Kings, queens, and in-betweens: the life and art of JoJo Baby

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Content KINGS, QUEENS, AND IN-BETWEENS: THE LIFE AND ART OF JOJO BABY
by
Robert Allen Brady Jr.
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(CURATORIAL PRACTICES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE)
May 2025
Copyright 2025 Robert Allen Brady Jr.

ii
DEDICATION
Thank you, JoJo Baby. You made this possible.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To my professors, Andy Campbell and Amelia Jones, thank you for your encouragement
and guidance throughout this process.
To my parents, I hope I made you proud.
To my chosen family, thank you for always believing in me.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………ii
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………................iii
List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….............vi
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………v
Introduction.……………………………………………………………………………….............1
Chapter 1: Drag & Its Place in Nightlife ………………………………………………………..12
Chapter 2: Greer & JoJo: Acts of Artistic Transmission………………………………………...22
Chapter 3: Conclusion: My Friend, JoJo………………………………………….......................31
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..34

v
ABSTRACT
This thesis is dedicated to examining the art and life of Chicago artist, JoJo Baby (b. 1971 – d.
2023). A doll-maker mentored by artist, Greer Lankton, they were one of the original Chicago
club-kids, as well as a club host, drag performer, and hairdresser. Baby played a crucial role in
Chicago’s vibrant and diverse LGBTQ+ nightlife scene for over three decades. As a friend of
Baby’s, the goals of this thesis are to relay the lineaments of their artistic and performative life
alongside my own experiences as a drag artist within the context of Chicago queer nightlife.

vi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Polaroids of JoJo Baby getting into drag, Chicago, 2001

vii
Figure 2: JoJo Baby showing their "Fruitcake" chest tattoo, undated

viii
Figure 3: JoJo Baby showing their "it" upper right arm tattoo, undated

ix
Figure 4: JoJo Baby showing their "Faggot" and "Lovechild" tattoos; screenshot from JoJo
Baby's Instagram, 2018

x
Figure 5: Poster of Clive Barker's documentary film, JoJo Baby: Without the Mask (2010)

xi
Figure 6: JoJo Baby at the age of fourteen, Chicago, 1985; posted on JoJo Baby’s Instagram on
March 25, 2021

xii
Figure 7: JoJo Baby in the early 1990s, Chicago; photo by Fred Burkhart

xiii
Figure 8: JoJo Baby and Sissy Spastik (me) hosting the reopening of Boom Boom Room at
Dolphin, Chicago, 2012

xiv
Figure 9: JoJo Baby as the "Ghost of Christmas Future" on the set of Scrooge and Marley, 2012

xv
Figure 10: Dolls of Sharon Needles (left) and Sasha (right) by JoJo Baby featured in Bjarne
Melgaard's installation, A New World, Luxembourg & Co. Gallery, New York, 2012

xvi
Figure 11: Bjarne Melgaard, A New World, Luxembourg & Co. Gallery, New York, 2012

xvii
Figure 12: JoJo Baby on the cover of Getting Into Face: 52 Mondays featuring JoJo Baby and
Sal-E; published in collaboration with photographer, Bernard Colbert, 2012

xviii
Figure 13: JoJo Baby's Drag Mother, Monica Munro, 1993 Miss Continental Pageant Winner,
Chicago

xix
Figure 14: Chilli Pepper (middle), winning the first Miss Continental Pageant, Chicago, 1980

xx
Figure 15: Madonna with The Baton Show Lounge performers, Chicago, 1990s

xxi
Figure 16: The Baton Show Lounge, Chicago, 1970s

xxii
Figure 17: Leopard Hair by JoJo Baby on Dennis Rodman, 1990s

xxiii
Figure 18: JoJo Baby on the Berlin Nightclub float in the Chicago Pride Parade; photo by Satori,
2013

xxiv
Figure 19: Sissy Spastik (me) painted by JoJo Baby, Berlin Nightclub, Chicago, 2013

xxv
Figure 20: JoJo Baby, Us Over; posted on JoJo Baby’s Instagram on February 8, 2020

xxvi
Figure 21: Sissy Spastik (me) and JoJo Baby at the Bowie Ball, Berlin Nightclub, Chicago, 2014

xxvii
Figure 22: JoJo Baby wearing their handmade, three-foot platform boots at Out Pride at the
Chicago History Museum, 2018

xxviii
Figure 23: JoJo Baby wearing their handmade Chewbacca costume, undated

xxix
Figure 24: JoJo Baby as Divine; photo by Satori, 2007

xxx
Figure 25: JoJo Baby as Divine; photo by Satori, 2007

xxxi
Figure 26: Sissy Spastik (me) and JoJo Baby hosting Boom Boom Room, Dolphin, Chicago
2013

xxxii
Figure 27: JoJo Baby performing "Really Rich Italian Satanists" by Dirty Sanchez, Hydrate
Nightclub, Chicago, 2013

xxxiii
Figure 28: JoJo's Closet at the Flat Iron Arts Building, Chicago; photo by Satori, 2008

xxxiv
Figure 29: JoJo Baby's "Trash" doll (wearing a mohawk), and "Panzy” doll (in black top hat),
JoJo's Closet, Flat Iron Arts Building, Chicago; photo by Satori, 2008

xxxv
Figure 30: JoJo Baby working on their Marilyn doll in their live-in arts studio, JoJo's Closet, Flat
Iron Arts Building, Chicago; photo by Satori, 2008

xxxvi
Figure 31: JoJo's Closet sign as displayed in the window of their live-in arts studio in the Flat
Iron Arts Building, Chicago; photo by Satori, undated

xxxvii
Figure 32: JoJo Baby and their brother Jay Jay, Chicago, 2014

xxxviii
Figure 33: JoJo Baby holding their dolls, Chicago, early 1990s; photo by Fred Burkhart

xxxix
Figure 34: Greer Lankton's "Hermaphroditic Deity" window display at The Alley, Chicago, early
1990s; The Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

xl
Figure 35: Greer Lankton, Self Portrait, pen and ink drawing on paper, 9" x 12,” 1975-1996; The
Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

xli
Figure 36: JoJo Baby, The Psychiatrist, pencil drawing on paper; posted on JoJo Baby’s
Instagram, February 1, 2022

xlii
Figure 37: JoJo Baby, Unfinished doll showing the armature (skeletal system) taught to them by
their mentor, Greer Lankton, undated

xliii
Figure 38: Screenshot of JoJo Baby's 10' Silky Jumbo doll in the Bullet Presents: JoJo Baby
documentary by Greg Stephen Reigh, 2015

xliv
Figure 39: Divine Doll in progress by JoJo Baby; posted on JoJo Baby's Instagram on July 17,
2017

xlv
Figure 40: Divine Doll (finished) by JoJo Baby, 2017

xlvi
Figure 41: Greer Lankton and JoJo Baby sitting at a restaurant table celebrating Lankton's 38th
and final birthday, April 21, 1996, Chicago; The Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory,
Pittsburgh

xlvii
Figure 42: Installation shot of archival photographs from The Greer Lankton Collection,
Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, featured in the Steep, Alter, Ritual exhibition, USC Roski Graduate
Gallery, Arts District, Los Angeles, 2024

xlviii
Figure 43: JoJo Baby in Greer Lankton's apartment, Chicago, 1994; The Greer Lankton
Collection, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

xlix
Figure 44: JoJo Baby, Portrait of Greer Lankton doll wearing her wedding dress, 1997-1998

l
Figure 45: Greer Lankton, "Love Me" doll, Chicago, 1990s; The Greer Lankton Collection,
Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

li
Figure 46: JoJo Baby, Diamanda Galás ("Love Me”) doll, unfinished; photo by Satori, 2008

lii
Figure 47: Greer Lankton, “Sissy” doll styled in four different ways, 1980s; The Greer Lankton
Collection, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

liii
Figure 48: Installation view of the 1995 Whitney Biennial Exhibition (Whitney Museum of
American Art, New York, March 15—June 25, 1995). Greer Lankton's dolls featured in the 1995
Whitney Biennial; From left to right: Oh, Hi Hon (God What a Mess); More Morphine He
Mumbled…; Blue Babe; and Candy Darling; The Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory,
Pittsburgh

liv
Figure 49: Installation shot of Greer Lankton's exhibition, It's All About ME, Not You (October
19, 1996-June 29, 1997); The Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

lv
Figure 50: Installation shot of JoJo Baby's exhibition, The Bandages are Off (January 6-February
25, 2023); Paris London Hong Kong Gallery, Chicago

lvi
Figure 51: JoJo Baby, Lazy Boyfriend doll (unfinished); posted on JoJo Baby’s Instagram,
January 27, 2023

lvii
Figure 52: JoJo Baby on the “Club Kids!” episode of The Jerry Springer Show, Chicago, early
1990s

lviii
Figure 53: JoJo Baby blowing a kiss to the camera on The Jenny Jones Show, Chicago, early
1990s; YouTube Video

lix
Figure 54: JoJo Baby (left) with club-kid Bobby Pins (right) at a Chicago Bulls basketball game,
Chicago, early 1990s

lx
Figure 55: JoJo Baby and Sissy Spastik (me); our last photograph together celebrating my move
to Los Angeles at Queen! at Smartbar, Chicago, September 20, 2015; photo by Erik M. Kommer

lxi
Figure 56: Sissy Spastik doll by JoJo Baby alongside a Polaroid of the dolls’ progression; posted
on JoJo Baby’s Instagram, January 27, 2023

