Meet the Artists Featured in BARNWOOD 2023

Gary Avanzato’s works have been exhibited in galleries since 2000. Born in Pittsburgh, Gary moved to the capital region of New York as a young adult. He has studied with Louise Lemieux-Berube at the Montreal Centre of Contemporary Textiles and Brooks Hagen at the Rhode Island School of Design.

His work includes hand weaving digital images into jacquard textiles. Gary is a member of the Hudson-Mohawk Weavers Guild along with the Tryon Weavers Exchange.

Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Brad Barnhurst relocated to Washington, D.C. to be with his partner. When he’s not working in the service/entertainment industry, Brad enjoys playing computer games on the couch, with a fruity drink, wearing nothing but a robe. Brad has been creating paper mosaics since 2015.

After hand-cutting colors and textures from specialized paper, Brad assembles and glues the pieces to form portraits and erotic scenes.

Brad’s work has been displayed in several exhibitions including: Alberta Street Gallery (PDX), Scandals (PDX), Seattle Erotic Arts Festival, The Tom of Finland Emerging Artist Competition, the DC Eagle, various PRIDE events, as well as in private collections in the US and internationally.

Longtime collage artist Jay Blotcher first began working in the collage medium in 1981. He creates pieces calculated to challenge. They reflect his progressive political motivations and a lifelong career in the queer community, from working as towel boy at the St. Marks Baths to later serving as spokesperson for the founding chapters of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Blotcher is also co-founder of New Paltz Pride March & Festival and the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center.

His tableaux explore recurring themes: the dynamic of sexual repression at the heart of homophobia, the joy of homoerotic desire, and the chronic demonization of LGBTQ people. His artwork incorporates vintage paper, photos, yearbooks, schoolbooks, medical journals, magazine ads and other ephemera that date from the 1870s to the 1990s.

Blotcher’s work resides in the private collections of renowned sodomites across the United States.

Keith Batten is an artist and stage director with an international career spanning over 40 years. This is the fourth time he’s exhibited artworks in BARNWOOD. These include vintage illustrations from Mandate magazine in the 1980’s, life drawings from his time in the Leslie Lohman Men’s Drawing Group, some of his doors artworks consisting of drawings on antique wooden doors and his most recent fabric hangings with painting on loose canvas. His artworks have been shown in over thirty galleries in the Hudson Valley and Manhattan. Keith currently lives in Stone Ridge, NY with his husband Dr. Anthony Gaudioso.

Joseph DiMaggio (he/him) is an event promoter, DJ, knitter, and self-taught photographer. His photography is an exploration of the form itself, as well as the specific impact that a subject’s own hobbies and creative outlets have on their sense of self. He prefers analog photography and the creative artistry and freedom a photographer can only find in the dark room. He lives in New Haven, CT with his partner.

Andrew S. Evans Jr. is an artist known for exploring surreal themes through printmaking and multimedia. Evans’ education includes biological sciences, zoology, taxonomy, and entomology with an emphasis on tick and mosquito-borne diseases. Artworks are inspired by Evans’ long career as a public health official who successfully managed government response to health crises ranging from HIV to COVID19. A melding of education and career experience influences his work expressed through nightmarish imagery evoking Hieronymus Bosch with a modern sensibility.

Anthropomorphized characters depict disease vectors as animals or viral cells in human clothing. The human-like vectors suggest powerful and organized creatures with sinister intent to spread deadly illnesses. He enjoys exploring this theme through watercolor, acrylic, photography, and sculpture.

Born in 1960, in Poughkeepsie, New York, he is finishing study at Dutchess Community College where he will receive an AAS in Fine Arts. Past shows include Mildred I. Washington Art Gallery, Opalka Art Gallery and Barnwood. Evans now thrives in the artistic community of Beacon, New York.

