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April 19, 2010
Friday afternoon class has ended for Rebecca Keaton, but only just before her
weekly 2 p.m. commitment. Rushing to the fourth floor of the Center for the Arts, the
senior art major heads to a bathroom and changes from the clothes she has been
wearing all day in her sculpture classes to an oversized men's button down shirt.
LAUREN SLAVIN
Arts Editor
Rebecca Keaton walks into a large, well-lit studio and sits on
a sofa surrounded by the easels of more than a dozen students
enrolled in a class called “The Human Figure."
Keaton removes her shirt and is as naked as the day she was
born, but the students don’t snicker, point or gasp. They simply
pick up their pencils and begin to draw what is to them nothing
more than the human form.
Keaton is one of fewer than 10 individuals whose bodies are
the subject of sketches recreating the muscles and lines of the
body. She is a nude model for the art department, weekly doing
what might give other students nightmares.
“It’s like that horrible dream that you have when you’re in
elementary school of showing up to class in your underwear, but
you don’t have any underwear," Keaton said. "It was awkward
at first, but it’s just part of being an art major and learning the
human form, you kind of get used to it."
Keaton has been modeling for art classes since the beginning
of the Spring semester, when school and medical debt forced
her to take up a second job. She had seen student models in
drawing classes she took her sophomore year, and when she
heard there was a class in need of a model and they were willing
to pay $15 an hour for her work, Keaton quickly brushed away
her insecurities.
"I think sometimes while modeling I get kind of self-con¬
scious; trying to focus on being still takes a big part of that
away because you have something else to think about," Keaton
said. "But every once in a while it’s like, ‘Oh gosh, I wonder if
someone is judging this part of my body.’ But then I just kind of
put it out of my mind, I mean you have to or else you’re going
to be really nervous the whole time."
Amanda Burnham, an assistant professor in art and design
and the department’s foundations coordinator, agreed the key to
being a successful model is being comfortable in one’s own skin.
“Some people would prefer not to stand nude in front of 20
arts students," Burnham said. "If that’s something that inspires
trepidation, you’re probably not going to be able to do it. Given
the context, it could create a situation that’s awkward for some,
but the students who are interested aren’t fazed."
As time goes on, Keaton finds herself less and less focused
on her nudity and more on her growth as a student and person.
"People aren’t looking at you and judging you based on how
your body is, they’re judging how they can draw it," Keaton said.
"It makes you way more comfortable with yourself in general.
Being naked and figure modeling are two totally and completely
separate things for me mentally and emotionally. Figure model¬
ing is something very professional and different than just taking
your clothes off."
Students taking courses that involve drawing, painting or
sculpting from a nude model hold professional stances on
student-model interactions in and outside the class. According
to Keaton and Ryan Munoz, a senior digital illustration major
who has taken courses at both Towson University and the
Community College of Baltimore County that involved nude
models, it’s taboo in the art community to bring up modeling
to those students outside of class. Not because it would be
awkward, but because the models aren’t really seen as that
individual.
"It just seems like another still life ... something to look at, to
draw,” Munoz said. "Nude models have been around for however
See NUDE, page 15
