Visual Art

Keyhole Sessions' Rogue Nuit Blanche Event

• Beautiful
• Sexy
• Chic

The Keyhole Sessions is the Toronto art community with a racy edge.

We hold regular life-drawing and photography events that are infused with the erotic. Always a mix of models with amazing attitudes, music and art, TKS nights are hella fun.

For the past 2 years, TKS has been growing its community of artists hungry for something beyond the traditional. What started as a small room of a few artists has grown into a well-respected community of people who not only draw and/or take photos, but who forge friendships with like-minded individuals. In a scene that can often have a high bar to entry, anyone who enters our studios immediately feels welcome, safe and free from judgement.

We are now approaching Nuit Blanche. Held in early October, it's Toronto's "all night contemporary art thing", where hundreds of artists display works {from visual to auditory to performance to interactive} for the thousands of patrons who roam the streets from sundown to sunup. The Keyhole Sessions has held an unofficial, rogue event during this night for the last two years. 2009 saw approximately 300 people participate, and 2010 was over 3000. We expect this year's event to be off the hook.

Our setup is simple: For 6 hours, we present a group of models, in various states of undress, rotating poses on a central stage. Surrounding the stage are chairs equipped with drawing boards, paper & pencils and we invite anyone who enters to sit & draw to their heart's content. Guests are welcome to draw for a few minutes or the entire length of the event {which some have!}. All artwork created that night is hung up for display during the evening.

2009's theme was down & dirty with Girls.Grease.Rope, an homage to a Suicide Girls Fight Club. In 2010, we went all pretty & feathery for Les Oiseaux, where all models were fashioned as exotic birds. This year we are going classic: Greek Mythology. Each model will represent an ancient Goddess, under the watchful and powerful gaze of Zeus.

As Nuit Blanche is a completely free event, any artist not granted an official fund have to pay for all costs out of pocket. For TKS, this includes venue, chair and sound equipment rental, art supplies, costumes, hair & makeup stylists, and event promotion, along with some other intangibles. TKS runs at the break-even point as it is geared toward creating & maintaining a vibrant arts community, not toward profit {although, profit would be nice!}, and we would love for this year's event to be bigger and better than the last.

Should TKS's RocketHub project fuel more funding than requested, we will sink that right back into TKS for future events, helping offset venue and model fees that are incurred for our regular monthly events. 

The fine print:
A 'crowdfunding' source of revenue, RocketHub isn't an investment or charity. It's an exchange of funds for rewards. It's an All & More funding mechanism: if we don't reach our financial goal, we get to keep what we raise. But if we do reach our goal, we'll get access to more RH opportunities. The Keyhole Sessions are happy to have discovered RocketHub as a way to raise funds within an artistic community. 

Thanks to all the amazing artists who contributed work for this video. Mwuah!