Miguel Espinoza has been interested in art his entire life. He began drawing and painting at a young age and has always been inspired by color in nature and how it affects the human psyche. Using various media, he paints from life and references photographs to extract expressive shapes and colors. His work is not overly concerned with exact representation but rather composition and balance. He often paints on large canvases to draw the viewer into the work. He graduated with honors and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He has done commission artwork for various art collectors and has exhibited in Honolulu, Hawaii, Long Beach, California, Hudson Valley, New York and most recently in Washington, D.C. His work was selected to participate in a traveling exhibit in Columbia, South America. He was assistant Preparator at the Contemporary Museum in Makiki Heights in Oahu, Hawaii and coordinated College Art 1990. He was a Museum Assistant at the Phillips Collection and a volunteer at the Smithsonian Institution.

Brett Formosa, pseudonym of Benjamin Seaman (born 1966) is a painter, photographer, and mixed-media artist concerned with queer and gay male imagery. Formosa is based in NYC and the Catskills, where he maintains a multidisciplinary studio practice. Brett Formosa came to life attending online life-drawing sessions in 2020 to maintain queer community during the Covid pandemic.

Seaman found that working as Brett Formosa unleashed an alter ego that allowed exploration of both the sacred and the profane in various erotic tropes such as “vintage porn,” beefcake, and life-drawing poses.

Formosa got his BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1992. Since then, Formosa has participated in numerous group shows including Barnwood: Nude and Lewd, a quarterly group show curated by Stephen Hengst for Pink

Stallion Events, the Fire Island Pines Art Project, and The Dirty Show, an annual expo of erotic work in Detroit, Michigan. In June 2020, Brett presented his first NYC solo show at Shag Sex Shop and Erotic Art Gallery.

A Pennsylvania native, Guth is an award winning artist who has worked consistently in various mediums throughout his career including painting, printmaking, photography, installation work and film. He has studied at Temple University, Philadelphia and Harrisburg Area Community College where he has received degrees in Visual Fine Arts, Art History and Film Media & Communications.

Andrew’s work often seeks to convey personal narratives, translated through the lens of his experiences as a queer man in North America. He creates a layered environment in which the viewer can project their own story through the piecing together of visuals and text, relying on personal associations to the arrangements, color and objects to dictate the experience.

Guth’s work has been shown regionally and nationally continuously since 2001. His print work and paintings have been showcased through exhibits orchestrated in spaces located in Philadelphia, Toronto, Pittsburgh (The Andy Warhol Museum), New York, Washington DC (Embassy of France), Baltimore, Miami, Provincetown, Dallas, and Harrisburg, PA (The State Museum of Pennsylvania). His painting and sculptures are included in numerous private collections throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Switzerland, Iceland, and France.

Guth has owned and curated a number of galleries in the city of Harrisburg over the past decade including The Mantis Collective Gallery (with fellow artist Tara Chickey), and North Gallery. As of January, 2019 Guth has curated over 172 exhibits throughout the course of his career.

Nathan lives in the Catskill region of Upstate, New York and works out of a studio in Kingston, where he also teaches. He’s been making pottery since 2001. Nathan makes, ornate, decorative, ceramic objects such as tableware and tile. His subject matter includes florals, animals, and the male figure.

Mickey Harmon is a Buffalo, NY based illustrator, community organizer and queer erotica artist. For over 10 years Mickey has been illustrating on commission. In 2019, Mickey began a queer erotica career under the moniker, Super Twunk and began celebrating his own community’s body positivity through art.

Creating paintings and illustrations for queer festivals, events, companies and content creators, it remains Mickey’s goal to illustrate the very essence of each individual. He also sells queer designs on Threadless, one of the internet’s oldest print to order services for apparel.

Edgar Hartley is a polymathic printmaker and artist born in Lubbock, Texas in 1963. He received his BA from the University of Kansas in 1986 and continued his Masters’ studies in Nanjing, China.

Hartley has exhibited in the US and abroad including the HOLLAR Gallery in Prague and has been collected by the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore and various private collectors. His printmaking practice encompasses many and various techniques which include etching, lithography and photogravure, as well as paper lithography, collagraphy, linoleum relief printing and silkscreen. He is currently pursuing his MFA degree at SUNY New Paltz. His work is heavily influenced by queer politics and Vajrayana Buddhist teachings.

