We recently connected with Cassandra Harner and have shared our conversation below.

Cassandra, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The first and only grant I’ve ever received (so far) was for a project called “Peek-a-Booth.” I received the Urgent Art Fund from SPACES in Cleveland for $4000. I didn’t apply for that grant originally but SPACES had a feedback session and encouraged me to apply to their other grant, due the very next day. I didn’t really see my work as “urgent” but a lot of applying to opportunities is simply about being convincing enough. I had to convince myself that this project was urgent enough to pitch to the grant, and do it overnight, but it worked.

The “Peek-a-Booth” is a pop up performance art vending machine, an idea that I had for a long time that finally came to life with the help of a small team of friends, the Urgent Art Fund, and Ingenuity Festival here in Cleveland. The Booth is a hexagonal wooden structure with a performer inside, behind a one-way mirror window. There are six buttons, and the performer has prepared a menu corresponding to each button. The viewer inserts tokens that activate the Booth, and the viewer can select a button from the menu, which turns on the lights and sounds inside the Booth for the performer to begin the action the viewer chose. Performers keep the profits of their tokens, with a percentage going back into the Booth. The structure is COVID safe, because it’s separating the performer and the viewer behind plexiglass, and only two viewers are allowed in at a time. The project is like a peep show, which is the predecessor for webcam modeling. It’s mysterious and enticing to the viewer, and a level of intimacy that is a rare experience. It’s a priority for me as an artist to center queer performers, and through these references to sex work, hope to destigmatize the art form.

This was also a project where I was the creator and producer, rather than a performer. There may come a time where I perform in the Booth myself, but for now, I facilitate its operation. I hired a programmer and a builder, got the help of some generous volunteers, and booked all the talent, and trained them for the events. My next path for the Booth would be to take it on tour to new cities. This project is so meaningful for me because it has such promise to expand and improve, but as it is now, it’s complete. It’s the most satisfying thing to see a wild, ambitious idea, something you say to yourself, “Wouldn’t that be cool?” and then to make it happen to full completion.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve described myself as “pretty good at everything, not really good at anything.” I’ve since stopped selling myself short like this, but it’s still a challenge distilling what I do and who I am in one go. So, I’ll focus on what I find most fulfilling to me.

I am a drag artist. I didn’t think drag was something I was allowed to do, first because I grew up Christian. But even after I identified as queer, I didn’t think drag was for me, because I was assigned female at birth. Luckily, here in Cleveland, there are so many supportive drag artists and other AFAB drag queens and kings, that I am able to succeed and be a part of an ever-expanding community of queer talent.

Drag didn’t come completely out of the blue, though. I’ve done performance art and video art since college, got my BFA in Digital Art from Indiana University, and created a character named “Kay-T Critiques” in 2014. Kay-T I would describe as my “proto-drag,” but my drag name now is Dusty Bucket. @dvstybvcket
Dusty Bucket won Master of Amazement from Ohio Burlypicks in 2020, headlined a few drag and burlesque shows around the state, and is a featured artist at Austin International Drag Festival this year (2023).

Outside of drag, I produce events including “Berghain’t” @berghaint (a spoof on the Berlin techno club Berghain), and Sapphic Night. I created and produced the Peek-a-Booth, @thepeekabooth, and I created & produced my first feature-length film “Elsewhere” with my collaborator Kristal Mills, that debuted January 2023. Other projects we have collaborated on include “I’m Just Playing” and “Wonderlanding.” These pieces are part drag show, part theater, part installation. “I’m Just Playing” features Kris as a little girl speaking live into a microphone, while I am a Barbie doll, lip-syncing to a mix of popular songs. “Wonderlanding” is a black light macabre adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, where I am the Queen of Hearts that chops off Alice’s head, and the black light hides and reveals bodies in such a way that creates an illusion of Alice holding her decapitated head while dancing on stage.

I’ve identified primarily as a performer (rather than a portrait artist, videographer, graphic designer, etc) now that I’ve been doing drag as Dusty Bucket for five years. Drag is an art form that is still very much marginalized, misunderstood, and in many places, endangered. There’s been a vicious backlash recently with drag, and many groups are threatening not only the art of drag, but the expression of any nonconforming gender in public. It’s my priority as an artist to elevate the art of drag as it deserves to be recognized. It has a long history and tradition, and is not merely sidelined to nightclubs or hiding in seedy underground parties. I have exhibited in nightclubs of course, but also in a theater, in an art museum, in a shipping container, at an art residency, at a library, at a fringe performing arts festival, in a gallery, at a pride festival, in a taco restaurant, in a storefront window display, at a fundraiser, at an all-ages / children’s event, and on the internet. I perform as well as give lectures and educate on the art and history of drag.

There is no limit to what drag can do, and who can do drag. The thing that sets me apart has to do with the way I do not compromise my artistic voice. I don’t think being “assigned female at birth” should set me apart as a drag artist, but I can’t avoid the fact that even in queer spaces, AFAB drag artists are not given the same opportunities as AMAB entertainers. But even further, my drag doesn’t always fit in the mainstream drag event, like a brunch or a pageant. My mixes are long and referential, have many layers and reveals, and tell a story. The refusal to be categorized also means that it can be hard to access a lot of art and entertainment spaces, or to be taken seriously by the wider world. But I am massively proud of all I have accomplished, and I want to continue to access more outlandish spaces, spaces with more money, spaces with all types of audiences with different expectations. I demand to take up more space, and I’m taking my community with me. I dare some bigoted extremist to cut the power to my neighborhood to try and stop me. We as artists, we as queer people, thrive no matter what.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think even creatives struggle with the mindset: “but how are you going to make any money?” I’ve been told that I need to grow up, join the “real” world, get a “real” job. I want to be transparent; I’m only able to live the way that I do because my girlfriend bought the house we live in. If I had to pay rent, my life would look entirely different. Instead, I freelance. I hustle. I gig. I work part time at five different little “fake gay jobs,” and I come home and find out where else I can put my art, where else I can apply to exhibit, what other grants and residencies I can apply for, how I can make a new outfit with materials I’ve never used, how I can make a new audio mix or video or commercial.