1
INTRODUCTION
Documenting an artist’s life and oeuvre is a daunting task, as it can be difficult to
highlight and include all the things that made them an interesting and important artist. With this
comes the task of researching, and, if the artist is not well known, gathering their art and
archives. This can sometimes be impossible if the artist’s milieu was the underground—
alternative or non-traditional spaces. This is true of JoJo Baby, who is the key focus of this
thesis. Born on April 10, 1971, JoJo Baby was a doll-maker, club-kid, drag performer, and a
hairdresser. Known for decades as one of the original Chicago club-kids, they were a mentee of
the artist, Greer Lankton.
Throughout this thesis, I will be discussing JoJo Baby’s work as well as some of their
more personal aspects, because I knew Baby as an artist, and as a friend. Understanding Baby’s
work and life could be equally informative and transformative for queer people and for those
who venture out of the margins of society more broadly. Furthermore, the goals of this thesis are
to relay Baby’s artistic and performative life as a club-kid, artist, doll-maker, and hairdresser
alongside my own unique, firsthand experiences of being a drag artist and drag performer
alongside Baby within the Chicago queer nightlife scene [Fig. 1]. My writing strategy will
alternate between general and archival information about the history of drag and specific
information about Baby. Given my friendship and admiration of Baby, I am not in any way
objective. However, weaving in my own firsthand experiences of being a drag artist alongside
Baby’s, aims to illustrate how artists, either knowingly or unknowingly, pass down queer
lineage.
Utilizing their face and body to create art on themselves using makeup, wigs, costumes,
and also tattoos of homophobic slurs they’d been called over the years (“fruitcake,” “faggot,” in

2
the style of a Broadway marquee, “it,”—inspired by the Stephen King film, It (1990)—, and
“Tinker Bell,” inspired by the Disney character, and “lovechild”) [Fig. 2, 3, and 4]. These tattoos
were a way to honor their queerness and to prove to the world that they weren’t ashamed of
being gay. Their artistic role models were Jim Henson, Boy George, and Clive Barker. Indeed,
for Barker the feeling was mutual, as the artist and horror novelist produced a 2010 documentary
on Baby entitled, JoJo Baby: Without the Mask, giving an in-depth look into Baby’s creative
practice and personal life, living and working in their gallery space at the Flat Iron Arts Building
in the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago [Fig. 5].
About the film, Baby said: “My advice for my younger self would be to be nice to
everyone you meet because you never know how they’re going to help you in the future. My
friend Rusty Nails introduced me to Clive and changed my life. The film became part of some
collection about gay icons. I guess I’m a gay icon now?”1 Baby also had plugs in their ears
which they often used to amplify their drag looks. For twenty years, Baby, alongside their best
friend and fellow club-kid, Sal-E, hosted a weekly house music night dance party on Mondays,
“Boom Boom Room,” at the now defunct Green Dolphin club in Chicago. Up until their cancer
diagnosis in 2022, they hosted weekly every Sunday at Smart Bar’s “Queen!” house music night,
featuring DJ’s, Derrick Carter, Michael Serafini, and Garrett David. They died on March 14,
2023.
Considering JoJo Baby’s life and art brings forward a question: why is it important to
preserve queer legacies in art and archives? In Amelia Jones’ book, In Between Subjects: A
Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance, she relates how, throughout history, certain people
and communities were written off due to how little value their lives were given. She says, “these
1 Harry James Hanson and Devin Antheus, Legends of Drag (Abrams, 2022), 146.

3
narratives are also written to highlight the relationality of determinations of signification and
value, a relationality that (as we will see) itself might be said to be central to the development of
concepts of ‘queer’ and ‘performance’ or ‘performativity,’ and to how they work together.”2 As a
gay, queer-identifying person, I strongly agree with this argument because the treatment of
LGBTQ+ people throughout history has often been contingent upon the categorization of them
as other/othered. What’s more, Jones elaborates on the histories she traces, which are “partial,
conflicted, and recursive, overlapping rather than neatly linear,” stating further that, “they clearly
narrate ‘in between subjects’ – both subjects as in topics (queer, performative, performance) and
as in people (relational exchanges that shape what we call queer culture) – without finitude.”3
Jones admits, “to this end, the ruptures throughout the book narrating my personal engagement
with performances that I perform interpretively as queer remind us that the genealogy is always
what Foucault called ’disorderly and tattered,’ incomplete and admittedly partial.”4 In a similar
vein, and because of my own history as a mentee of Baby, I cannot feign an objective point of
view. Part of what marks this queer sense of relationality is an engagement of the personal,
which I hope functions to bring such performativity to the fore. Jones says that “performance or
performative modes of expression are often strategically chosen by people in Euro-American
cultures seeking to assert non-normative gender/sex identifications and registers of embodiment
– artists from the margins.”5 Similarly, Baby and I chose performance as primary modes of
expression. Queer people throughout history have always been on the margins, most of the time
2 Amelia Jones, In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance (New York and London:
Routledge, 2020), 3.
3 Ibid., 5.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.

4
not by choice, but due to mainstream society’s homophobia, ignorance, and lack of empathy for
those who are different. (JoJo Baby identified as genderfluid and used they/them/their pronouns).
In 2005, one of the most turbulent years of Baby’s life; they were diagnosed with HIV
and testicular cancer at the age of 34, and their mother, Joy Ann, died. Due to having HIV, Baby
took a daily cocktail of HIV medications including one of the first available, AZT, which
permanently caused their hands to shake. Baby was heavily involved in their communities,
including HIV+ communities and activism. With an interest in divinity growing up, Baby had
originally wanted to become a priest and sought to “give sermons with black lights and
puppets.”6 As a member of the Chicago chapter of the social justice advocacy organization,
Windy City Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Baby named themselves “Sister Mary Please,” and
helped raise funds for HIV/AIDS and other LGBTQ+ related causes.7 In 2014 when I was
diagnosed with HIV, they were the first person I disclosed my status to because they were the
only person I knew who was HIV+, so I knew they could empathize with my experience and
how terrified I was of thinking I was going to die.
Kicked out of the house for being gay at the age of fourteen by their father, Baby was
instantly drawn to the glitz and glamour of the Chicago nightlife scene where they instantly felt
accepted, forming a chosen family of the most glamorous drag queens and trans women at The
Baton Show Lounge [Fig. 6]. It was around this time when they became a club-kid, wearing
androgynous, outlandish makeup and costumes, and dabbling in what might normatively be
recognized as “drag.” Most of their outfits they would create and sew themselves. With
6 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 146. 7 The original chapter of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence was founded in San Francisco in 1979 by Ken Bunch
(Sister Vicious PHB), Fred Brungard (Sister Missionary Position), and Baruch Golden. There are chapters in most
major cities in the U.S. and abroad. The Sisters dress up in kitschy, Catholic nun attire and protest social injustices,
raise awareness and funds for HIV/AIDS causes, and promote love, acceptance, and inclusion within the
LGBTQIA+ community.