In his post-meditation time, Edgar is also a poet and podcaster, living and working within all his auspicious phenomena in New York State.

The artist works with diverse elements that include natural and found objects, fabric and craft supplies, display letters, scraps of wood and construction debris, dime store frames, souvenirs and keepsakes, images lifted from smut and advertising, and painted surfaces. Arranging and assembling these elements is like charting a map as it unfolds, revealing destinations and treasures. Activities of painting, wrapping, binding, and studding are involved. He also use words as supporting visual elements to articulate, buttress, and amplify ideas and themes. Color and surface are key: industrial fluorescents and jewel-box metallics are often underscored with tones of earthly growth and decay.

His work focuses on harnessing, reinforcing, and expanding the untamed forces of a queer masculine energy. Like other expressions of queer experience, the pieces take on elements of de- and reconstruction, subversion, promiscuous flamboyance, and innuendo. The queer spirit of shapeshifter is ubiquitous, involving a transformation of found and chosen materials that suggest, disguise, tease, and confound. Anchored in a tradition in which the queer tongue is held firmly in cheek and dissonant elements create magnetic polarity, each of these pieces simultaneously emits a wistful sigh and a grunt of rough exertion, every light-in-the-loafers step accentuated by the clomp of steel-toed boots.

Stephen Honicki is a photographic and multi-media artist who is currently living and working in the Hudson Valley Region of New York State. Honicki is also a media arts educator who has been working in the field for over 25 years. He earned a BFA at the State University of New York at Albany and received his MS in Art Education at the College of Saint Rose. 

Honicki is a visual storyteller who constructs dramatic vignettes providing viewers his perspectives on the underlying themes of love, relationships, loss, & hope in our queer culture. He recently has begun to explore the nude male figure in his work; examining the relationship between the figure and the space in which they inhabit. 

Photographs from his narrative series, “Between Heaven & Hell”, “Coupling”, “A Solitary Man”, and “The Book of James” were exhibited as part of a two-person show, “Biography” at the Photo Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY, and a solo exhibition, “The Simplicity of Life” at the 39th Street Gallery in Brentwood, Maryland. In addition, he has had various work from his series selected to be a part of several “Exhibitions by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region and “Annual Photography Regionals”.

These male figures represent the artist’s reminiscences of the Disco Era of the 1970’s and the text within the figures derives from erotic magazines of that era, when meeting men was only possible through personal ads or in bars.

That decade predated the scourge of HIV-AIDS that so severely impacted our community, and as such, these figures are evocative of those years, during which sex with men was relatively carefree and without consequences.

These “Newsboys” are a small portion of an ongoing series of erotic collages created by Perry A. Iannaconi Jr. a Hudson Valley-based artist and a long-term thriver with HIV-AIDS. He currently lives and works in the Hudson Valley.

Jack lives in Seattle. He is inspired by analog mediums and traditional craft. He is trained as an industrial designer and as of late, enjoys dipping his toes into art. He likes to drift in and out of minimalism, asking himself how expressive can a drawing be with as few lines as possible?

Klockowski creates queer illustrations under the name Woolybearz on instagram – the artist and graphic designer is based in the Capital District of New York State.. I’m an artist and graphic designer based in the upstate NY / Albany area.

The artist has always been drawn to the bear community over any other gay scene, but has felt disconnected because he’s not physically a bear-type guy. He started creating bear-oriented artwork in 2016 as a means for me to connect with the bear community. He lovingly pokes fun at the community and its ‘tough guy seriousness’. His work is all about taking a big, hulking man and drawing him into a delicate or precarious position and often in a more quiet and somber light. The artist likes to portray queer intimacy and gay bear art in a way alternative to the hypersexual ‘Tom of Finland-esk’ trope known by most. In some ways, drawing bears became a bit of a cathartic way for him to explore his own feelings of alienation.

