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For 20 minutes, the man in the white hat studies Gherity. He cocks his head this way and that, arms crossed.
"Head a little to the right," he says, breaking the silence.
Gherity doesn't move.
The man stares a minute more, grimaces, then mixes his paints, laying a base coat on a small canvas. He paints meticulously, eyes darting between her figure and the canvas.
The art of modeling requires that Gherity not only hold this pose for 45 minutes at a time, but that after each of three 15-minute breaks she return to exactly the same position. Before Gherity's timer goes off, Colwell marks key spots with blue tape — Gherity's hip, heel and feet.
"Remember that man I told you about, the only one who was rude to me?" Gherity whispers at break, pulling her sarong close and nodding toward the man in the white hat. "That's him."
She had heard his instruction to move her head. Other artists were well into their sketches. She could have made the others angry by changing her position.
"I don't care if you're Pablo Picasso," she adds. "If you're rude, I won't model for you."
"There has been a long history of artist models being seen just as objects, and that extends to how they're treated," said model Jeff Nygaard, 47.
Years ago, it was not uncommon for college art classes to have open doors and no assurance that people weren't peering in or even wandering in to gawk.
Then Cynthia Amendt and other senior models started insisting on professional treatment. They negotiated higher pay — up from $4.40 an hour in 1977 when Amendt started modeling locally, to $10 to $20 an hour today. And they insisted that studios be closed to anyone but students and instructors. An etiquette of respect was mandated.
"The models are giving something to the students that they couldn't get in any other way," said Howard Quednau, who chairs the Minneapolis College of Art and Design's Fine Arts Department.
"It really is a gift. I'm not sure the students necessarily appreciate that."
The human body is perhaps the most compelling of any artistic subject, he said. It is also among the most difficult to capture, with its complex mix of muscle, sinew, bone and spirit.
"It's easy to fall into the idea of the model as just another prop," Quednau said. So, early in each life drawing class, he asks students to assume a strenuous pose while he tells them which muscles they're using. He has them hold the pose until it hurts.
"I don't want my students ever to lose track of the fact that the model is an individual person."
It is warm in the studio and although she is naked, Gherity has a film of sweat on her brow. She thinks about the last song she heard on the radio, the heat and the man in the white hat.