5
nightclubs playing a central role in Baby’s life, they used the many opportunities to showcase
their art of doll-making as part of their club-kid looks. Sometimes when hosting in drag sporting
a fabulous look, they would attach one of their handmade dolls, which they would name after
their close friends and past lovers, to their costume [Fig. 7].
Throughout JoJo Baby’s 30+ year career in the Chicago nightlife scene, they worked at
many bars and clubs catering to various straight and queer audiences, spaces such as: Shelter (the
first club they started working in at the age of fourteen), Red Dog, Debonair, Evil Olive, Green
Dolphin, Smart Bar, Sound Bar, Berlin Nightclub, Hydrate Nightclub, Foxy’s. The list could
easily go on. Many of these nightlife venues are now shuttered, but in 2012, JoJo Baby asked me
to host alongside them at their popular weekly house music night, “Boom Boom Room” [Fig. 8].
At the time I was brought on to host the weekly party, they were relaunching the night at the
same venue, Green Dolphin, where the venue’s name had just been changed to Dolphin. It was a
dream to be asked to host a weekly event with them, having looked up to them for so long.
Working alongside them, getting to learn of their past – both personal and professional, opened
my eyes to the infinite possibilities – both in and out of drag. 2012 proved to be a very successful
year for Baby. They played the role of the “ghost of Christmas future” wearing their own
handmade costume and three-feet-high platform boots in Scrooge and Marley, a film adaptation
of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol, told from a gay perspective, starring actor
Bruce Vilanch [Fig. 9].
That same year, Baby was commissioned by contemporary Norwegian artist, Bjarne
Melgaard, to make dolls for their installation, A New Novel, shown at the Luxembourg & Co.
gallery in New York City [Figs. 10 and 11]. The book, Getting Into Face: 52 Mondays featuring
JoJo Baby and Sal-E (also released in 2012) showcases JoJo Baby and their friend/collaborator,

6
Sal-E, showing off their incredible talents in makeup, hair, costume and overall transformation
and the art of drag as they got ready for their hosting gig at “Boom Boom Room” [Fig. 12]. It
was common practice for Baby and Sal-E to plan their looks for Boom Boom Room; they’d say
a word or theme and each of them would create a look based off of that. Everyone was always
excited to see what they’d look like, because they never failed to impress or shock.
Nightlife isn’t all glitz and glamour, though. One of the main ongoing issues working in
the nightlife scene as a club host or drag performer is the financial instability. Moreover, as I can
personally attest, unless you’re a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s hard to make a stable
living from doing drag. For seventeen years (1992-2009), Baby supported themselves by
working as a professional hairdresser at Milio’s Hair Studio in the Lakeview neighborhood in
Chicago (across the street from the now shuttered Berlin Nightclub).8 In addition, they relied on
their monthly Social Security Income (SSI) disability check from living with cancer and HIV.
The stipulations vary case by case on how SSI determines how much a person is eligible to earn
before they’re cut off. While I’m unaware of Baby’s financial specifics, I can infer that they
didn’t earn that much since they were still receiving monthly SSI benefits. Though, the money
they made from their art and drag gigs wasn’t extravagant, they used it to support their art by
purchasing things like doll-making materials, brushes, makeup, wigs, and fabric to make more
dolls and drag looks. Makeup is expensive and Baby used drug-store makeup and designer
makeup gifted to them by some of their friends. They used a Michael’s craft store paint brush to
apply their eye liner. Getting bookings for performance gigs was a bit difficult sometimes for
Baby since they were primarily known for being a club host. With the popularity of RuPaul’s
8 Carrie Maxwell, “PASSAGES: Visual Artist, Chicago Nightlife Scene Drag Performer Legend and Hairdresser
Jojo Baby,” Windy City Times, March 16, 2023, https://windycitytimes.com/2023/03/16/passages-visual-artistchicago-nightlife-scene-drag-performer-legend-and-hairdresser-jojo-baby/.

7
Drag Race (and due to the fact that they were older than the newer generation of drag artists),
they weren’t booked to perform as much as the other drag artists in the city. Baby confided in me
sometimes about being disappointed that some of the drag shows in Chicago wouldn’t book them
in shows, events, etc.
In Lucas Hilderbrand’s introduction in, The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of
Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After, he underscores the importance gay bars play in LGBTQ+
communities and the formation of such identities. The book, “focuses primarily on bars, but the
continuities in cultures and practices among bars, private clubs, speakeasies, cabarets, dance
clubs, parties, and sex clubs render precise legal distinctions between genres of venues to be of
limited importance in lived experience.”9 Upon reading this, I had a flashback to my years of
doing drag and performing at Berlin Nightclub in Chicago, which sadly closed after forty years
in November 2023. After performing in our weekly Saturday night drag show, my friends and I
would take the party outside and chat with friends and random strangers on the street. Although
it was a public space, it was a space where we all felt safe and seen, a place where we could
share and spill gossip. Bars in general, not just gay bars, Hildebrand says, are conceptualized as
“third places […] distinct from the home and the workplace that provide both the basis for
community and the celebration of it.”10 Bars are a gateway for many queer people to explore and
discover who they are, free from judgement, and for some, they are one of the only safe spaces
for them to exist. Gay bars and clubs continue to shutter today; many have closed due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, while other bar closures can partly, as Hilderbrand argues, be blamed on
“the internet, and hookup apps, gentrification and the straightening of gayborhoods, mainstream
9 Lucas Hilderbrand, The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2023), 2.
10 Ibid.

8
acceptance and assimilation of LGBTQ+ people, and younger generations’ disinterest in the
scene.”11 As with many societal struggles, bars that cater to queer people of color have been
impacted the most due to their patrons’ limited access to disposable income.12
In spite of bar closures, drag is alive and thriving (even as Republicans are using drag as
a justification to pass bills into law that attack the lives and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people). The
second chapter of Hilderbrand’s book lays out the history of drag and female impersonators in
Kansas City, Missouri at two venues: Jewel Box, marketed for straight people, and Colony Bar,
the go-to, oldest gay bar.13 These specific venues marketed crowds with specific language. For
example, female impersonator is a term used by those at the Jewel Box, and by an older
generation of performers. In Esther Newton’s 1979 book, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators
in America, she classifies female impersonators as “professional performers who receive a
regular salary for their specialized service: entertaining audiences. The specialty is defined by the
fact that its members are men who perform exclusively, or principally, in the social character of
women. The identity is of very great importance to impersonators. It marks them off from
‘freaks,’ ‘hustlers,’ the insane, and many other anomalous social types whose activities can in no
way be incorporated into the legitimate order of things.”14 Newton associates these terms with
professionalism and respectability of the female impersonator, and states, “there are four basic
types of female impersonators: dancing, singing, glamour, and comedy.”15 Today though, these
terms are skewed for many; how a drag performer might identify is specific to every individual.
In drag parlance, depending on my drag look, sometimes I liked to be called a club-kid if the
11 Ibid., 30-31.
12 Ibid., 31.
13 Ibid., 68-69. 14 Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979),
4.
15 Ibid, 43–44.

9
look was “androgynous”, meaning I was “blurring the lines of femininity and masculinity,”
rather than attempting to “pass” as a “female illusion,” in which case I preferred to be called a
drag queen. From my own association, depending on time and place, my identifications would
vary. Esther Newton defines a “drag queen” as someone who is “a homosexual male who often,
or habitually, dresses in female attire.”16 Today, the term “drag queen” is far more open to
interpretation, leaving the freedom to explore various facets of gender identity. The term “female
impersonator” has been traditionally attributed to cisgendered men who impersonate female
identities. Although many trans women identify with the term female impersonator, the term
varies widely depending on person to person.
Hilderbrand mentioned the term, “genderfuck,” a term I attached my style of drag to
sometimes when I would do a club-kid look.17 The term “genderfuck” is not used as much now,
but I do find some drag artists still using it today.18 At the end of the day, though, for me
personally, I didn’t really care what people called me as long as they called me by my drag
name, Sissy Spastik.19
Finally, the importance of archives within the LGBTQ+ community cannot be overstated.
Archives are vital in telling the stories of LGBTQ+ people which offers a glimpse of what life
was like for them at certain places and times in our world. Queer archives exist to resist
homophobia, transphobia, racism, and erasure while offering people the opportunity to research
people who were like them, and to allow others to see themselves represented. It’s important to
16 Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979),
100.
17 I view “genderfuck” to be when a drag artist isn’t trying to “pass” or be convincing as the male or female gender
but rather chooses to blur the gender binary spectrum in an attempt to critique and disrupt the traditional confines of
society’s limited views of gender and sexuality in regard to one’s own identity, visual presentation, and expression.
18 Hilderbrand, The Bars Are Ours, 71.
19 Sissy Spastik was my drag name inspired by actress Sissy Spacek when she played the taunted teen, Carrie, with
telekinetic powers in the movie, Carrie (1976).

