Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

The Red Deer Public School board has said no to nude models.
Art instructors at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School had proposed introducing a figure drawing course in the fall that would have required nude models posing for students.
The course was created and used by an arts high school in Edmonton, and the Red Deer school district had obtained permission to adapt it, said district deputy superintendent Pieter Langstraat.
But trustees decided this week not to allow the drawing component that requires unclothed models. While parental consent forms could have been issued for students young than 18, and the art classes could have been held before or after regular school hours, or in a secure location on the school site, the school board just wasn’t comfortable with introducing nude models to high school students.
Langstraat said trustees always ask themselves, when considering a new activity or field trip, whether it’s something they want for their students. And in this case, the answer was no, he added.

Police raided a Melbourne porn business that makes up to $10 million a year from allegedly illegal activities.
Detectives raided five premises as part of Operation Refuge, seizing computers containing footage of women allegedly performing explicit sex acts, which are illegal to produce in Victoria.
They are also investigating allegations that some of the models on the porn company’s website are under age.
Police raided the Fitzroy head office of G Media - which runs a porn website - in the early morning raids, and arrested its director, Garion Hall, at his Heidelberg home.
Two storage facilities and another office were part of the Fitzroy raids.
Computer records and explicit DVDs allegedly containing material too graphic to be legally made in Victoria were among items seized.
It is illegal to profit from making porn films in Victoria.
It is believed Mr Hall denies any wrongdoing.
Yesterday’s raids came after the Herald Sun provided police with a dossier of information about the allegedly illegal porn; G Media, and companies associated with it, have churned out in Melbourne since about 2000.
G Media is believed to receive about $30 a month from 30,000 subscribers to its website, which contains more than 370,000 explicit images and almost 4000 sex videos.
The company specialises in filming female teenage students and backpackers in Melbourne and has explicit photographs and videos of almost 1200 young women on its website, many listed as being aged 18 and 19.
Police have seen a copy of a driver’s licence of one G Media nude model, allegedly showing she was 17 when photographed. It is not known if Mr Hall knew of her age.
Detectives from Yarra CIU questioned Mr Hall yesterday while the police e-crime squad began sifting through mountains of electronic material seized during the raids.
Mr Hall, 34, was released last night, but possibly faces charges of making objectionable films for gain, which carries a maximum jail term of two years.
Each of G Media’s 30 employees could also be charged with the same offence.
Yarra CIU Sen-Det Steven Boskovski said police were likely to make more arrests.
“We’re still identifying the hierarchy involved,” he said. “We’re very satisfied with the content we’ve secured.”
The Herald Sun provided police with written information that allegedly reveals Mr Hall was warned by experts in 2007 that G Media’s activities were likely to be in breach of state and federal laws.
One former G Media employee, Steen Vestergaard, has claimed in court documents that before he accepted a job he was assured the sex films he would be producing were legal.
Mr Vestergaard later sought his own legal advice and was told the films were too explicit to be legally made in Victoria and that he was liable to be prosecuted if he continued to produce them.
Former G Media model Liandra Dahl said the company used cash-in-hand payments to lure teenagers into performing prohibited sex acts on camera.
“It is utterly unethical to mislead very young people into choices that could affect their entire life,” she said.
G Media uses posters stuck on traffic lights and poles near popular pubs and nightclubs to entice budding nude models to contact them.
A G Media poster in Chapel St, Prahran, offers females up to $800 cash on the day of the shoot and provides contact details for more information.

Nude models are coming to MOSI.
No, Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry isn’t turning into a gentleman’s club. But Tuesday, the kid-friendly venue’s Body Worlds and the Story of the Heart exhibit will host nude models. They’ll replicate the poses of the exhibit’s preserved, skinless human figures. MOSI invites artists to draw, paint or sculpt the subject, but gawkers need not inquire.
“It’s not anything that’s vulgar; it’s just something that’s artistic,” said Sarah Lajevardi, marketing manager for Body Worlds. “Even though this is a children’s museum, we still talk about the body,” she said, citing MOSI’s Amazing You exhibit. Sketch Night will begin at 7 p.m., two hours after the museum closes.
This is the MOSI’s second Sketch Night; the first was May 19. At that event, one male and one female model held each pose for about 40 minutes, replicating the archer, the torch bearer, the kneeling lady, the gymnast on the beam and more.
“It was quite challenging,” Lajevardi said. “They’ll kind of have to shake it out here and there and maybe take a five-minute break.”
Sixty artists attended the first Sketch Night. Their feedback? The event was a rare opportunity to observe the human form outside of an art studio. They just wish it had lasted longer. So this time organizers will extend Sketch Night from two hours to three, with a minimum of four models — at least one of each gender.
Douglas Land, who teaches drawing workshops throughout Tampa Bay, had time for seven or eight studies during the first Sketch Night.
“From an educational standpoint, it’s really a good opportunity because normally we would just have illustrations in a book or maybe a plastic model that you can refer to for the muscles bones, anatomy and that,” said Land, 55, of St. Petersburg. He keeps the sketches in his home studio and may use them for reference in one of his classes. Land considers the first Sketch Night a success, and he plans to return Tuesday. “It was well attended, and it was very professional — good lighting, and I think the extra hour will be nice.”
Was he weirded out by seeing models disrobe at a children’s museum?
“Not really,” Land said. “I think that that’s part of what they do. They have educational exhibits. Some may not be as good for young children.”
Similar events have been held at other museums that hosted Body Worlds. The exhibit closes at MOSI June 28 and then heads to Buffalo.

