In The Flesh logo artist Molly Crabapple profiled in The New York Times

photo by Brian Van

If you didn't already know, Molly Crabapple drew the In The Flesh logo for me (for free!) and has been incredibly kind to me and In The Flesh over the years, not to mention being outrageously talented. I've interviewed her twice over the years: once for Gothamist, once for The Village Voice. She very graciously took me to The Box one night and every time I check out her her blog I'm in awe of her talent, productivity, and spirit. She is truly visionary and one of a kind. I'm honored to be her friend, and to own an original Molly Crabapple that not only hangs proudly on my wall but gets tons of comments every time I pass out postcards (Reverend Jen was like, "You look just like your drawing!").

She was just profiled by Carol Kino in The New York Times on Sunday:

With her long dark hair, artfully made-up eyes and demurely vixenish demeanor, she can suggest Morticia Addams, John Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland or an anime caricature. And because she is never far from her iPhone or her MacBook, little of her life seems unshared.

In fact, some believe Ms. Crabapple’s talent is neither making art nor modeling nor fire eating nor Internet branding, but her ability to combine everything in one seamless persona. Joe Wos, who founded the ToonSeum, the cartoon museum in Pittsburgh, calls her “one of the most innovative young artists out there right now” but argues that her influence extends beyond drawing. “Dr. Sketchy’s itself is a work of performance art,” said Mr. Wos, who runs the Pittsburgh sessions of Dr. Sketchy’s. “Molly Crabapple is an art movement in and of herself.”

Or, as Ms. Crabapple said matter-of-factly, “What you get in life isn’t about how much you cultivate your talent; it’s about how you cultivate your name.”

Certainly the last year has been good to Ms. Crabapple in terms of name cultivation. July saw the publication of her first graphic novel, “Scarlett Takes Manhattan.” Created with Mr. Leavitt, who wrote the text, it recounts the fairly pornographic adventures of Scarlett O’Herring, a fictitious 1880s New York circus performer. Its colorful pictures, made with pen and ink and colored in Photoshop, exemplify Ms. Crabapple’s style. Curves and facial features are exaggerated, bodies tumble through space, and each scene is filled with impossible Rube Goldberg-like architecture.