10
understand that there is not one “queer experience;” it’s not homogenous. Every queer person is
different and has their own lived experience which affects how they navigate the world.
Questions I’m investigating surrounding the method of archiving in relation to Baby,
drag, and performance are: how do you archive or preserve a process like drag/drag
performance? Since it’s an ephemeral method of artmaking, does one need to be present to fully
experience it? In regard to Baby’s creative practice, not only did they use various mediums for
their doll-making, but they also used their literal body to make visual forms of art through the
use of drag (makeup, wigs, body shapers, nylons, high heels, costumes, etc.). Performance was
amplified through the use of a DJ, music, stage lights, etc. The ritual of getting into drag also
comes into play here. Every drag artist has their own unique process of how they get into drag in
relation to their emotional mindset, from the makeup and costume they will wear to the choice of
the music they will perform to; from the venue they will host/perform at to the crowd they will
perform for; and the method of transportation used to get there. Drag, for me, was about
transforming into something otherworldly, using various tools to create something new or
different, while combining my love of fashion and modeling into performing.
In Andy Campbell’s book, Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary
Art, he stresses that, “making archives more inclusive by expanding upon what could potentially
be considered an archive means that feminist and queer enframings of archives thus claim a kind
of radicality by centering performances of collecting, of reading and researching, or writing and
presenting as enunciative and connected acts.”20 With this being said, I find myself taking on the
role of a written archivist in a way, pulling the archives of my friend JoJo Baby from memory
(and thus the format of this thesis, which toggles between remembrance and research).
20 Andrew Campbell, Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art (Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 2020), 13.

11
Moreover, I think that underground queer artists and those who don’t have representation or
access to the mainstream/popular art scene are not often included in archives, perhaps due to
their limited notoriety, but also the stigmatization of certain art forms like performance and drag.
But it’s also due to the key issue of resources when it comes to who is in a position to have an
archive to begin with; if you’re not well off enough to be able to store archives, you won’t have
any, as was in JoJo Baby’s case.
Drag changed my life in so many ways, from the amazing drag artists I’ve met and
become friends with, to the many opportunities traveling to cities like Portland, San Francisco,
San Diego, and Los Angeles, to doing photoshoots with photographers like Sequoia
Emmanuelle, Magnus Hastings, and Jeremy Kost. I’ve been inspired to discuss my drag career
by queer scholars like Andy Campbell who’ve constantly encouraged me to not shy away from
it, because it’s a huge part of my own queer history that relates and brings forth a larger story of
my chosen family with JoJo Baby. There is also a therapeutic dimension to this project. Grieving
the death of my friend JoJo Baby has been difficult, but grieving through writing has helped me
to mourn their loss a bit more, while celebrating how my life has been forever impacted and
changed by their presence. While this is not a traditional chronological history of an artist, it is a
narrativization and a memorialization of an artist’s legacy and my way of making sense of such a
personal, painful loss, within both the art and queer communities.

12
CHAPTER 1: DRAG & ITS PLACE IN NIGHTLIFE
One core understanding of performance art emphasizes its ephemerality.21 With this
understanding, performance brings its own modalities in terms of how its viewers and
participants connect and interact with both the performance and the performer. Drag, like
performance art, is ephemeral in the sense that a drag artist typically creates a unique look and
performance for a specific time and place. Drag and performance art rely upon a person using
their body in order to transform their physical appearance for their artmaking. In this respect JoJo
Baby was the ultimate shapeshifter. Depending upon the theme of a drag show and contingent
upon how many performances they had to perform in one show, Baby would center their entire
makeup and costuming to fit one superb performance.
Typically, drag shows in local bars across the country and the world, drag artists will
routinely perform one to three “numbers” (usually coordinated with a particular song or audio
track) in one show. This also varies in relation to how many drag performers are in the show.
With all of the above taken into consideration, drag artists paint their makeup to fit each
performance considering the specific song or mix they’re performing.
Baby was a spiritual person; they believed in the afterlife, dreams, and magic. When
they’d get into drag, it was a ritual of what Baby always referred to as, “putting on the goddess.”
They had a beautiful altar set up in their studio where a stick of nag champa incense, thought by
Baby to cleanse negative energy and purify, was always burning, welcoming visitors to their
studio with its spicy and sweet scent. This was not the only way in which the spirituality of the
ritual of getting into drag was apparent in Baby’s habits. In Legends of Drag: Queens of a
21 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London ; New York: Routledge, 1993), 146.

13
Certain Age, Baby said, “I do a lot with ritual. I take baths to draw love to myself. I hang old
keys over my bed for good luck and protection.”22
Coming up in the Chicago club scene as a teenager in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
when they were in their early twenties, JoJo Baby, as described by those closest to them,
intuitively realized early on that there was something special about them and that they would be
hugely successful in the art, drag, and club scenes. In drag parlance, “you either have it or you
don’t,” and JoJo Baby had “it”—talent and personality—both things that can’t be bought.
Mentorship was key to JoJo Baby’s life in performance. As a teenager they were
mentored by some of the most legendary queens of Chicago’s The Baton Show Lounge such as
Monica Munro (Baby’s official drag mother), Chilli Pepper, Mimi Marks, and Sheri Payne [Figs.
13 and 14]. In, Legends of Drag, Baby reminisces about the time they asked to host their twentyfirst birthday at The Baton Show Lounge where they had been performing guest spots as a
teenager. Baby says, “they were shocked when I asked to host my twenty-first birthday there,” as
they’d assumed Baby was at least twenty-one since they had been performing there for a while.23
Given this, a mutual respect and admiration was developed through the love of drag,
performance, illusion, and creative expression revolving around a sisterhood formed among
Baby and The Baton Show Lounge performers. One of Baby’s most notable performances at The
Baton Show Lounge was performing and lip synching to Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots are Made
for Walkin’” while wearing “three-feet-high platforms on stage, holding onto the ceiling!”24
Baby also recalls doing “fishy” drag at the Baton Show Lounge [Fig. 15].25
22 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 147.
23 Ibid., 146. 24 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 146. 25 The term “fishy” is an old school drag term used to define queens who would get in drag to pass for a feminine,
traditional cisgender woman. Today, the term is outdated because of its insinuations referring to misogynist
stereotypes of women’s private parts.

14
The legendary history of The Baton Show Lounge, goes all the way back to 1969, when it
was founded by Jim Flint in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, the same year as the
Stonewall Inn uprisings in New York [Fig. 16]. Since then, it has seen changed locations within
Chicago and is now located in the Uptown neighborhood on the north side of the city. During the
time in which barbaric “cross-dressing” laws (also known as masquerade laws) made it illegal to
wear items of clothing of the opposite gender, in resistance of these laws, and others delimiting
the expression of LGBTQ+ lives, various uprisings ensued all over the country, primarily in Los
Angeles: Cooper Do-Nuts in 1958-59, The Black Cat Tavern in 1966, and The Patch in 1968.
The Baton Show Lounge was known locally for their annual Miss Continental Pageant,
instantiated in 1980, after Flint witnessed “discrimination among performers who took hormones
or had surgical enhancements at the Miss Gay America Pageant, he sought to create his own
pageant that would be an inclusive space for all female impersonators.”26
Within the Miss Continental Pageant where “contestants must have been born a
biological male and have reached the age of 21 by the start date of the National Pageant,” are
other pageants according to how contestants fall within certain categories, such as the Miss
Continental Plus Pageant where “contestants must weigh a minimum of 225 pounds to be
eligible to participate in the Plus Division.” Within the Miss Continental Elite Pageant,
“contestants must have been born a biological male and have reached the age of 45 by the start
date of the National Pageant,” while the requirements for the Mr. Continental Pageant say
“contestants must be male and must have been born a biological male and have reached the age
26 Jp Swenson and Marie Mendoza, “What’s the History of Drag Performance in Chicago? - WBEZ Chicago,”
WBEZ, March 30, 2023, https://www.wbez.org/curious-city/2023/03/30/whats-the-history-of-drag-performance-inchicago.

