Confessions of an Art school Model

performed at The 2001 Winnipeg Fringe Festival

Confessions of an Art school Model: written in 2001, Talia first performed this solo drama in the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. In it, she acts as an artist’s model, posing for the Winnipeg artist, Derek Brueckner, who draws her for the duration of the one hour monologue. In 2002, she received an invitation to perform at the New York City Fringe Festival. That same season, she also brought it to the Minnesota Fringe Festival in Minneapolis. The following summer, 2003, she and Derek again staged it at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

Normally, the meditation between the artist and the model occurs in private. The meditation between the finished piece and the audience occurs in public. However, in this piece, all three parties will be engaged simultaneously. The model interacts with the audience and the artist. The audience views both the model and the artist as the work progresses.

A one woman, one hour monologue, performed in the nude, with an artist on stage throughout, drawing the actor, who is playing an artist’s model during a drawing session. Topics range from the history of erotic art to details of the model’s own life.

Drama. 60 minutes. 1 female. 1 artist

Written and produced by Talia Pura

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Review by Michael Criscuolo (New York performance)

Confessions of an Art School Model is equal parts art history lesson, figure drawing class, and reminiscence. Writer/performer Talia Pura sounds off about her almost thirty years as an art school model while posing for artist Derek Brueckner. This informal, one-person show has many things to say-perhaps too many-but is never less than interesting and engaging throughout.

By performing the show stark naked, Pura makes two points. The first is that studying a naked person in such a clinical fashion takes the titillation out of doing so. Secondly, being physically naked doesn’t mean as much as being emotional naked. Since models usually remain silent during a sitting, being nude around strangers means nothing to them because they never reveal anything about themselves. Pura is obviously very comfortable with her body and who she is, and she makes the audience feel equally comfortable about spending an hour with her in her birthday suit. By the time she gets to the more confessional second half-which spotlights a recollection of the great, lost love of her life-she has made both of her points very well. It’s to her credit that she’s able to get so much out of her words while moving so little.

Confessions is also interactive. Pura interacts with Brueckner, and freely converses with the audience, throughout. Afterwards, you may go on stage to see Brueckner’s sketches up close, and you may even buy one if you like.

Excerpt

Confessions of an Art School Model © Talia Pura

This excerpt may not be used for any purpose whatsoever. Rights to produce, in whole
or in part, by any group, amateur or professional, are retained by the author.

A nude model speaks to the audience, while an artist draws her.

Sorry, I digressed. I was telling you why I am a model. I started modeling when I was a first year student in university. I was studying psychology. A classmate and I were talking about liberating experiences. She said she had always wanted to model nude to free herself, but was too scared to try. I said that I didn’t think that it would be that hard and she should just do it. She told me to prove it, so I did. I was right, it wasn’t any big thing, at least to me. She never did try it. I found out that it was an easy way to pay the rent. Do a couple of quick art classes between studying Freud and Jung. It was easier work than my night job waitressing and it was right on campus. By the end of my first year I decided that I didn’t care what made people’s brains tick and switched to social anthropology, to find out how the collective brain began. During that year I found that I had some pretty mundane anthropology Profs. and some really amazing art Profs. I learnt a lot about drawing, of course, but some of them were also really good at bringing in all these classical paintings and drawings and explaining how they related to what they were trying to do with the figure.

I switched to art history as a major and kept on modeling….I never thought about actually making art myself, until half way through that first semester of studying art history. I had been modeling in the class of this amazing artist. He inspired all of his students and brought out the best in them. I had actually started looking at his first year students’ work. It was all good. Some of it was very good. I signed up for his class the next semester. At first it was strange. I walked into class that first day and unzipped my jeans. Just kidding. But it was kind of weird to sit there with my blank paper and conte pencil and try to let my wrist flow. After several classes I realized two things.

One, he was just as inspiring from this side of the drawing paper. And two, Inspiration alone does not an artist make.

I sucked. I couldn’t draw the figure to save my life. I worked really hard, I really tried, but there was a good reason why I couldn’t remember doodling much as a child. Sure, by the end of the term I showed some improvement. You could recognize that I was attempting to depict the human form, but I was bad. Not only that, but I had nothing to say as an artist. I mean, although weak drawing skills will always hold an artist back, even in another medium, I would have fought on if I really thought that I really had a message for the world.

So I gave up the drawing class. I was pregnant and quit modeling, too, and then I stayed home with my baby. (to artist) Are you ready for a longer pose? How’s this? ( she settles into pose straddling the chair on which her robe in flung, facing the audience. Long beat )

Have you ever had a favourite song that is special only to you and your lover? Or maybe you have a restaurant or special make out place or something. Well, I know that it sounds corny, but this was “our pose”. Stephen was a painter and this was our pose. I was sitting like this in an art class when we met, years ago – twenty… twenty-six years ago. God, can it be that long? Yeah, this year would have been our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Crazy, almost impossible to believe. Stephen had transferred in from down East, thought that his creative vision wasn’t being nourished and needed a change.

He was the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on, and there he was, drawing me. As he drew, I watched his hand. I knew from its position on the page that he must be drawing my thigh. It started to get warm and tingly. I felt as if his hand was on my thigh, every stroke of his pencil was a caress. He spent a long time on my thigh. God, I’d never been so turned on by anyone’s touch. I wanted to leap over his drawing horse and straddle him right there in the class. But I didn’t. I just sat there and burned. I guess he felt the heat. After class, he made some excuse to hang around and when I left the building, he was right behind me, wanting to go for coffee. Coffee turned into dinner and dinner turned into a long walk in the park and that turned into the most amazing night of making love that you can imagine. By morning… I was in love – totally, all the way. He seemed to be, too. Over the next few months we went out a lot, made love a lot and he painted me…a lot. He was working on a masterpiece, a portrait of me that would make the world think that John Singer Sargent was only second rate. Only he never quite finished it, it was never quite perfect. And then of course, when my pregnancy got too advanced for him to even remember what my waist used to look like…well, he just sort of put it away, went on with other projects. But I never forgot this pose. The one when he fell in love with me.