I feel like I’m always and never working. I don’t think I have hobbies. What I like to do is also something I take seriously and will advance my career. But, yeah, most of the time, I do not make money. Even when I produce a successful event, or get great tips at a show, it goes to the people I hired first, and the rest goes right back into supplies, transportation, application fees. Maybe I have $10 left for kimbap at the Korean restaurant.

I really enjoyed taking, and then facilitating, the “Making Your Life as an Artist” course by Andrew Simonet. There are exercises and readings that are really encouraging and challenge me to think critically about my long-term goals. I used to think, forget a five-year plan, I have to make it to the next month! But I’ve been able to return to those same exercises from a year or more ago and see how far I’ve come and reorient to my goals and recognize that what I do is, in fact, a career. My value as an artist and as a human being does not relate to the money I make. It has much more to do with how I feel fulfilled by my accomplishments.

A jarring thing I heard from a collaborator recently was, “This was supposed to be fun!” We were having a big disagreement, and this statement caught me off guard. Yes, art can be fun, but art is also a job–several different jobs, if we’re counting–that I take seriously. I have to do the grinding, the slog, the detail work, the follow up emails, the paperwork, the research, the writing, the budgeting. If all you expect from creatives is that we are goofing off and having fun, it undermines how hard we work with fewer resources, less money, and less time, than say, a project manager making a salary somewhere.

We can’t separate “real” jobs and “fake” jobs based on salaries, or the fact that creative work seems like more fun so it can’t be real. We are in such a toxic culture around work, value, and labor. “Making Your Life as an Artist” was a great source of affirmation that creative work is important, and we are capable, responsible, and hardworking. Now, I hope to advocate for myself better and set an example for other artists too, to demand what we are worth, and also defend our right to rest.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I’m a big picture thinker, so I like trying to justify everything I’ve ever done in some grandiose narrative. It feels like a stretch, but I think a lot of artmaking is subconscious, can predict the future, or reveal something about yourself you had no idea about. Why did that happen, why did I do it that way? Sometimes you don’t find out for years.

The most important ingredient to what I am making is humor. Defending my work in school during critique when it was funny was a challenge that became Kay-T Critiques, who became my thesis. Some MFA students don’t share the “this is supposed to be fun!” perspective on artmaking.

I say in my artist statement that the pillars holding my practice aloft are humor and camp. They aren’t synonymous, but they are intertwined. Kay-T sometimes accidentally makes a great point but is so outrageous that we’re all unsure what the difference is between stupid and smart, or good and bad art. I love that. Have you ever seen The Room? Or the movie Troll 2? The apparent effortlessness of something being so bad it’s good is delicious. I want to harness that kind of power, and: that’s camp. Luckily, according to Susan Sontag, camp belongs to gay people, and I am in fact, gay. I’m drawn to camp because it wields humor but also has this complex relationship to earnestness and self-awareness. Is Tommy Wiseau self-aware? We will never know. Fascinating. Is Lady Gaga self-aware? As far as I can tell. They are both gods of camp and inspiration to me.

I want to tell a story, and sometimes that story is painful, but humor is the cheese that I’m wrapping around a bitter pill to entice you (a good dog) to eat it. My creative journey is something I take seriously, but it’s far from being “serious.” Yes, it is fun! At least the parts that you get to see. You can trust me!

Even the performances that are scary or dramatic, or even vulnerable, have moments of humor. Well, those performances have an even greater necessity for humor. The way I relate to my own emotions by both rolling my eyes at them and feeling them to their fullest extent is camp, and then with those emotions I make a drag mix about every toxic mother in modern film. All the gays in the audience can recite the Mommy Dearest monologue “no wire hangers!” with me and laugh for some reason, but then minutes later cry along to Laurie Anderson singing “So hold me, Mom in your long arms” from O Superman. I think we could only feel comfortable crying together if they trusted me first, and I earn their trust with laughter.

Is there a goal? Have I answered the question? I’m justifying this wandering answer because it’s a metaphor for my creative journey. Sometimes I know the goal and sometimes I don’t. I spent months editing the film “Elsewhere” watching it what feels like hundreds of times. Then, only after it was finally finished, I saw it in a whole new way, that it was telling our story all along, predicting the future of our relationship as collaborators. One goal of my creative journey is to understand myself and for others to understand me, but that feels like every artist’s journey, and makes me feel unoriginal, which is devastating and lame. Of course, collaboration and uplifting my fellow queer artists is a priority and a mission of my practice, but then that feels self-congratulatory and martyr-ific. The oversimplified answer is I want to make people laugh with furrowed brows. I want people to go back and watch what just happened again and again and get something different each time. I want people to never know what to expect and think that it was the coolest thing they saw all night, all month, or ever. Talk about self-indulgent. I dare you to name an artist that isn’t self-indulgent.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.charnerart.com
• Instagram: @dvstybvcket
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandraharner/

Image Credits
Bridget Caswell Max Torres Steve Wagner Phoenix Rahmani