15
of 21 by the start date of the National Pageant.”27 Pageant competitions such as these were
created as an alternative to the traditionally heterosexual and cisgendered-focused Miss USA
pageant, and a place where LGBTQ+, queer, and femme-centered people could be celebrated.
Speaking from my own experience in the drag scene, I can attest that drag pageants are
different from drag shows in bars and clubs. Drag pageants are serious competitions where a
contestant is judged on various elements of their drag persona such as costume, makeup,
performance, and overall presentation. Drag pageants also cost money to participate because
contestants have to purchase gowns, costumes, jewelry, wigs, heels, and also hire backup dancers
and photographers. If a contestant is chosen as the winner, they are usually expected to be
community role models and must do specific kinds of community service. Pageants are scripted
and categorized – contestants are expected to perform more traditional drag such as lip-synch
performances and put a premium on the attributes of a certain form of femme presentation (i.e.,
big hair, expensive beaded gowns, and lots of chunky jewelry). Pageants are similar to drag balls
in the sense that they offer members of the LGBTQ+ community opportunities to be seen and
celebrated by their chosen family. Outside of these celebratory occasions, LGBTQ+ people
grapple with the exclusionary, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic society deeming them
unworthy of value and worth; and within the confines of such events, participants may
experience acceptance and adulation.
Whereas drag pageants usually consist of professional drag artists who rely solely on
drag to support themselves, a lot of drag artists also have to support themselves by working a day
job. In fact, Baby was a professional hairdresser for seventeen years at Milio’s Hair Studio
(1992-2009), in addition to their nightlife jobs of hosting and performing in drag. In the early
27 Continental Pageantry LLC, “Continental Pageantry,” Continentalpageantry.com, 2024,
https://www.continentalpageantry.com/.

16
1990s they started doing Dennis Rodman’s (of Chicago Bulls fame) hair. Of their best-known
looks were Rodman’s unforgettable leopard patterns [Fig. 17]. In a 2007 interview with 5
Magazine, Baby said, “I did his hair at his house. I’m sure people would have loved the picture
of this big, 7-foot-tall man bending over the bathtub with me behind him rinsing out his hair dye!
He would take me everywhere. I even went to Utah with him for the playoffs… I once was in an
elevator with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Larry Bird and Jordan said to me, ‘You’re the
one that does Dennis’ hair. My son wants hair like that.’ So, I offered him my card and he said
‘Uhh, no.’”28
In 2013, Baby was hired to do a Keith Haring inspired look for Berlin Nightclub’s Pride
float/festivities. They painted a bodysuit and their face in a Haring inspired print, as well as
wearing an enormous parachute worn as a dress on top of the Berlin Nightclub float [Fig. 18].
Viewing the parade from a friends’ apartment balcony, Baby looked incredible. Later that day
after the Pride parade, Baby and I hailed a pedicab to their place in Wicker Park so they could
get out of drag and then we went to a restaurant nearby. It was always interesting seeing people’s
reactions to Baby in drag because they often weren’t trying to pass for a female. They were
always some sort of other worldly character, but even so they were still approachable due to their
loving, positive personality. Seeing this, for a future Keith Haring inspired night during Pride
month, I was prompted to ask them if they’d paint my body like Keith Haring painted onto Grace
Jones for the movie, Vamp (1986). To my delight they said yes [Fig. 19]. Wearing only a red
wig, panties with butt pads, and high heels, Baby painted my entire body in Keith Haringinspired art. While in this look, I did a lip-synch performance to Grace Jones’ song, “I’m Not
28 Boogie McClarin, “JoJo Baby: The 5 Magazine Interview,” 5 Magazine, February 2, 2007,
https://5mag.net/features/jojo-baby-interview/.

17
Perfect (But I’m Perfect For You).” This was the most vulnerable I ever felt in drag due to being
almost completely naked.
Baby often painted their face with clown white makeup because it enabled them to
become an exaggerated character of themselves. In 2003, Baby had an uncredited part in the
film, Party Monster (which starred Macaulay Culkin, Seth Green, and Chloe Sevigny) and was
loosely based off of New York club-kid Michael Alig’s murder of Andre “Angel” Melendez. In
Legends of Drag, Baby discusses their involvement in the film: “Somebody from their crew
reached out to me and said, ‘We understand you’re a club-kid. Do you still have any of those
clothes?’ Baby responded, ‘I do, but it’s all made to fit me.’ To which the crew responded,
‘We’re getting you a plane ticket.’ Baby said, ‘It cost me $7,000 to ship all those clothes back
and forth. They never paid me, but I [got] an honorable mention at the end of the film.’”29
Within the dancefloors and walls of clubs and bars, generations of queer people have
found their chosen families, their partner/s, and even themselves. As time passes, bars and clubs
that once were havens and lifelines for queer folks also begin to dissipate. Thankfully, The Baton
Show Lounge in Chicago still proudly stands.30 In the last couple of years, nightlife communities
in cities like Chicago and San Francisco have suffered the loss of some of their most beloved
drag artists; in addition to Chicago losing JoJo Baby in March 2023, and San Francisco lost
Heklina just one month later. Moreover, Chicago’s thriving queer nightlife scene took a huge hit
in November 2023 when Berlin Nightclub shuttered just eight months after their death. Berlin
Nightclub was one of JoJo Baby’s favorite venues they hosted and performed at.
29 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 144.
30 The Baton Show Lounge, “The Baton Show Lounge - about Us,” Thebatonshowlounge.com, 2024,
https://www.thebatonshowlounge.com/about-us.

18
Much like their doll-making practice (which I will dive into further detail about in the
next section), their drag practice was about telling a visual story about life experiences we can all
identify with – breakup, love, death, etc. Baby used props such as Russell Stover valentine
chocolate heart boxes, which also appeared in their art. On an Instagram video post from
February 8, 2020, they wrote, “whenever I break up with someone, I take a Russell Stover box of
chocolate, and I eat the chocolate thinking about them. Then, I damage the box of how I think
they damaged me, redding out some of the letters in Russell Stover to [spell] ‘us over” [Fig. 20].
In a video interview from 2021, Baby said, “Some of the chocolate boxes have knives, arrows,
and bullet shots in them.”31 Baby’s performances were never repeated; they always performed
different songs and did different looks for every performance. Once, they handmade and wore a
piñata costume while performing a lip-synch to Sia’s “chandelier” song, which was an exciting
and whimsical performance.
32 At a David Bowie themed party at Berlin Nightclub, Baby,
dressed in their David Bowie Aladdin Sane album cover inspired makeup, and wearing their selfmade eighteenth-century inspired Louis XIV look, performed “The Man Who Sold the World”
[Fig. 21]. Baby’s performance was alluring, always leaving audiences mesmerized by their
energy and presence. Among the many things JoJo Baby was frequently known to wear in their
looks were their handmade three-foot platform boots, which made them a towering presence in
nightclub settings [Fig. 22].
Though Baby was a drag chameleon and created their own original looks from fantasy,
they also enjoyed doing impersonations of characters from Chewbacca to the Joker [Fig. 23];
while also doing impersonations of legendary drag queens, like the iconic drag queen, Divine
31 Shaina Hoffman and Reed Everett, “Jojo’s Closet,” YouTube, August 23, 2021,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Ffz17YNnw.
32 Greg Haus, “JoJo Baby at Berlin Nightclub in Chicago (7-2-15),” YouTube, July 8, 2015,
https://youtu.be/yUdgDKKRSOg?si=O2zhOKhQ0NtjfbXi.

19
[Figs. 24 and 25]. When Baby impersonated Divine, I was blown away by their flawless
interpretation. From Baby’s incredibly detailed eye makeup to their perfectly styled platinum
wig, from the shape of the lips to the arch in the eyebrows, all of it was nothing short of
perfection and quintessential Divine. They recreated many of Divine’s looks, including the one
from Divine’s My First Album (1982) where she wore a black and pink animal print dress. Baby
wore a dress in a similar print, and their Divine-inspired makeup featured the iconic turquoise
eyeshadow and pink lips. While in this outfit Baby performed Divine’s hit song, “Native Love.”
Watching Baby perform this song was magical because their impersonation was so spot-on that
one might mistake them for being the real Divine. Hanging out with Baby, listening to music
while we’d paint our faces in their live-in arts studio were some of the most unforgettable
moments that I’ll never forget. I was always so fascinated by how Baby would transform before
my very eyes with the assistance of makeup, wigs, and costumes.
Baby always had a unique way of captivating an audience. They were a natural on and
off the stage. I include off-stage, because as a weekly club host, they naturally gravitated people
toward them with their infectious, positive energy. As soon as the stage lights flashed onto them,
they immediately lit up from within. Berlin Nightclub was the place to go to watch subversive
drag shows and bands. Performers who have appeared on the Berlin Nightclub stage include
Miss Tosh, Detox from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Lady Bunny, Cody Critcheloe of the band Ssion,
Jake Shears of the band Scissor Sisters, Lady Miss Kier of the band Deee-Lite, and more. Berlin
Nightclub was a safe space for so many who didn’t feel welcome at other queer bars in the
Lakeview neighborhood. Lakeview was also where Baby’s mentor, artist, Greer Lankton lived at
the time of her death in 1996. In the next section, I will be discussing their relationship in depth.