Chicago-based artist Joe Kraft works with a variety of materials. He earned a BFA in Ceramics from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Clay has led Joe down many artistic and professional paths; however, his love for drawing and printmaking is what currently drives his practice in 2023.

“The beautiful part of working with different media,” he says, “is that you never get bored”. You can find Joe’s artwork throughout the Chicago area: as public art and murals, on the beer bottles of local breweries, inside art galleries, and printed on merchandise around Chicago.

Mike Marcus is a California Bay Area-native. He grew up in his mother’s weaving studio and clothing store in the heart of a thriving art community and began making and selling jewelry at a very young age. The studio and shop was located above internationally-renowned glass blowers and by the time he was ten years old, he’d adopted glass as a primary medium; this continued through my early 30s.

Mike’s creative practice has always been intertwined with community. However, there was always a disconnect between the jewelry that he made and the people who it resonated with. They weren’t *his* community. They were often the mothers of guys who he went to school with (and who he was secretly attracted to).

For many years Mike repressed his attraction to men, terrified of the potential social, familial, and career consequences of his sexuality. As he became more comfortable with his sexuality, he became less comfortable with an art form that didn’t have personal resonance, or resonance with the community that he identified with. As a result, Mike went on a creative hiatus for over five years.

In 2021, Mike knew that he had to re-engage his artist self and was fortunate to rediscover his love of printmaking. Mike was simultaneously inspired by various San Francisco queer artists and over the past few years, he’s been re-discovering his creative voice. One that is fully integrated with his personal identity. Exploring the subject matter of male eroticism and intimacy through a fine art medium is at once an irreverent celebration of who and what Mike finds beautiful, and simultaneously an indignant political rebuke to the cultural taboos surrounding homosexuality.

What is hidden is seen and what is seen is hidden. All of my work has this duality. The artist mixes his own colors using neon and blacklight reactive acrylic paints. Each of the pieces is a painting within a painting. The light will reveal it all.

Maldonado’s work has two sides, two personalities within each canvas. The blacklight will reveal its secretive or hidden side. This duality exists everywhere and within everything. Using different light sources allows him to bring this duality to life on his canvases. Bold vivid colors bring my masculine portraits to life. The colors soften their gruff and tough exterior, revealing a softer more human side. Thus bringing to light the duality of these men and their lives. When illuminated by the blacklight the scene changes to a more mysterious and alluring atmosphere. The tension builds. The artist wants the play of light and color to invite the viewer to create their own narrative about these men, their lives and experiences, while also asking the viewer to question what is masculinity? How is it perceived and displayed?

A self-taught artist, Murphy started Totally Wired Sculpture in 2002 and has gradually spent more time in the creative process, which provides a strong contrast to his work as a child therapist, primarily dealing with issues of trauma.

His work can be seen as a lighthearted line drawing in the medium of steel wire. Often political and humorous, themes are incorporated which can challenge or amuse the viewer leaving them uplifted.

The goal of each piece is to create kinetic movement from the tension in the wire so that the figures seem to dance or sway on their own and appear enlivened. Mythological themes and tales of transformations dominate, illustrating the power of art to help us change and grow.

​​Jeremy Novy’s unique brand of street art is ripe with thoughtful social examinations. Novy has combatted a homophobic lack of representation with a celebration of gay iconography, bringing joviality and warmth to disused urban spaces. With a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, he curated the first major exhibition of its kind, “A History of Queer Street Art,” premiered in San Francisco in 2011 and later toured to Pop Up Gallery in Los Angeles and Yale University.

Since graduating from Pecks School of the Arts, Novy’s art has been met with acclaim across the country and around the globe.

Since the early 80’s, stained glass has been Andy’s muse and mentor, fine tuning the connections between his inner self and the outer world.

From the point of inspiration, through the act of putting pencil to paper, and on into the vision of adapting colors and textures into the craft of rendering, shaping and assembling, his stained glass works can range from flights of fanciful whimsy as an expression of the moment, to an esoteric essay of one’s place on this mortal coil. Each window, lamp, terrarium, chime or mobile is visual poetry, a sonnet, a meditation of its own luminous self.

