Much(sh)Room
This is an artist page by Seth Garrote. Seth was a resident during the CATS+ Spring 2025 cohort.
Introduction
I heard about CATS+ from Jay (Bobby Pudrido). I’ve been doing drag since 2023, which is where I met them and became friends. I didn’t know programs like CATS+ could be open to drag performers. When I started doing drag I got into production and began enjoying film and video editing and started to incorporate that into my drag performances whenever I could. I got excited about CATS+ because it put me in the same room as people who have experience and gave me tools and resources I didn’t already have. I’ve never had any professional equipment or even high tech electronics. Just an iPhone, an iPad and a 2013 MacBook Air (ancient in Apple years)
For our showcase, Laura and I thought we would collaborate on a performance together, But then I thought it would be better for her to do the performance by herself since it was her first time and I wanted her to experience that. I decided to just make a video and art installation, but still use the footage from our walk. Which brings us tooooooo:
The Walk
Laura went on a walk for her birthday at Roy G. Guerrero Trail. When she brought it up at CATS+ Bre and I were like “That’s siiiiiiick, we can use it for gathering stuff.”
At the time we were talking about gathering media to start working on our piece for the CATS+ showcase. We didn’t know what we were going to do until 1-2 weeks before the showcase. The initial plan was that I would help Laura with a performance and then use the footage for making some kind of video. This kind of turned out to have happened just not how we originally thought.
Laura, Bre, and I went to the park, specifically to the area where Texas Mycology was restoring and introducing different species of things like mushrooms and other stuff to restore the ecosystem. Even though Bre wasn’t part of our piece, she came to help us out because she has a background in video editing and filming and also she’s just rad like that. Bre mostly filmed Laura and I as we explored the park and brought the most important piece (to me) for the walk: the UV flashlights! We used them to try and look for mushrooms, but it wasn’t humid enough so we only found two but they were too small to be affected by the light. We ended up finding other things that were UV reactive, some plants that went from green to red, centipedes, and trash (real nice, Austin) that glowed.
I was in full drag (skeleton suit, cape, mask and mouth stretcher) but no makeup. I had used a mask for a performance previously and I wore that. Laura brought her owl costume.
Laura and I found specific spots that spoke to us aesthetically. Laura wanted to be more hidden like owls do. I wanted to be in the open field and the trail itself. When you think of creatures you think of them hidden in the shadows but I like when creatures are exposed. It’s kind of polarizing- being out takes the suspense and mystery away and kind of makes them less scary but also, being out in the open like that might be scarier? Like, why are you out here like that? ;P
I think after our walk, Laura and I realized we were making different but related pieces for the showcase.
Creating the Mask and Video
After the walk, since I couldn't find mushrooms, I got stuck. I guess I kind of got in my head this idea of what was going to happen (Don't do that, it's so disappointing every time.)- I thought I would get all this super cool footage of us finding mushrooms and I would focus on video more than anything else. I was not even thinking about installing anything, honestly.
But the show must go on.
I thought I could find some royalty free footage of bioluminescent mushrooms and use that but I didn’t like any footage I found. Instead, I got the idea to make mushrooms myself from foam clay and hot glued them to the same mask I used on the video with some wire. This mask is actually one of the very first ones I used in drag. I think I probably found it at Goodwill or some thrift store or something. It has had many different looks and iterations.
I think in my head I have this idea that everything you create must be new but… repurposing old art and evolving with it is kind of cool? I think because we didn’t focus too much on making this a giant show, it helped me be okay with accepting that some things are just not feasible or needed.
I created my video using the footage we took at the park. I wanted it to look found, degraded, old. A lot of the footage I used was just the test footage of us shining a light on the field and screaming into the void. I thought it looked like a search and rescue, which is what gave me the idea of installing the mask and having people “find it” at the showcase using the UV flashlights. I edited the video on my Ipad using InShot. The process was mostly watching all the footage, seeing what parts I liked, and then piecing them together in the app. I layered other parts of the footage on top and messed around with blending, filters, and distortion until it had the qualities I was looking for.
I think one of the cool things about not having any background in video editing or proper training or education is that I do things just because I like them and I don't get stuck on the technical aspects of things. Being real… I didn’t even know what color grading was until I started CATS+ LOL :P turns out I was doing it this whole time? Crazy business.
Installing the Show
I didn’t know how I was going to display my piece until I showed up at MoHA to actually install. I thought I was going to put the video on a projector but I didn't want it to be just projected on the wall because it’s too clean for the concept. So I thought about projecting onto a corner and trying to distort it.
Then, like true divine intervention (if u believe in that ;p) the small CRT TVs were out when I got to MoHA. They had used them for something else a couple nights before. I asked Jay how many they had and Jay said they had 8 but only a few worked. I immediately knew I wanted to display the video on these TVs. “As many as you’ll let me have.” I told Jay. The smell of them really drew me. It was a lot of trial and error because, again, I have noooooo idea how to do a lot of things. I just have a vision, a dream and a willingness to learn and make it everyone’s problem :P
For a moment I thought it wouldn't work because it wouldn't play on all the TVs at once. We got really frustrated but I was dead set on using the TVs at this point, so I would not let it go. We just jiggled cables endlessly to get it to work. We twisted a couple of cables until it was working and then nobody was allowed to touch it. Truthfully, honestly, really… Jay is so cool and real for being willing to help keep messing with things until it worked.
For the mask, I had never installed anything or suspended anything. So I asked Jay how to do it. I wanted the mask to be on a different line of sight and so that’s why on the table I had the flashlights, look up, don’t look up, look up, don’t look up. I thought people were going to be curious but nobody touched it. They were very respectful of the art. Honestly, crazy business because at drag shows EVERYONE is trying to touch the art (the performer.)
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I knew the paint I was using for the mushrooms was UV paint but I didn't know it would hold a charge so the more that people played with the flashlights the brighter the mask shone even without people using a flashlight. At my artists talk at the opening I told people to use the flashlights so we could see how much charge the masks would hold. Right after I said that everyone came up and wanted to use the flashlights. In hindsight… maybe I should have been more direct with instructions lol.
I still wanted to show how collaborative making the piece was so during install, we gathered branches and displayed them in my installation. This tied Laura and my project together and then, I don't know if it was because of it or not but, Salome ended up adding some branchy floral stuff to her installation too!
The Showcase
The opening was surreal because when I was in high school I wanted to do an art degree, but I got discouraged because my parents were like,” it’s hard, you will be poor.” Joke’s on you! Chefs don’t make any money either!!!! Now almost 10 yrs later I decided to do it anyway. It felt full circle. I invited my mom to the showcase and it was a moment of “See? I told you I could do it.” I mean, my mom has always been way more encouraging than my dad but I think it was also showing myself that I could do it. Having that many people interested in something I made was crazy bonkers bananas. 10/10 want to do again.