20
Shopping was one of the most exciting things about doing drag, and Baby and I enjoyed
going thrifting and wig shopping together. Our go-to thrift store was the Village Discount Outlet
in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood; and our favorite wig store called Heads-N-Threads
(now shuttered), was also in Wicker Park. At the Village Discount Outlet, Baby always seemed
to find fabulous clothing and accessory items, which they utilized in both their doll-making
practice and in their drag looks. For example, once they cut up a 1980s metallic silver vintage
dress and wore it as a neckpiece in drag; always going the extra mile creatively by having to
improvise for things they didn’t have or sometimes couldn’t afford [Fig. 26]. In performances,
sometimes Baby would incorporate a puppet using a gesture as if it was lip-synching with them.
I witnessed this in a 2010 performance of a song called, “Really Rich Italian Satanists” by a band
called Dirty Sanchez, made up of drag legend, Jackie Beat and their friend/actor, Mario Diaz, at
Chicago’s Hydrate Nightclub [Fig. 27].
33
Drag is ubiquitous now; it has gone mainstream, due largely to RuPaul’s Drag Race,
which the self-proclaimed “supermodel of the world,” RuPaul, began in 2009, and which has
received a groundbreaking seventy-eight Emmy Awards.34 Still, underground versions of drag
still exist vastly in most major cities across the U.S. In Amelia Jones’s In Between Subjects, she
says, “dialogue and narratives circulate around the concepts of gender performance, queer
performativity, and genderfluid modes of self-presentation, often combined with claims of
attaining an authentic gender corresponding to an internal truth.”35 Yet, with this recognition has
come vociferous criticism of drag’s mainstreaming—both from within drag communities (as the
33 Hydrate Films, “50 Faggots Launch Party - JoJo Baby!,” YouTube, May 14, 2010, https://youtu.be/ZIMOfmGRP0?si=N-IS8q2sC96XFk3y. 34 Kyle Munzenrieder, “The Gospel according to RuPaul: 10 Inspiring Quotes before the Return of RuPaul’s Drag
Race,” W Magazine | Women’s Fashion & Celebrity News, March 19, 2017,
https://www.wmagazine.com/story/rupaul-inspiring-quotes-rupauls-drag-race. 35 Jones, In Between Subjects, 9.

21
art form has been positioned as ever-more “family friendly” through television shows such as
RuPaul’s Drag Race), and from a revanchist right-wing (who want to see all instances of gender
expression extinguished).

22
CHAPTER 2: GREER & JOJO: ACTS OF ARTISTIC TRANSMISSION
JoJo Baby’s doll-making practice was a ritualistic one. In a 2017 interview, they
described their practice of making the dolls in detail saying, “I put a full chakra system into their
body, so they all have hearts in their chest. Some of them have hokum or diamonds in their heads
because they say the stone adds to psychic ability and also works with intent. So, if I want you to
feel happy or sad about a character, I like to think that the stone is shining through the doll.”36
For almost twenty years JoJo Baby created these dolls in a live-in arts studio located at the Flat
Iron Arts Building in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood [Figs. 28, 29, 30]. Due to the lack of
scholarly research on JoJo Baby, it’s hard to know exactly when they started making dolls. With
the research and information we do have, it suggests that it started around the early 1990s. In
Legends of Drag, Baby says, “eventually I put a line in the floor and said this is the collection
and these are the dolls I make. My place has been used to demonstrate to art history students that
you can make a gallery out of any space.”37 As a recent transplant to Chicago, I was walking by
this building one day and upon looking up, I saw a sign that read, “JoJo’s Closet” [Fig. 31]. It
immediately piqued my interest. This was the moment I remember knocking on JoJo Baby’s
bright green door, while greeted by their two barking chihuahuas, Sir Lefty and Venus in
entering their studio, and instantly becoming friends.
Born Joseph Arguellas, JoJo Baby (they legally changed their name later in life), was
raised in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. Baby was the oldest of their siblings, their
middle brother, Jay Jay (Jason), and youngest brother, Justin. Baby’s brother Jay Jay followed in
their footsteps of becoming a hairdresser and doing drag; they still live in Chicago and continue
36 Faces in a Crowd, “Faces in a Crowd - Episode One: JoJo Baby,” YouTube, January 21, 2017,
https://youtu.be/4e6Dm6hun48?si=fA3pY5gmSfr8yfBI.
37 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 147.

23
their professions of hair and drag [Fig. 32]. I was unsuccessful in gathering more information on
their youngest brother, Justin. Baby’s birth mother, Joy Ann (Adoski), was a Blackfoot and
Sioux Indian and was a Playboy bunny in Chicago’s Playboy Club (opened in 1960), and their
father, John Luis Arguellas, was Greek and was a chef. Their grandmother taught piano lessons
and played the organ for silent movies at the Chicago Theatre, and their grandfather made
trumpets for jazz legends like Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong. Working for the Chicago
Playboy Bunny Club, Baby’s mother was able to put herself through medical school and then
worked for an HMO for the Teamsters Union. As a child, Baby’s mother enrolled them and their
brother, Jay Jay, in Polish dance classes, which inspired them both to become performers.
Growing up, Baby’s mother had a wig room in their home; “I always wanted to be in there trying
on all the wigs. She taught me how to sew. She gave me my stage name too. She’d wake up
every morning: ‘JoJo baby, wake up!’”38
With an exciting, yet complex familial bloodline of artists, Baby’s thirst for the arts was
prevalent from the beginning and the artistic talent was in their DNA. In, Legends of Drag:
Queens of a Certain Age, Baby said of their doll collection:
They’ve helped me through the pandemic. Friends were worried about me living alone, but
I never get lonely. I constantly have a party going here because I’m surrounded by
thousands of faces. The dolls are always there for you. My mother’s godmother had a doll
collection when we were growing up. She traveled so much and had dolls from all over the
world. That’s why I collect dolls from all over the world—I wanted to recapture what I saw
as a child. I was always bugging my mom to see her collection and finally she said, ‘Why
38 Ibid., 144.

24
don’t you start your own collection?’ I don’t think she knew what she was feeding into, but
it’s never stopped since.39
Baby took this and ran with it. Their collection of thousands of dolls and puppets spanned
a wide array of doll types including Raggedy Anne and Andy, Cabbage Patch, Coleco, Jan
Shackleford, Mattel, Monster High, Play Along, Whimsies, Norah Wellings, a Jan McClean
Lollipop Girl doll, and an FAO Schwarz Muppet [Fig. 33].
Baby’s fascination with dolls never waned. In the early 1990s they met artist, Greer
Lankton through a mutual friend, which would end up being life-changing for them and their art.
Lankton (born in Flint, Michigan in 1958) was an American artist known for her lifelike,
handmade dolls inspired by close friends and celebrities that were posed in various settings. She
was a key figure in the 1980s East Village New York art scene. Describing her dolls in a 1984
interview with The East Village Eye, she said, “They're all freaks. Outsiders, untouchables.
They’re like biographies, the kind of people you’d like to know about.”40
Lankton’s oeuvre is an amalgamation of her lived experience as a trans woman, her
religious upbringing by her minister father, the painful complications from her gender affirming
surgery at the age of twenty-one in 1979, her battles with anorexia, and drug issues that
ultimately took her life at the age of thirty-eight in 1996. Lankton’s dolls vary in size from super
skinny to very large and curvaceous. Lankton’s process of doll-making bound her to her queer
chosen family via the transmission of knowledge via the next generation. Among the people she
passed this knowledge to was her mentee and friend, JoJo Baby.
39 Ibid., 147.
40 Greer Lankton, “My Life Is Art,” interview by Carlo McCormick, East Village Eye, November 1984.

