The white Karmann Ghia screeches to the curb on a rainy Monday night. Laure Drogoul --es out, late as usual, her vinyl go-go boots clacking against the asphalt.
It's not her feet you notice first, though; it's her head. Yards of silver and gold fabric have been draped around it like a turban and fastened with a fake spider hatpin. But that's just part of the visual show-and-tell: She's also wearing a sleeveless sequin gown, rabbit's head pendant (yes, it's real) and more black eyeliner than Tammy Faye Bakker.
Consider them all the wonders of Laure (pronounced Laura) Drogoul. As the co-founder and hostess of the 14Karat Cabaret, the funky performance art venue in the basement of Maryland Art Place, it's her job to dress the part of avant-garde diva trapped in a polyester town.
After all, this is a woman who has jackhammered nude and jumped rope in cement shoes for the sake of art. Who would
expect her to show up in a simple double knit?
Words of advice from Charlotte Cohen, program director for Maryland Art Place, ring in your ears: "When you first meet Laure, you have to be open-minded, especially if you're not used to dealing with a creative force like that."
What she declined to add is that this 32-year-old performer and sculptor, who talks with a faux French accent and collects empty toothpaste tubes, has a method to her madcapness.
Sitting on a folding chair in the dimly lit cabaret, cigarette stubs still in ashtrays from last week's show, Ms. Drogoul shares her life's ambition.
L "I'm motivated," she says proudly, "to be a living cartoon."
But while she faces the world with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, the contribution she's making to Baltimore's alternative arts scene is serious stuff. Known for her quirky taste and adroit organizational skills, she's emerging as a major player among progres-sive artists, showcasing experimental acts and fighting for an expanded definition of what's considered art in a conservative town.
"Her work has been an exhilarating breath of fresh air into this city," says Philip Arnoult, artistic director of the Theatre Project. "She's really a shimmering persona."
At the cabaret, nearly anything goes. In the two years since she and fellow artist John Henley founded 14Karat, they've attracted some national acts, including controversial porn star-turned-performance artist Annie Sprinkle. During another recent show, an artist poured a bucket of water over an audience member's head. Another time, a paper airplane fight ++ broke out between the audience and act.
"When I moved here [in 1980] there was no type of performance venue that was accessible," she says. "This is a very atmospheric performance space. It's a little bit of theater that happens every other weekend."
One of her own favorite skits is a Julia Childs-style cooking demonstration with power tools. During it, she beats eggs with a jackhammer and chain saws butter. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that she lives above a hardware store on Howard Street's Antique Row, but talk of saws and bulldozers and forklifts figures prominently in conversation.
"For modern living you must be very industrial strength," she explains.
It's tough to find something Ms. Drogoul considers off limits. Jackhammering nude during a videotaped performance art piece wasn't. Neither was constructing a floating boat dress-cum-oars and launching herself in it in the harbor.
In fact, Ms. Drogoul is hardpressed to describe the wildest thing she's ever done. She scrunches up her face in concentration and finally decides on this: traveling with a friend from New Jersey to Chicago in a Renault with no front windshield.
"It started to snow, and we had to turn the windshield wipers on because we were afraid the cops would see us," she says.
Friend and fellow performer Madenney Carlisle sums her up this way: "She unpredictable. That's part of her charm. I love how she'll have this strong, strict ostentatious attitude. Then she'll act like a 6-year-old girl."
There is one thing friends and associates would change about her, though: her chronic lateness.
"When we go out together and she says she'll pick me up at 9, that means 2 o'clock," says Mr. Carlisle.
Ms. Drogoul explains it away: "I'm a proud member of the cult of tardyism."
But if she acts supremely self confident, inside she feels otherwise. In fact, she often suffers from stage fright. "I get serious lockjaw," she says. "Half the time it's like family here, so you're very comfortable. But when you have a big show and an absolute full house, it's quite frightening."
