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John Musser, left, performs as Veronica Bleaus with Scott Andrew, a multimedia artist and CMU professor, during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club in August.
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Bloomfield Garden Club puts eclectic artists on a backyard stage

Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette

Bloomfield Garden Club puts eclectic artists on a backyard stage

Drag diva Veronica Bleaus (John Musser) arrives in a Bloomfield backyard on the bed of a silver Toyota Tacoma. Scott Andrew, a multimedia artist and longtime collaborator, turns on a hose. 

“John is desperately trying to perform while I am essentially hosing him down,” explains Andrew, who teaches animation and video at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. “We don’t really take ourselves too seriously when we’re working together.”

Neither does the outdoor salon called the Bloomfield Garden Club.

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In three more performances on Tuesday, Thursday and Oct. 18, artists of various disciplines will entertain audiences of less than a dozen people who stay physically distanced while gathering in a Squirrel Hill backyard. Tina Dillman, founder of TD Projects, organized the live entertainment series that began in August. When the series began, August performances were held in Bloomfield; in September, artists appeared in Braddock.

The three final shows will include Andrew with dancer Jesse Factor, creator of “Mommie Queerest,” and Madame Christiane Dolores with an art installation. Also taking the grassy stage again will be Elizabeth “Betty” Asche Douglas, an art gallery owner and vocalist who scats and sings while Rex Trimm, a gifted glass artist, performs on his saxophone. Naomi Chambers, who also appeared in August, sculpts her daughter’s discarded clothes, toys and rhinestones into art. Shows run 6-8 p.m. weekdays and 3-5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets, $25, are available at tinadillman.com/the-bloomfield-garden-club

Earlier this summer, Veronica Bleaus and Andrew sang a 10-minute musical mash-up of pop songs about the seductive but destructive nature of rain as Andrew’s hose blasted away dirt and makeup.

Musser grew up in Crafton and has been performing drag with visual artists for the past 15 years. As Veronica, he and Andrew staged “The Diva Saga: The Legend of the Worst Drag Queen at Washington College” in Chestertown, Md., last year. Musser also curated an art exhibition, “In Her Closet — How to Make a Drag Queen,” at the Spurlock Museum in Urbana, Ill.

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Live performances and art exhibitions dovetail with Musser’s academic career at Pitt, where he teaches a course on sex and race in pop culture. He earned a doctorate in English last year from the University of Illinois.

When Andrew is not teaching animation and video, he’s performing or exhibiting artwork at The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side, the Institute for New Feeling at the Museum of Modern Art’s PopRally in New York City, Ballroom Marfa in Marfa, Texas, or the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. He works in queer-oriented video, installation and performance.

The pair were regular performers at Brillobox, a Bloomfield bar that presented live music for 15 years before closing in August.

“Scott was involved with Open Thread, a regional arts organization and literary arts publication. He would develop a vido project. He would need a drag queen. We developed a good working relationship,” Musser said, adding that creating his Veronica persona took time.

Laughing at himself and letting go of the need to be a “pretty performer” helped him make audiences laugh, he said.

“I really struggled. I might not have even been that good. The more I learned about camp and the deep cuts of gay culture, I learned to run with it or make that part of a joke. I became a better performer.”

As a Pitt student, Musser said he staged impromptu “pleasurable chaos.”

“My drag sister and I used to do drive-by drag. We’d show up in public with a boom box, play music and perform on a street in Downtown, or on Walnut Street in Shadyside.”

Bloomfield Garden Club audiences are “highly amused to somewhat bewildered, which is exactly what we tend to shoot for,” Musser said. “A lot of queens are streaming their performances in their living room or dressing room. I’m glad I had a chance to do something experimental with Tina’s project and still be socially responsible.”

For the comedy sketch, Andrew said, “We were trying to respond to this fear of the virus, the fear of the air around us.... We worked with water and mist to make the air movement around us a little more visible.”

“We were also wearing plastic see-through masks. For a drag queen, they’ve got to see your mouth,” said Andrew.

“I wanted to be able to do something in person again. There’s so much you can’t capture when a performance is being mediated. That’s what is really valuable to me.”

Douglas, who began learning the piano at age 5, said music has been a constant in her life, partly because her mother directed a church choir. A 1951 graduate of Carnegie Tech’s visual art program, she was two years behind Andy Warhol.

“I was the only African American there. He was the only poor white boy,” said Douglas, who owns the Douglas Art Gallery in the Rochester, Beaver County. She has sung outside Con Alma, a Shadyside jazz club, so appearing in a backyard with Trimm is not a stretch, she said.

“I take a lot of liberties with songs. We always make up our own arrangements. He’ll do a chorus and I will scat. I do a lot of a cappella work as well.

“The audiences were very good. People were there because they love live music and they like to be on the avant-garde side in their taste,” Douglas said.

Chambers is the mother of a 4-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son. The painter and sculptor said she draws inspiration from found materials, including translucent pink plastic, her children’s discarded clothes, rhinestones, wood and glass.  She turned one of her daughter’s discarded vanities into a Black woman’s body, blinging it with plastic gemstones and rhinestones.

“It was a piece about exhaustion and trying to build strength and provide light during hard times as a Black mother and a Black woman,” Chambers said.

Marylynne Pitz: mpitz@post-gazette.com or on Twitter@mpitzpg 

Correction, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2020: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect location for the last three live performance.

First Published: October 11, 2020, 11:00 a.m.

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John Musser, left, performs as Veronica Bleaus with Scott Andrew, a multimedia artist and CMU professor, during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club in August.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
Elizabeth “Betty” Asche Douglas sings while Rex Trimm, a glass artist and musician, plays the saxophone during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
Artist Naomi Chambers poses with some of her work during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
Elizabeth “Betty” Asche Douglas sings while Rex Trimm plays the saxophone.on opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
Audience members listen and ask questions while artist Naomi Chambers talks about her work during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
Artist Naomi Chambers sits among some of her work while she talks to others about her art during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club on Aug. 18.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
John Musser performs as Veronica Bleaus with Scott Andrew, who is dressed as a construction worker, in August.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
John Musser performs as Veronica Bleaus with Scott Andrew, who is dressed as a construction worker, in August.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
John Musser performs as Veronica Bleaus with Scott Andrew, who is dressed as a construction worker, in August.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
John Musser performs as Veronica Bleaus during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club on Aug. 18.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
John Musser performs as Veronica Bleaus during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club on Aug. 18.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
John Musser performs as Veronica Bleaus with Scott Andrew during the opening night of the Bloomfield Garden Club in August.  (Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette)
Emily Matthews/Post-Gazette
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