25
In, Legends of Drag, Baby recalled the first time they saw Lankton’s dolls displayed in a
window display at The Alley [Fig. 34], a punk rock store in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood,
“One of her dolls said, ‘Please don’t touch,’ but I had to. It felt like she stuffed a skeleton inside
the fabric! I thought, What the fuck is going on? She’s killing people and hiding the bodies
inside the dolls.”41 Intrigued, confused, and mildly horrified by Lankton’s dolls, Baby eventually
got to meet Lankton through their mutual friend, Reagan Comstock, and they later met up at the
now shuttered drag bar, Cheeks.42
Baby reflected on their first encounter:
I walked into the bar and there was only this suburban lady. I walked up and we started to
chat. What’s a nice suburban lady like you doing in a place like this? She said, ‘I’m one
of the girls too.’ In a window display at The Alley, Lankton once scrawled a prophecy:
“Hermaphroditic deity: ‘It’ lay in bed in a heroin haze. The make-up and hair, glamorous
perfection, one thing that never let ‘it’ down … depression transformed into anger. ‘It’
would kill all the assholes who had stolen free entertainment laughing at the glamour
only she-males possess.” Cis passersby beware. “Suicide or homicide,” the sign
concluded.43
Among The Greer Lankton Collection at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh are
sketchbooks showcasing her 2D self-portraits on paper in pen, ink, pastel, and watercolor, which
are truly breathtaking for their depiction of vulnerability [Fig. 35]. Baby, too, left behind
41 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 147.
42 Todd Savage, “Chi-Lives: Jo-Jo’s All Dolled Up,” Chicago Reader, December 9, 1999,
https://chicagoreader.com/arts-culture/chi-lives-jo-jos-all-dolled-up/.
43 Grace Byron, “Trail-Blazing Trans Artist Greer Lankton Gave the Girls the Dolls We Need,” XTRA (Pink
Triangle Press, August 25, 2022), https://xtramagazine.com/culture/greer-lankton-exhibit-dolls-234764.

26
drawings on paper, primarily of nude male-identifying models they’d pay to pose for them [Fig.
36]. Lankton and Baby were extraordinary creative people who were skilled drafts people. They
both had unconventional drawing skills as well as unconventional subject matter.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Lankton and her then husband, Paul Monroe, had had a
tumultuous relationship, abusing alcohol and drugs, and she ended up divorcing him and moved
back to Chicago.44 Moving to Chicago was her chance to detox from her longtime drug use, and
to essentially start the next chapter of her life.45 Lankton mentored Baby during the last few
years of her life, around 1994 to 1996, a fact gathered from archival photographs.46 Though Baby
had already been making dolls and puppets before meeting Lankton, it was Lankton who
specifically taught them how to make armature, which allows the doll to stand and be poseable.
Lankton and Baby’s doll-making practices were similar in that they both involved
utilizing armature (the skeletal system allowing a doll to stand and be poseable). But Lankton’s
doll-making practice in particular involved using materials like wire coat hangers and the wire
from broken umbrellas to make into a dolls’ skeleton, which she then would cover with tissue
paper, followed by a matte medium that was then painted over [Fig. 37]. Meanwhile, Baby’s
doll-making process involved using various types of wire, duct and masking tape to form and
shape a dolls’ body, then they would use a type of matte medium, then the doll would be painted
over. Lankton’s dolls ranged in size from 6” to 7”; Baby’s dolls ranged in size from 6” to 10”, as
seen in their doll they made of their friend, “Silky Jumbo,” who was a stilt walker in Chicago
nightclubs [Fig. 38]. Like Lankton’s dolls, Baby’s also involved using wire clothes hangers and
44 Julia Morton, “Greer Lankton, a Memoir - Artnet Magazine,” Artnet.com, January 26, 2007,
https://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/morton/morton1-26-07.asp. 45 Morton, “Greer Lankton, a Memoir - Artnet Magazine,” 2007. 46 The Greer Lankton Collection | Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, “Lankton Archive : Archival Image : Snapshot of
Jo-Jo in Full Makeup [GL.P.855],” Mattress.org, n.d., https://lankton.mattress.org/Detail/objects/33505.

27
also incorporated human hair and teeth, foam, duct tape, masking tape, beads, wigs, fabric,
synthetic eyelashes, fake nails, glitter, and nail polish, which was used to paint on the dolls’
makeup and facial features. Baby’s dolls were made from recycled items found in thrift stores
such as clothing, toys, and jewelry, as well as found items given to them from fellow artists and
friends. In a 2021 interview, Baby said, “I do portraits of people because I want them to live
forever and ever. The people I love I just want them to outlive me…I hope that people will find
my artwork interesting enough that I will live as long as some of the masters. I don’t want to
compare myself to any of the masters, but it’s all for love…above all my dolls’ hearts is written,
‘I love you’ or ‘love me,’ because I think everybody has the desire to be loved.”47 Baby’s dolls
were inspired by friends, former lovers, singers, drag queens, and original characters created
from their own fantasy [Figs. 39 and 40].
While doing preliminary research for the curatorial planning of our MA curatorial cohort
exhibition, Steep, Alter, Ritual in 2024, I discovered archival photographs of Baby and Lankton
in The Greer Lankton Collection at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh dating back as early as
1994, with the latest from 1996. It’s poignant to mention that in the archival photograph dated
April 21, 1996, Baby and Lankton are seen celebrating Lankton’s thirty-eighth and final birthday
at an unnamed restaurant in Chicago [Fig. 41]. In the photograph, Baby is dressed in a
silkscreened The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert movie t-shirt, wearing bleachblonde dreads, a nose ring, with their eyebrows and facial hair shaved off, and Lankton wears a
dark green, floral printed blazer over a black turtleneck shirt. They smile and pose for an
unknown photographer, while their uneaten plates of food can be seen. I included this
photograph in the Steep, Alter, Ritual exhibition because I felt it was important to show the
47 Shaina Hoffman and Reed Everett, “Jojo’s Closet,” YouTube, August 23, 2021,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Ffz17YNnw.

28
human connections amongst queer people whom we claim as our chosen family and are inspired
by, both as friends and creatives [Fig. 42]. It’s through our chosen family where queer lineage
starts to come into focus and take shape, creating our vision of how we perceive ourselves in the
world.
Throughout history, queer people have had to create a chosen family due to being
ostracized from their blood-related family because of their own sexual orientation and/or gender
identity. Baby and Lankton shared these similarities and naturally gravitated towards one
another. Lankton must have seen something special in Baby for her to take them under her wing
and mentor them. Contextually speaking, when Baby met Lankton in the early 1990s, they were
in their early twenties, while Lankton was in her mid-thirties. Lankton would have encountered a
curious, creative, sweet soul who was passionate and eager to learn more about her renowned
doll-making practice. In one archival photograph of Baby, they were twenty-three years old;
Lankton, behind the camera taking the photograph, was thirty-six [Fig. 43]. Although they were
thirteen years apart, they both shared experiences in the world of being treated differently.
Especially considering how society was in the early 1990s, they would otherwise have been
isolated: there were no cell phones, no computers, and no avenues for queer people to seek out
other people like them. This is why nightlife has always played an important part in the shaping
of many queer people’s lives. For some LGBTQ+ people, nightlife is the only place they’re able
to meet other queer people and where they can let their guard down and be one hundred percent
themselves.
Shortly after Lankton’s death, Baby made a life-size doll of her likeness in 1997-1998,
and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) invited Baby to exhibit it. In Legends of
Drag, Baby said:

29
I put her on a pink cross lined in pink lilies with a crown of syringes on her head. I
wrote on the gallery floor: Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not for mine. They
censored me and took off the syringe crown because children were present. They
didn’t know when they could give it back to me, so I ripped Greer off the wall at
the opening and dragged her down the stairs and out the door. Being shown in a
museum was always crazy to me, I thought you had to be dead to be in one.48
Their doll of Greer Lankton is one of their most recognizable and was often the doll Baby
would begin talking about when giving tours of their live-in arts studio at the Flat Iron Arts
Building in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. The doll wears Lankton’s actual wedding
dress she wore to wed Paul Monroe in 1987 [Fig. 44]. Baby acquired Lankton’s wedding dress
after her death by diving in a dumpster where her family disposed of her wedding dress and other
possessions.
Before her death, Lankton made an unnamed doll with the words on its chest, “Love
Me,” of which I found an archival photo of in The Greer Lankton Collection, Mattress Factory,
Pittsburgh [Fig. 45]. In 2008, Baby was in the process of making a doll of singer, Diamanda
Galás, where the words “love me” can also be seen on it like in Lankton’s “Love Me” doll from
the 1990s [Fig. 46]. As for a lot of artists, it wasn’t uncommon for Baby and Lankton to have
unfinished work. Depending upon the availability of supplies and materials, artists with limited
means might fluctuate between projects from time to time. Also discovered in The Greer
Lankton Collection archives was a doll named “Sissy” [Fig. 47]. (Because of this, I like to think
it was fate that connected Baby and me.)
48 Hanson and Antheus, Legends of Drag, 147.