Designer clothes go from secondhand rack to runway in West Loop.
In between sips of dirty martinis at a West Loop quaffing station one recent balmy eve, the makeup artists dabbed a little of this, a little of that on the sculpted noses of models who would soon be slipping into resurrected haute couture. Draped on a crushed velvet banquette the color of Dracula’s bloody lips, one lithe young model called out for help; her bustier was missing.
Emanuel Wilder, proprietor of Classy Closet, an Evanston consignment shop staging its first fashion show, was mere steps away, riffling through the rack of born-again threads when a stylist rushed up to him, clutching a Sonia Rykiel black crepe dinner jacket with rhinestone-studded collar that dangled from a hanger.
“Someone from the mayor’s office wants to purchase this,” the stylist, Anthony Green, shouted over the thumping Lady Gaga tunes at Plush, a nightspot on West Madison Street where crystal chandeliers catch shards of light between exposed heating ducts, and flatscreen TVs vie for attention beside naked, headless, faux-marble statues.
It was 12 minutes to showtime, and already the place was packed. Maybe, though, it was the NBA Finals that had drawn the pizza-scarfing crowd. Except for busboys eager to cut through the back lounge-cum-dressing room, there wasn’t yet much attention paid to the half-naked models. Ah, but that would change, once the game went on mute and, for 30 minutes, the joint became a throbbing fashion hall.
“We’re not selling till the show’s over,” replied a cool Wilder, unruffled by the suggestion that his inventory could be stuffed in shopping bags before the first model slipped into her stilettos and strutted toward the sidewalk.
And so it goes when the lineup is rich with names such as Rykiel, St. John, Armani, MaxMara and Escada. But the price tags hanging from those wares have been stripped of their many, many zeros.
Ever since he was a kid, Wilder says, he’s delighted in discovering the value in other people’s discards. And now, with the economy in tatters, the discards are coming in droves — and they are hardly shabby, says Wilder.
Which is pretty much the reason he leapt at the brainstorm of his shop’s manager, Natalie Gottlieb, to roll the clothes racks downtown, hire a gaggle of models and show the world how fine a thing secondhand clothes can be.
It’s a business tailor-made for those who like their closets packed with history but don’t see fit to bust the wallet.
“I like the idea of walking in my store and not knowing what I’ll see,” said Wilder, who for 27 years worked for the state Health Department but six years ago acquired the Classy Closet, hard by the Metra tracks at 701 Washington St., in southeast Evanston.
“It might be a death in the family. Or somebody who lost a lot of weight and they think they’ll never gain it again, so they bring in all their old clothes.”
Twice lately, says the debonair Wilder, he’s had customers who decided to unload their closets — and then some — after near brushes with death. Both came back from the brink, he said, as “changed people.” Once “shopaholics,” he adds that they’ve shed all that they’ve ever shopped. One fellow came in with 1,000 shirts “of the Versace variety,” some still with price tags.
And thus Wilder finds himself with an abundance of recycled riches.
And no wonder heads turned as they took to the runway.
Edward Weiland, a fashion photographer click-clicking away, adding a certain flash to the festivities, shouted something about finding it odd not to be on Oak Street with such drop-dead clothes swirling around him. Nicole Lehr, a bartender from Bridgeport, on the other hand, said she’d never stumble onto such a haute scene where she pulls the spigot. “Not with the baseball crowd,” she said, turning back to her mango martini. “They’re just happy with their jerseys.”
None of this was lost on the models of the secondhand outfits.
Taking in a deep breath before she sauntered across the room in a vintage silver-satin slip with beaded mesh overlay, Ksenia Golikova, a 26-year-old from Russia, whispered that while strutting she imagines she’s a noble person from the 16th Century.
And then she said of those old clothes: “It’s excellent that they have a story behind them. When you carry the clothes, you carry the story. You don’t know it, but the story still lives.”
And then the noblewoman took off, her storied sheath swaying behind her every step.

Renek Gaszewski:

Muara Johnston describes figure drawing as Pilates for painters. Any painter, regardless of skill and experience level, can benefit from the presence of a live model from which to draw. Which is why the assistant director for the SLO Art Center selected two documentaries featuring nude models to screen in conjunction with the Art Center’s exhibit, Corpora in Extremis (Bodies to the Limits). The public is invited to view The Nude Model and Art is an Attitude: The Art of Drawing the Nude as part of the Art Center’s movie night June 15 at 7 p.m., a program that began last October with the purpose of enhancing the exhibits. Read the rest of this entry »