Amid the sequins and turbans, there is another side to Ms. Drogoul: a serious one. For the last six years, she's taught sculpture and design at York College of Pennsylvania. During class, she makes a point of leaving the jackhammers and eggs at home.
Ms. Cohen has seen this facet of the artist as well. "She's not a phony art freak. Once you get to know her, she's very down to earth. She's not above rolling up her sleeves and putting in hours and hours of work," she says.
Ms. Drogoul also takes a workmanlike attitude toward the sculpture she creates in her Fells Point pickle factory-turned-church-turned-studio. Her pieces -- multimedia installations that she calls "patchworks of social and personal information" -- have been displayed in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta and several local galleries.
One of her most recent works, an 8-foot-tall maze with a sealed observation hive containing 400 bees, was a major hit at Artscape this summer.
She describes it as more amusement than objet d'art. "If you were afraid of bees, it was a bee horror house," she says with a self-satisfied chuckle.
But the same qualities that the public may find intriguing about her work also make it controversial in the more established art world, says Gary Kachadourian, visual arts coordinator for the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Art and Culture.
"Her work in some ways is offputting to some people involved in the arts for the same reason it's popular at Artscape. It has a kind of carnival feel . . . and it's more pop culture-oriented."
Ms. Drogoul is keenly aware that not everyone "gets" what she's doing.
"Certainly what people see on stage here is not for the masses. People have to be plugged into a certain idiom to really grasp a lot of the work. . . . Some people come down and hear some music and say, 'Oh, that sounds like noise, horrible, horrible noise,' " she says.
Yet shocking people isn't her aim. "I don't think people can be shocked anymore. They've seen it all and heard it all on TV," she says.
But she has had plenty of experience upsetting the status quo. Her exotic life began somewhat improbably in Jersey City, N.J., where she was the middle of five children. Her parents separated when she was 10, and her father moved to Southern France. She spent much of her youth traveling between the two worlds.
By the time she entered a Catholic high school in New Jersey, she was in her rebellious phase.
"I was suspended from school all the time for not going, which suited me just fine," she says. "I was always fighting with those nuns. One of them once told me not to run down the stairs because my stomach was made of glass, and it would shatter."
In 1977, she eventually got her diploma and a direction in life: art.
She moved to Philadelphia, graduating from the Tyler School of Art in 1980. The same year she came to Baltimore to get her master's from the Maryland Institute, College of Art.
One insight that has stayed with her since those early days is the lack of support artists have in this city. "Living in Baltimore used to be like living in a cultural bush. It's a little better now . . . but Baltimore still lacks a real gallery scene. I've lived here long enough to realize you have to go and use other cities as a showcase. I've learned you don't expect that much from this small town," she says.
You get the impression that her life's too busy and, well, too strange to ever be boring. So it comes as a consolation to know that even Laure Drogoul faces dull days. "I would never want to be so presumptuous as to say my life is never boring," she cautions. "I saw reruns of 'The Gong Show' the other day. That wasn't too boring, but a lot of the sitcoms bore me to absolute tears."
But instead of watching TV, she's spending her spare time preparing to take the cabaret on tour. In February, she'll participate in a show at the Theatre Project, and several months later 14Karat Cabaret performers will do a show in New York.
Then there are her long-range goals. "I want to age gracefully," she says, "and one day turn into a fluorescent cartoon."
THE DROGOUL FILE
Born: Aug. 27, 1959, Jersey City, N.J.
Occupation: Cabaret hostess, sculptor, art teacher.
Marital status: Single.
Current home: Howard Street apartment.
Education: Bachelor's from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1980; master's from Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1982.
Her idea of a wild night in Baltimore: "Having forklift races down I-83 and a nightcap at Sip & Bite."
Three things she's never done but hopes to one day: "Find a diamond in the garbage, have my teeth removed and replaced with glass shards, and grow an extra head."
She'd give anything to perform with: Mr. Clean.