30
Thinking critically of Lankton and Baby’s final shows are helpful in deciphering the
noticeable similarities in regard to their doll-making styles. In 1995, a year before Lankton’s
death, she was featured in the Whitney Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American
Art in New York (March 15—June 25, 1995), where she showcased four of her dolls [Fig. 48].
Lankton’s dolls were juxtaposed on an adjoining wall near her longtime friend and artist, Nan
Goldin’s work entitled, Tokyo Love (1994-1995).
One year after Lankton’s inclusion in the Whitney Biennial, she debuted her final show,
It’s All About ME, Not You, at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, which ran from October 19,
1996–June 29, 1997 [Fig. 49]. One month later, Lankton died of a cocaine overdose in her
Chicago apartment on November 18, 1996. The shows’ permanent display was curated as a
recreation of Lankton’s Chicago apartment inviting museum guests to enter the artist’s apartment
which featured many of her dolls interspersed with prescription pill bottles, a reminder of her
health struggles.
JoJo Baby’s final show, The Bandages are Off, ran from January 6–February 25, 2023, at
the Paris London Hong Kong gallery in Chicago [Fig. 50]. Their show featured old, new, and
unfinished dolls, some of which they were working on as in “Lazy Boyfriend,” while in the
hospital, battling cancer [Fig. 51].
In one of Baby’s final interviews with Grace Byron shortly before their death at the age
of fifty-one on March 14, 2023, Baby said, “I miss my time with Greer. I’ve never found the
camaraderie or anyone else interested in the same work. I feel alone now … I went to a psychic,
and they told me, ‘Do you ever hear Greer’s voice when you’re working?’ and I said, ‘Yes’ and
they said, ‘That’s when she’s the closest to you.’”49
49 Byron, “Trail-Blazing Trans Artist.”

31
CHAPTER 3: CONCLUSION: MY FRIEND, JOJO
My first intrigue into drag started out as a young child when I’d hide in the bathroom and
put on my mother’s makeup; I loved the smell of it, the way it made me look, but most
importantly, how powerful it made me feel. In a patriarchal world obsessed with masculinity, I
felt empowered to be my true, effeminate self. Makeup was the first tool I discovered that
allowed me to change how I felt about myself. Later, when I was a young adult in my early
twenties in 2007 when I was living in New York City, I went out in drag for the first time at a
club called Don Hills. In drag parlance, my look was androgynous; I wore skinny jeans with
pointy high heels, and my makeup was inspired by singer Boy George. It was at this point when I
realized the power of makeup and transformation and how it can make one feel.
As a child growing up in the 1990s, I vividly remember watching The Sally Jesse
Raphael Show where they had filmed a club-kid themed episode. I remember being glued to the
television in utter fascination, as the club-kids talked about their drag and what they do. At the
time I didn’t know why I felt a connection to them, but when I came out as gay at the age of
sixteen, I realized why. It was because I wanted to be as fabulous as they were in their custom
outfits and over-the-top, theatrical makeup. Moreover, during the 1990s, Baby was featured on
club-kid themed episodes of famous talk shows of the time such as The Jenny Jones Show and
The Jerry Springer Show [Figs. 52 and 53]. In addition, due to being Dennis Rodman’s personal
hairdresser, Baby could be spotted in full club-kid drag at Chicago Bulls basketball games [Fig.
54].
JoJo Baby died on March 14, 2023, from liver, lung, and stomach cancer, only five
months before I started graduate school. Meanwhile, during the time I was applying to graduate
school at the University of Southern California, Roski School of Art and Design, Baby was

32
battling cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. One of the application requirements was to create
a curated project proposal of a potential exhibition I would want to curate and see exhibited in
real life. As a way to memorialize Baby, I dedicated the MA group exhibition and my thesis
project to them. They were the most unique, creative, genuine, kind soul I ever met and I’m so
fortunate I had the privilege of knowing such an amazing person that I was so lucky and proud to
call my friend.
In September 2015, Smartbar, the club where Baby and I hosted the weekly Sunday night
party, “Queen!,” threw a going-away party for me to celebrate my move to Los Angeles [Fig.
55]. Little did I know at the time that this would be the last time I’d get to see Baby. A year later,
Baby was commissioned to make a doll of my drag alter ego, Sissy Spastik [Fig. 56]. They
fashioned its likeness using a photo of me in drag; the doll wears a red wig with fringe bangs, a
black bra, black panties, and a Bowie-inspired cape. I love how Baby paid attention to how the
doll is posed. When in drag, I’d often do exaggerated poses as if I were a fashion model.
Reflecting back, if I could give my younger self advice, it would be to cherish the
moments you have with your closest friends and loved ones because you never know what the
future will bring and when they will no longer be in your life. I was heartbroken that I was
unable to see Baby before they passed, and that I wasn’t able to personally tell them how much
they meant to me and how they positively impacted my life.
As I have shown, the goals of this thesis are to relay JoJo Baby’s artistic and
performative life as an iconic Chicago club-kid, artist, doll-maker, and hairdresser. Their
presence and mentorship fostered my own interest in wanting to preserve their legacy through
my own writing within the lens of LGBTQ+ history. Grieving their death through writing has
helped me to mourn their loss, while at the same time, celebrate their incredible life.

33
In a 2017 interview, Baby was asked about what they wanted to try out artistically, Baby
said, “I’ve never had a piece of public art. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t
see anybody giving me a chance for that. We’ll see. That’s future. I would love to have a house
where all of these collections could be, and people could still come and visit it long after I’m
gone. I have pieces from my mentor’s mentor, my mentor’s work, and then my stuff, so you see
that lineage of doll-making.”50 In the future, I hope to curate a retrospective exhibition of Baby’s
work that showcases their artistry and imagination that lied within their dolls, costumes, drag
looks, and performances. The show will contain various ephemera such as costumes, dolls,
archival photographs, and video performances from their 30+ year career, with the hopes that art
and drag lovers around the world will be able to get a glimpse into this truly magical artist and
drag legend who was an inspiration to me and countless others.
50 Faces in a Crowd, “Faces in a Crowd - Episode One: JoJo Baby,” YouTube, January 21, 2017,
https://youtu.be/4e6Dm6hun48?si=fA3pY5gmSfr8yfBI.

34
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Asset Metadata

Creator Brady, Robert Allen, Jr. (author)

Core Title Kings, queens, and in-betweens: the life and art of JoJo Baby

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere

Degree Conferral Date 2025-05

Publication Date 04/18/2025

Defense Date 04/17/2025

Publisher University of Southern California (original), Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag archives,Chicago,chosen family,club culture,club-kid,doll-maker,drag,drag performer,drag queen,Greer Lankton,HIV/AIDS,JoJo Baby,LGBTQ,nightclub,nightlife,queer,queer archives

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Advisor Campbell, Andy (committee chair), Jones, Amelia (committee member), Bustamante, Nao (committee member)

Creator Email rabrady@usc.edu,bradyrobert@icloud.com

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Format theses (aat)

Rights Brady, Robert Allen, Jr.

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This thesis is dedicated to examining the art and life of Chicago artist, JoJo Baby (b. 1971 – d. 2023). A doll-maker mentored by artist, Greer Lankton, they were one of the original Chicago club-kids, as well as a club host, drag performer, and hairdresser. Baby played a crucial role in Chicago’s vibrant and diverse LGBTQ+ nightlife scene for over three decades. As a friend of Baby’s, the goals of this thesis are to relay the lineaments of their artistic and performative life alongside my own experiences as a drag artist within the context of Chicago queer nightlife.