Meet Rachel Rampleman

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachel Rampleman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rachel, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

I was in grad school in New York City trying to figure out what to make for my master’s thesis project. Having come to the big city from suburban Ohio, I’d felt imposter syndrome since the 1st day of my 1st semester. Here I was, this (self-identifying) bumpkin from the midwest, getting to meet and hang out with the artists and intellectuals who had inspired me to become an artist in the 1st place. I was surrounded by those I saw as the smartest and most talented and creative people on the planet (and who in all likelihood were and still are). I had never felt more excited but also humbled, in over my head, and anxious to rise to the occasion.

To backtrack for a sec, it took me a while to decide to give being an artist a go. Like many of us, I come from a family of hard-working and practical people with lifelong careers as teachers, doctors & nurses. I’d struggled in undergrad to figure out who I was and who I wanted to become or what I aspired to do. After 6 years at a university in Cincinnati, having tried majoring in subjects ranging from German literature to anthropology, I felt compelled to try art. Fast forward to moving to NYC to get my MFA from NYU. I still hadn’t really “found my voice” – and was starting to wonder if I even had one to find. For reasons too complex to get into here, I decided to make my 1st documentary – about my younger sister, and her experiences as a 17 y/o in the Tennessee mansion of Bret Michaels (lead singer of 80’s-90s hair metal band Poison) with whom she’d been obsessed since she was in 2nd grade.

That experience ultimately led me to go on the road with and document the world’s 1st and only all female Mötley Crüe tribute band (Girls Girls Girls), then to find and meet with – and of course, document – the world’s longest competing female bodybuilder/powerlifter, and then eventually to my most recent project – “Life is Drag”.

I’ve been working on this latest project for the last 5+ years, and have created America’s (and most likely the world’s) largest living archive of digital drag – featuring (so far) 350+ beautifully captured performances & interviews. By working with my sister, and all the subsequent muses I just mentioned, I found my voice – my purpose. It is to help amplify the voices and share the stories of others, in hopes of opening minds to other ways of being, encouraging empathy and understanding, self-reflection and self-actualization – and maybe even affecting change for the better in regards to the way we see and interact with each other.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

While I see myself as a visual artist first and foremost, I also see myself as an archivist, anthropologist, director, curator – depending on the project and the day. To say a bit more about my art and practice, for a few decades now I have been making work that showcases irrepressible personalities who revel in challenging clichés and taboos to rethink and reimagine the gender construct. In other words, I love working with incredible and inspiring individuals who question behaviors stereotypically considered masculine or feminine, and present alternatives to what’s been traditionally thought or taught.

Since 2019, I have been working exclusively on “Life is Drag” (at lifeisdrag.com) – which I am proud to say is now the largest archive of drag in the United States, and probably in the world. I’ve worked with over 200 drag performers and documented more than 350 performances and interviews over the last 5+ years.

This project feels like what I was born to do, and has become my life’s purpose. Through my collaborations with these singular and innovative artists, I have learned that drag is a poetic synthesis of painting, sculpture, sound and performance. Drag is also all about self-discovery, transformation, and ultimately – radical self-expression. Drag is art – and all of life is drag!

With drag presently threatened in cities all over the United States, I believe that now, more than ever, it is incredibly important to share these bold, brilliant, and binary pushing performances to ensure exposure for artists and ease of access for those in communities that are hostile to this vital and important art form.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I’m not sure if these are more skills or qualities – but I think being a good listener, open-minded/curious and quite simply just being present are key.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

My primary challenges currently are outreach and funding.

I am very much in need of more press and publicity to help me get this project out into the world more so it reaches as many people as possible – so if you know anyone who might be interested in supporting this project in that capacity, please help spread the word!.

And I have self-funded this project since its inception. I am a one-person production team – handling all research, curation, communication, lighting, shooting, editing, interviewing, archive building, residency outreach, and more. Having recently completed residencies in New York City, I am now planning to bring this project to Nebraska in 2025 (confirmed!), as well as other places where drag bans have been proposed or are in effect in order to work with and within the communities most threatened by anti-LGBTQIA+ rhetoric and legislation. So I am now actively looking for more national and international residency invitations so that I can keep adding new voices and performances to the project. And on a crucial and related note, I need additional financial resources to be able to travel to do so.

Please consider helping protect and support drag and drag artists wherever you are by contributing to the archive today via my Venmo @lifeisdrag or my GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/life-is-drag (and thanks a million for whatever you can spare – no amount is too small!).

Contact Info:

• Website: rachelrampleman.com & lifeisdrag.com
• Instagram: @rachelrampleman & @life.is.drag
• Facebook: @rachelrampleman
• Linkedin: Rachel Rampleman
• Other: TikTok: @life.is.dragGoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/life-is-drag

Image Credits

Image 6: Kevin Yaratola (at Symphony Space, New York, NY)
Image 7: Kelly Coleman (at Wave Pool Gallery, Cincinnati, OH)

All others are by me. 😉