Advertisement
Advertisement
Tabboo!: I moved to New York City in the summer of 1982, meaning "Manhattan." I was a big drinker back then, living in a dumpy old-age home known as the Homo Hilton, drinking Manhattans, working at dead-end jobs, yet still making out an artist's life. What little money was left after my frequent trips to the liquor store was spent on art supplies! I was always painting away and "doing shows." With my friend Pat Hearn and her new French husband, we were performing in a sort of no-wave band called Wild and Wonderful. We figured are chances were better if we headed to the Big Apple. Pat found a loft for rent (way over our collected budget), so within a month we split up and I ended up in a big, bright, sunny six-room tenement dump off of Avenue C. So many years later, I'm still here, painting away!
Advertisement
Tabboo!: The very first day of getting to New York, I ran into Anne Craig and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and they said come do a show at the Pyramid! So it was off to the races from the very start. Wild and Wonderful did shows at the Mudd Club, CBGB, and Club 57, but those clubs were far past their prime. The Pyramid was exploding. As fate would have it, it was just a few blocks from my apartment-studio.Jimmy Paul: A friend of mine from the Pittsburgh scene was working at the Pyramid Club doing lights. I heard he was working there, and I also heard they had drag queens dancing on the bar. He got me a job there when I was very new in town. It was the beginning of my new life.What was the transformation like to get to become this drag persona?
Tabboo!: As far as trans-forming into Tabboo!, with the safety of having big, strapping doormen to protect me from being fag-bashed, kicking around on five-and-a-half-inch patent leather pumps for an appreciative audience, not to mention money at the end of the stick, it was no problem at all. As a child, I was always getting told, "Stop flitting around the house and take off that ridiculous outfit." Drag was freeing, fun, and there was a huge community of like-minded souls!
Advertisement
Tabboo!: The old-school queens seemed to always be "doing" a famous diva: Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Judy, Liza. So, of course, they lip-synced. The greats could actually create the voices like Craig Russell, Jim Bailey, and Jimmy James. All the queens I knew were just into jumping into drag to be themselves. Once the lashes were on… HELLO!Jimmy Paul: I never really thought about the previous drag performers who did traditional female impersonation. I never aspired to that. I much more related to the Warhol queens and glitter rockers: Candy Darling, Bowie, the New York Dolls. What were the bands like that you played in?
Tabboo!: Fuckin' Barbies was sort of like the group Pylon. We played with toy instruments and banged on metal folding chairs and other found objects. Our two "hit" songs were: "She Never Had Eyebrows, She Painted Them In" and a cover version of the That Girl TV theme song. By the way, Jack Pierson was in that group with me, and we were all in drag. There were real girls, too. Seven of us.
Advertisement
Tabboo!: Well, I would say every single person I knew in the 80s and into the mid 90s—I dropped out of the drag scene around then, 20 years ago—was a drag queen or at least did it now and then. Yes, it influenced everything. I still refer to everyone as "she." When I met my first queens as a teenager in the gay bars, I couldn't get enough of the wild lingo, the gestures, the history. I gobbled it up with a passion. The gay world seems so conservative now, everyone wanting to blend in. We were the opposite—children of Bowie and T. Rex and International Chrysis.Jimmy Paul: I didn't realize it at the time, but drag was edgy then. Without trying, we were ahead of the curve. Still, I was burning out fast. I was in a few bands, but I didn't feel like it was going anywhere. At the same time, [designer Stephen] Sprouse exploded on the fashion scene. Teri Toye [one of the first openly transgender models] was around. I always loved fashion, but this was happening right alongside all the stuff we were apart of. I saw a place for myself there.
Advertisement
Tabboo!: Well, they're both two different art forms. When I was doing those ads for a drag club, of course I drew cartoon queens. That was the job. On the other hand, my paintings have always been more realistic and the form and content more classic. Still lives of little setups I do around the house with house plants and figurines, flowers in vases (imagined or real), portraits of friends, landscapes, all on stretched Belgian linen, with me doing all the work myself, old school. I haven't done drag in decades, but people never get tired of bringing it up!You have this presentation coming up at the Outsider Art Fair. Do you identify with the term "outsider artist"?
Tabboo!: Call me what you want, but just call me.Follow Whitney on Twitter.