Commissions, as these three pieces here in the Barnwood Show were initially, are inherently exciting. Incorporating the concepts, ideas and wishes of the client into a design idea, then blending this inspiration with the themes, colors and ambience of the ultimate destination of the piece, gives my pencil a place to land on the paper. From then on, the drawing takes on a life of its own, as the dance between the art and the artist begins.

Jason, an illustrator/graphic designer by trade, makes bespoke modern ceramics, wallpaper, and art in his Kingston, NY studio. This Hudson Valley resident’s vibrant and colorful illustrations of modern people, places, and pets have been published globally by the likes of Chanel, Gap, Mini-Cooper, Ikea, Coca Cola, Random House, and American Express to name a few resume highlights.

His editorial illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, OUT, Lucky, InStyle, and numerous international publications. He designed and illustrated the rainbow flavored book and branding for Big Gay Ice Cream and the fabulous entertaining tome; The Cocktail Party by Mary Giuliani.

In his spare time he does custom portraits of people just like you. For more info visit jasonomalleyportraits.com.

JTM Artworks is the gay erotic artworks of Jeffrey Todd Moore. Moore is a self taught artist, watercolor painter, digital photo manipulator and glass artist, using both stained glass and fused glass.

He has been making art since 2006, but Covid opened up the online world, showing him that there was a place for gay erotica and phallic art. This is the artist’s third time being a part of BARNWOOD.

John Paradiso earned a BFA at the State University of New York at Purchase and his MFA at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is a mixed media artist, and his work is based upon such issues as identity, sexuality, health, and love. He has work in private and public collections including the Stamp Collection at the University of Maryland, the Kinsey Institute, The Leslie-Lohman Museum, and a portfolio of seven photographs in the National Picture Collection at the Library of Congress, (AIDS portfolio).

John is currently the Resident Artist and Curator at Portico Gallery and Studios in Brentwood, MD, part of the Gateway Arts District, Prince Georges County. In my work, I try to represent a Queer fluid masculinity. The use of pansy imagery refers to it historical use as a disparaging term for a man or boy who was considered either effeminate or homosexual. The irony is that the pansy is a very hardy flower. A term once meant to be ugly and hurtful remaining resistant and pretty.

JJ Quinn is a queer pop artist, primarily working in acrylics and mixed media. Known for his bold line-work, whimsical figures, and saturated color palette, JJ’s work explores what turns us on in a playful, sexy, yet approachable way.

JJ Quinn’s brand also represents a trans-owned and operated platform – with an ethos that every queer body deserves space and recognition in art. By seamlessly joining elements of both pop and erotic art, JJ’s work aims to elicit a sense of joy that is sure to bring a smile to your face.

JJ has exhibited work solo and in several group shows, such as The Tom of Finland Foundation in Los Angeles, Art Gaysel in conjunction with Art Basel Miami and more. His work is amongst private collections throughout the country. JJ most recently celebrated his first solo-show in Provincetown’s Gallery Lacombe.

He holds a BFA in Costume Design from Missouri State University. Hand currently lives in New York City with his grumpy senior cat, Capote. (Yes, like Truman).

Guelmo Rosa born In Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx. Rosa has earned two Bachelor’s degrees; one as an English Teacher and the second as a fine arts painter. He moved back to NY in 2012 and has been exploring his sexuality and fetishes through his art.

Rosa has been working with metals for more than a decade, and they have become his primary art medium. Osa is constantly evolving and changing as he digs deeper into my queerness. Each day he discovers something new about himself and utilizes his craft as the medium through which he expresses and shares his personal evolution. To live as his authentic self is to allow himself to continue exploring his queerness. The artist is focused on taking his mistakes and learning from them, and to be as unapologetic as possible while navigating through this world so that he can continue to stay strong for future generations.

A queer leatherdyke femme who celebrates the erotic body in a variety of mediums, including watercolor, acrylics and clay, Charlotte’s lush nudes evoke the joy and bliss of being at home in our skin – and she offers custom portraits for those wanting to celebrate their own unique erotic expression.

