Go Figure: Building a Creative Community Stroke by Stroke

The hardest part of modeling at Go Figure has never been the nudity. Brooklyn has seen worse, and usually before noon. What ruins me every single time is the music. They play these smooth, dance-adjacent R&B tracks that slide under your skin like warm oil. It is the kind of music that makes you want to roll your shoulders or sway your hips or do something sinful with your eyebrows. Even when I am supposed to be a statue, some ancient part of me tries to move. My toes flex like they have their own opinions. My tongue clicks against the roof of my mouth like I am trying to keep time. I am up there trying to look serene and classical while my body is quietly begging for a dance floor.

Meanwhile, the room stays unbothered. People sit on mismatched chairs inside the Godspeed Studios space, leaning over sketchbooks, sipping from plastic cups, nodding along just enough to confirm they are also restraining the urge to groove. By the end of the night, the white scuffed floors are covered with drawings like a makeshift quilt. 

It is the scene that turns stillness into a communal act, and that may be the best part of Go Figure. Even when I am perched on their tiny platform, feeling like a vibrating tuning fork pretending to be calm, there is this sense that the whole room is holding the pose with me. You stay still because everyone else is trying so hard to concentrate. The lights are warm. There are name tags. There is quiet chatter during breaks. There is always a red plastic cup exiled somewhere under a chair. The floor, aggressively white and scuffed, becomes a quilt of drawings by the end of the night. People lean down to look at each other’s work with an admiration so sincere it almost feels dangerous.

Go Figure was never meant to be an empire. It started because Eliana walked into Godspeed Studios in June of 2023 when it was still a loose constellation of painters sharing the upstairs floor. There was no events calendar, no designated gathering space, nothing official – just a big open room full of potential and a handful of people trying not to spill turpentine on each other. She began hosting figure drawing sessions in September, unnamed and unbranded, mostly for friends and whoever they dragged along. It was small and quiet and sweet, the kind of weekly ritual that grows without anyone noticing.

What makes the origin story so endearing is how close it came to dissolving the second Eliana left New York for her year-long grad program. The whole thing could have faded like most well-intentioned art projects do – swallowed by group chats and conflicting schedules – but she refused that fate. She named it, branded it, and wrote a guidebook like a tiny manifesto for how to keep a fragile creative ecosystem alive. Then she handed it to the people she trusted most – her twin sister Kayla and their Godspeed-studio-mate Anya, who kept the weekly session thriving while she was gone. They didn’t just maintain it; they expanded it. When Eliana finally returned, Anya stepped aside with the kind of grace that makes you believe humans are occasionally good, and the twins stepped naturally into running the weekly drawing night together. There is something unreasonably charming about sisters co-running a session inside a shared studio that is not technically theirs, yet seems to bend toward them every Tuesday. They speak in shorthand. They balance each other. They operate without the polite fragility that normally ruins creative partnerships. For them, Go Figure has become a weekly ritual – part sibling bonding, part community caretaking.

Being in the room on a Tuesday night inside Godspeed feels like stepping into intimacy without needing permission. Kayla and Eliana greet everyone by name or with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you pretend you have met before. They hand out name tags. The lights are ambient and forgiving. The playlist is chosen with care – music that is smooth and steady. Each drawing session is intentionally small – about 10 to 20 people, just enough to feel like a group and not a crowd. The energy is low-key and wholesome and surprisingly supportive. It never has the tense, silent seriousness that traditional life-drawing spaces often demand. This is more like stumbling into a living room full of gentle overachievers. 

Kayla and Eliana want sessions to feel beginner-friendly. People chat between poses, give each other drawing tips, and settle in as if they are returning to a familiar place. The optional share-back at the end becomes a soft chorus of admiration. People hold their drawings out like they are revealing a vulnerable secret to a trusted friend, and the room responds exactly how it should: with appreciation and surprise at the different ways people interpret the same body without pretension or hierarchy.

What I love most is how their studio feels like stepping into a lived-in thought. The structure itself is a rhythm that feels like it should be obvious, but is actually quietly brilliant. One-minute poses to start. Then five. Then 10. Then 20. Eliana created this structure when she was running the sessions alone, trying to fit everything into short evenings. The one-minute poses are her favorite because people cannot overthink. Instinct takes over. The long poses let people hit a flow state, the kind that makes time collapse in on itself. Sometimes she sits at the front of the class and narrates her process. Other times, she walks around and gives hands-on feedback. It feels like having a second pair of eyes that care about your drawing more than you do.

Then there is Muse – their sapphic night – which somehow transforms the Godspeed space into something velvet-soft. Even though the regular sessions already draw mostly women and sapphic and queer attendees, Muse feels different because it is designed that way. The lights feel lower. The room feels warmer. Janae, also known as usb_ellen_j, fills the space with a soundscape that feels like being held. The session sells out every single month with a waitlist that grows like a myth. New York has endless queer nightlife, but very few recurring creative spaces where you can show up soft, make something with your hands, and talk to strangers without shouting over a DJ booth. Muse has become that refuge. An intentional gathering inside a larger studio, carved out for the sapphic community one Tuesday at a time.

Go Figure is an experimenter at heart. They do museum meetups at the Cloisters, where people sketch medieval architecture like it is a casual Sunday activity. They host themed nights, like for Halloween, using fake blood and black paper. They collaborate with poets, musicians, movement instructors, yoga teachers. They have done lesbian speed dating where participants draw each other on mini dates. They are currently making collaged candles and matchboxes using vintage magazines and recycled figure drawings. There is this sense that nothing is off the table. If it involves creative energy, they will try it.

The most rewarding part of all this, according to Kayla, is watching friendships form right in front of her. People arrive alone and then somehow leave exchanging numbers. Someone once met their best friend after a session because they serendipitously took the same train home. Every week there are familiar faces along with brand-new ones — a rotating cast of people who keep showing up because something about the room feels worth returning to. It is rare in New York to find a weekly event that feels both casual and meaningful, but Go Figure has managed to become just that. Maybe it is the low cost. Maybe it is the warm lighting. Maybe it is the sisters. It might also be the fact that drawing someone for two hours is a very odd yet effective way to get comfortable around strangers.

The future of Go Figure is not about building a bigger studio or claiming more space; they already have Godspeed as their weekly home. What they want is to expand the kinds of gatherings that can bloom inside and around that room. More collaborations with other groups. More workshops beyond figure drawing. More community-building events for people who want the social atmosphere but feel intimidated by drawing a nude model in public. They want to create creative rituals that feel as warm and accessible as their Tuesday nights, especially for people who do not see themselves as artists. They want participants to leave feeling full, like the night was worth their money and their time, like they learned something or met someone or made a mark they did not expect. It is a small dream disguised as a big one … or maybe it’s the other way around.

For me, Go Figure is one of the few places where I feel connected to my body even when I am desperately trying not to move it. It is a place where stillness is not demanded but shared. Where art is not a performance but a practice. Where people come together with pencils, plastic cups, and mismatched chairs and make something that feels like community. You leave feeling steadier than when you arrived. You leave carrying something that was not there before.

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