Star Tribune
Rochester artist preserves Minnesota drag queen history through portrait series
ROCHESTER – It took more than 220 hours to properly convey Sidonia Dudval on canvas.
In her portrait, Dudval lounges on a luxurious ottoman inside a Hollywood-style mansion — the kind of elegant atmosphere Dudval embodies at drag shows throughout southeast Minnesota.
Artist Joseph Alexander captured Dudval’s vibe as part of his portrait series, “The Grand Drag Legacy of Southeastern Minnesota.” The five portraits are on display at the Historic Chateau Theatre in Rochester to honor pioneers of the region’s modern drag scene.
“Not only is drag culture being remembered but there’s a reason to remember them and who they were,” Alexander said.
Alexander has attended drag shows in Rochester since the 1990s, when performers like Dudval and Anita Tiara started consistent events. Dudval is the founder of the Rochester Girls shows while Tiara has hosted drag queen bingo fundraisers for years.
Both are longtime pageant winners and have a history of the area’s drag scene that wouldn’t be preserved without this kind of attention, Alexander said.
He started the series a year and a half ago, setting up photo sessions with each queen. After taking hundreds of photos of each performer in numerous outfits, he put together backgrounds that brought out each queen’s personality. He then built each portrait’s canvas, followed by painting each queen’s likeness.
Alexander selected queens from a variety of genres, from elegant performers like Dudval and Tiara to campy Gosh Alice Johns, along with the flashy Allota Shots and Jayda Cline. Each has performed in the area for years and has played a part in expanding drag in Rochester.
Drag has come under fire over the past few years, with some performers across the state subject to fierce debate and protests. Yet Minnesota has had drag performances for decades.
There were popular “womanless wedding” revues at the turn of the 20th century where an all-male cast performed comedic wedding scenes for school and church fundraisers. Shows were done from Worthington to Lanesboro to the Twin Cities.
The performers included in Alexander’s series say it’s an honor to be portrayed, a validation of the work they’ve put in.
“Drag has really thrived in Rochester for the last 25 years,” said Bob Werner, who portrays Tiara. “I don’t think that’s very common in most towns of 100,000 people.”
Darren Wendt, who portrays Dudval, said the portrait series was a little bittersweet. He was close friends with drag queen Celeste DeVille, who died in 2000 in a car accident. Wendt credits DeVille with kickstarting drag events in Rochester.
“She was kind of the anchor,” Wendt said. “I wish Celeste was here because if her portrait was in it, it would be the staple. But I guess having Sidonia there, my portrait there, it’s kind of like the history is still there because Celeste is always part of me.”
“The Grand Drag Legacy” opened Aug. 13 and will be on display until early November. Alexander said he plans to hold talks and artist forums that include the queens, along with a closing ceremony where all the queens will come together.
He’s already hard at work on his next project: another portrait series, this time featuring prominent Minnesota LGBTQ advocates over the years.
Alexander is already taking photos of Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins. He plans to include First Nations advocates as well as leaders some may not have heard of before.
“They’ve been so important in your life if you’re queer in Minnesota,” Alexander said. “There’s [some] who people will not ever know who they are except for something like this.”
“I honestly think he used to understand how tariffs work,” Cuban said. “Back in the 90s and early 2000s, he was a little bit coherent when he talked about trade policy and he actually made a little bit of sense. But I don’t know what happened to him.”
Speaking in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, pushed back against the Harris campaign’s claims that tariffs would hurt the economy. Vance described the tariffs as a way of discouraging imports and boosting American manufacturing.
“If you are a business, and you rely on foreign slave labor at $3 a day, the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to say, if you want to bring that product made by slave labor back into the United States of America, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you get it back into our country,” Vance said.
Back in Wisconsin, Amara Marshell, freshman at UW-La Crosse, said she showed up to support Harris because she is concerned about what a second Trump presidency could mean for reproductive rights. Like her friend, sophomore Avery Black, Marshell is also excited about the possibility of electing the nation’s first female president.
“Women deserve to have power over their own bodies,” Marshell said. “We shouldn’t have to not be able to get an abortion just because of a president.”
Mary Holman, an 80-year-old retiree from Fort Atkinson, Wis., said she hasn’t been to a rally since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. But Holman said she decided to get off the sidelines this cycle because she views the election as a fight to preserve democracy.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.
The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.
“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.
Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.
This all can trim for print: The properties include:
40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000
44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000
1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000
Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.
This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.
On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.
Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”
“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.
Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”
“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.
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