With his high school friends, Mundt found a “safe space,” full of likeminded people, at cosplay conventions, which also aided self-discovery. Utica’s take on the curtains-inspired dress worn by Carol Burnett “I just love the way that these female comedians are just 100% themselves,” he says. But reruns featuring Carol Burnett and Lucille Ball resonated with him-the oddball, the goofy kid. “I didn’t grow up with a lot of money or a lot of access to luxuries like public television,” he says. “I always wanted to build something,” he says, “or just act something out, or be creative in some regard.”Īround this time, two major inspirations showed up on his grandma’s old black-and-white TV. He would walk around outside in a “choose-your-own-adventure” headspace, listening to his CD player, building rock forts in the woods. “My older brothers were always together playing, and they were in a band,” he recalls, “and then my little sister came along, and it was her getting all the attention from my family.” If he wanted to go to a friend’s house, his parents would have to drive him, “so it was always a second option.” Instead, he became his own muse, his own entertainment. Here, surrounded by animals and the wide-open spaces of farmland, Mundt began to burrow into his imagination early on. To find the hidden well of inspiration from which Utica appeared to pull inspiration on Drag Race, we must return to the “homespun little universe” of Ethan Mundt’s childhood. “The exhibit can offer an escape, but also offers a sense of home.” “Cathedral” “I grew up in a home that was loving and kind, but it was also very stifling toward my creativity-just, you know, being free,” he says. To that end, Mundt wants the exhibit to empower other queer kids who may find their situations constricting. “I feel like not a lot of little queer kids get that opportunity.” “Being able to go out and do this work, and then have my hometown still celebrate me for who I am and how I’ve changed and how I’ve grown … is a gift,” he says, adding that he still feels like a small-town kid. Then there’s the beastly, fur-fringed number that accompanied a sinister interpretation of the Black-Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.” And, of course, there’s the sleeping-bag gown, “a staple of the exhibit.”īut the “cornerstone” ensembles, Mundt says, channel a creative energy that exceeds the show. The exhibit also includes original design sketches and a 10-minute film about his creative process.įans of the show will recognize a few pieces: There’s the Carol Burnett–inspired, draped-in-curtains confection that will be hoisted high in the art center’s atrium. Titled Homecoming Queen, it unspools Utica’s story through a painstaking curation of outfits that Mundt, now 26, crafted after leaving home-an odyssey that tested his technical prowess at Hamline University and sharpened his performance chops at Minneapolis venues like Union and Lush. Utica’s breakout moment on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” came in the form of her “Sleeping Bag” gown Running until April 3, the show takes place at the Rochester Art Center, roughly 30 miles west of the town of Utica. 4, he launches a 4,000-square-foot exhibit of 20 garments. “I wanted to pay homage to all of the love and the spirits that I got from my little small town,” he tells me by phone. Seven months since the season finale, wherein Utica came in sixth out of 13, Mundt is now making a case for the creative fecundity of one’s provenance. (And, critical to fans of the show, she could actually sew.) At times cartoonish, at times statuesque, Utica had either emerged from a Renaissance fresco or popped out of a panel in the Sunday funnies-or both. Her breakout moment arrived in a sleeping bag that she tailored to fan out in breathtaking Björk-ery. For the many hundreds of thousands of viewers this past winter, Utica gave Drag Race a kaleidoscopic twist as the season’s most fantastical “look queen.” She held her own alongside the season’s other two aesthetic titans, both from Los Angeles (a polished club-kid punk and a Vogue-ready catwalk storyteller). Tall and lanky, Utica was proudly kooky, a self-described “wacky waving inflatable-arm tube queen.” “Cowgirl”īut any “aw, shucks” narrative would prove misleading. In a promotional clip that aired before the show’s debut, Utica talked about her “hometowniness” and her “lovely farm goobers” (cows, chickens, cats). (Note: While using “she/her” pronouns in drag, Mundt uses “he/him” out of drag.) Mundt even took his drag persona’s name from this offshoot of a place between Rochester and Winona: Utica, Minn., whose population numbers fewer than 300. Utica Queen, then 25, regularly performed in Minneapolis, but Utica’s creator-the maestro behind the makeup, Ethan Mundt-had grown up on a farm about two hours southeast.
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