A lithe. No buff. No smokin’ heeyot young woman is positioned upside down, legs asprawl against the wall, arms outstretched, naked. I mean nude. For this is art, fine art, in the making. Or is it? Yes and kinda, with a side of burlesque. It’s the eighth installment of Live Art!, a yearly benefit for SMASH School that features three nude models, eight artists, and a slew of onlookers bidding for sketches hot off the pad.

Gallery owner Delia Cabral enlightens on how to frame the event, “it’s an invitation into the creative process.”

With a bit of voyeurism tossed in. DCA's Live Draw! isn't meant be dirty; it's meant to be transcendent. But it's kinda dirty, too. And it’s not classical music wafting through speakers but erotic euro-jams pumping from the DJ booth. And the models aren’t the run of the mill art school variety. Did I say, scorchin’? And this is Puritanically-rooted America. We like our art nudes threatless and lumpy, and if seen at all – in and not out of context.

So maybe this is a bit of a peep show, in the name of art, minus the curtain. I look around. Onlookers look on. Not a lascivious grin. No wine-fueled half-grins, even though there’s exposed hoo-ha in the room. But, wait. I am enlightened! I write about art! So why I am the only one who doesn’t know where to look?

"Oh my god. Come look at this pose!" The poses are indeed exquisite arabesques. And don’t think these models are just lying around; they are working their lovely asses off. Because nude modeling ain’t easy. Posing for twenty minute stretches, moving not a hair, is extremely intense. I once tried holding my arm up in a 90-degree angle for an entire commercial break and nearly crossed into the dark side from lack of circulation.

An artist stands against a wall making colorful strokes with chalk outlining hips and shoulders that collapse into and over one another on sheets of butcher paper. Another sits with a charcoal crayon, lines of black and white indicating a torso in motion made with such intensity it gives me chills.

Professor David Schoffman works in bright pastels alongside his 17-year old prodigy Annie Pendergrast, appearing aloof beyond her years as she works in shades of gray. As for what his star pupil will take from this experience, Schoffman says, “I am not her teacher. I am a painter. So I don’t care.” Whatever his laissez-faire philosophy of the mentor-mentee relationship may be, art tonight is about the making of it.

Abstract painter Katina Zinner tells me that the intimate connection with a subject eclipses any external forces. And I must admit, watching Lynn Hanson make smoldering sketches on vintage maps while Fausin Mdisa squirts latex paint from ketchup bottles onto plexiglass and cotton paper is kind of epiphanous.

As the night warbles to an end, discussions move to the notion that Americans are soooo uncomfortable with nudity and can’t handle its connotations with sexuality. That would be a Yup, but just for one night -- not here. There is an intensity of focus and absorption in process. And we are all lucky enough to witnesses, up close and quite personally, this all-consuming act of making form from creative fire.

JORDAN WHITLEY for LA2DAY

Jordan@la2day.com

LINKS: DCA FINE ART www.dcafineart.com  SMASH School www.smmusd.org