are strictly physical, like the dexterity to mold oneself in space and hold a pose without moving. But the essence of it became clear to me when I modeled with another woman for an art class. I knew the woman was well respected by the teacher and students, but I couldn't see why. She shifted around, she immediately fell asleep (I consider it unprofessional to nod off), and I found her snide. I asked a student why he liked her. "Oh, Doreen," he said. "She's got attitude." This I understood. Modeling attitude is a type of vanity. The vanity of a performer.I can't act. I can't sing. I'm a lousy dancer. I've never been close to cutting it as a fashion model. So I'm delighted that in a studio, stretch marks and all, I get to play solo in the center of a stage; my presence the focus of everyone's attention. Not only don't I get laughed off the platform, but people inquire how many weeks before I return. I feel like a star. Once, during a long pose, I propped up an index card on which I'd written the seven deadly sins, and memorized the list. Wrath, avarice, sloth, pride, lust, envy, greed. Pride takes me down for the count every time. I exalt in my vainglorious capacity to take challenging poses and stay still, even when a foot falls asleep, a muscle aches or a hair obscures my vision and drives me crazy.My particular brand of pride is also cultural in nature. I trained as an undergraduate in anthropology. I spent hours viewing slides of nude bodies and watching countless ethnographic films. Anthropology celebrates variety, including the ways we hold ourselves in space. My wide-eyed world view, matched later with pregnancy, dissolved my modesty. I've heard other models discuss what they won't do. Some women will not do anything that hints of stripping. Other models leave the stand during art school tours when a busload of high school students clump together near the doorway and stare. My pride is such that none of this matters. Kilmer differentiates between vanity and pride. His grandmother told him a vain woman "fixes up" so that she will appear splendid. A proud woman doesn't think the fixing up is necessary.I confess. When I model I feel beautiful, a representative of the family of man. Even though when I peer in the mirror I like my curly hair, inquisitive brown eyes and long neck, no one has ever described me as attractive. The five times in my life I heard a whistle in my direction I reacted by looking around to find the other woman. I'm shaped like a pear-my ass and thighs dominate the landscape. But on the platform, instead of throwing out my hip and seeing myself as a cow, I am a thick woman who bears children. I am all mothers.For my last pose, I sit on a tall box, my left foot flat on the platform, my right leg up, knee bent, foot on top of the cube. My left arm rests along my side and I make sure to straighten my back so it won't get sore. I bring my right hand across my body. I don't really know if a pose will be comfortable until I've been in it for a few minutes. Simply leaning on a wrinkle in a sheet can be torture. Sometimes I wish I could roll back time and undo the miserable twists I take. But I want to be interesting. Despite what happens to models in books and movies, I have never had anyone approach me with the slightest suggestion of impropriety. When my clothes are off and people address me, they make sure to keep their eyes on my eyes. No wandering. I'm treated with such respect that I'm almost piqued. My timer beeps and the evening comes to a close. I step down and get dressed. My body has been scrutinized for two-and-a-half hours. My body, the container that holds me together.Most people don't spend much time looking at their own bodies, or anyone else's, for that matter. These artists have analyzed my outline, my mass, the way my muscles and bones and veins interact with my skin, how light hitting me creates highlights and shadows. They have seen plenty. But what have they seen? A bowl of fruit-the shape of me, or something more? In the studio, when I step onto the platform I enter the garden. I say they see no evil. Coda: While in a department store elevator lowering to the ground floor, I notice a woman eyeing me. She knows she's seen me somewhere before. A minute later I realize what caused her confusion. She was a member of a drawing group that hired me to model and didn't recognize me with my clothes on.