Devoted to art and conversations that expand our individual and collective capacity to experience more pleasure, joy and connection, Charlotte is co-founder of PleasureMechanics.com where she co-hosts the Speaking of Sex podcast and offers group and personal sex coaching.

Charlotte grew up in Hong Kong and London, UK and now lives in the Hudson Valley of NY, savoring life with her partner, child and queer community.

Paul Rizzo is a painter and sketchbook filler who lives and works in Provincetown Massachusetts. He works with and from 70s gay porn, portraiture, abstraction, houses and text.

His work is also about a nostalgia both for a time he lives in and a time he has not technically lived through. He is obsessed with the past – specifically old Hollywood and the 1970s. A process painter, he loves getting lost in documenting and/or the making of art.

Ryan Rudewicz (better known as @RudePolaroids) is a Polaroid and film photographer based in Brooklyn capturing Queer life. He is the winner of the 2023 Glam Award as New York’s best nightlife photographer and just recently had his first solo gallery in Provincetown this summer. Ryan’s first time showing his work was at Barnwood in July 2021 and he’s thrilled to be back.

As a mixed media artist, I create autobiographical art that currently explores queerness and gender identity. My earlier work involved photographing my nude body, presenting it in various methods of collage practices. Lately, I am a gatherer and composer of images, a practice wherein countless hours are spent scouring the net for vintage photography and various printed ephemera. Part of my practice follows in the steps of artists who have plucked out imagery from our print culture to make new and rebirth. Artists such as members from the Dadaists, the Pictures Generation, John Stezaker and Rauschenberg are some that have influenced my creative impulse.

An artist who plays with earth, fire and water in Kerhonkson, NY under the guise of Ogre Ceramics, Dusan was born in the Czech Republic, he took his first pottery class in 2003. After a long career as a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre (DT)2, he fully transitioned to life upstate NY in 2019 and embraced his passion for pottery full time. His work is in many private collections worldwide. In 2021, he was invited to take part in Internationales Kunstlersymposium Beratzhausen (Germany). Recently he has collaborated with rampagetoys.com for exhibits in Taipei (Taiwan) and Tokyo (Japan). This is his second time at BARNWOOD.

Court Watson (he/they) is a member of the Doable Guys Art Collective and runs the Drawn Together drawing group. He has exhibited in numerous group shows at the Leslie-Lohman Gay and Lesbian Art Museum including The Male Gaze, Dirty Little Drawings, and Boy Bordello, as well as four Fire Island Pines Art Biennials, Superfine! Art Fair, Art Gaysel Provincetown, Barnwood, Side Tracks Gallery, Salzburg’s Dark Eagle, Atlantic Gallery, Brooklyn Queer Flea, Dandyland, and been featured in E. Gibbons’ 100 Artists of the Male Figure, Doable Guys Vols. 2-8, Falo Magazine in Brazil, and Murn Magazine.

WANDERLUST at the SoHo Project Space was his first solo show in New York and first monotype.

His theatrical set and costume designs for opera, musicals, dance, and themed entertainment have been seen on stages from Beijing to Nashville, Orlando to Cooperstown, and Munich to San Antonio. He is committed to advocating for safe, respectful, inclusive, diverse spaces where we can take creative risks together without harassment or abuse. He holds an MFA from New York University and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University with a minor in Art History. He serves on the faculty at NYU’s Tisch Drama.

For the last 21 years Melissa Wilkinson has served as an academic, teaching art at various academic institutions and workshops throughout the country. She received her BFA in painting from Western Illinois University in 2002 then went on to receive her MFA in painting from Southern Illinois University in 2006.

Her work has been featured in wide reaching publications throughout the country including three editions of New American Paintings, The Curator’s Salon, and The Manifest Drawing Annual four times. She has shown in various galleries nationally and internationally including South Korea, Canada, India, and Art Basel Miami and has won numerous awards throughout her career. She has won several fellowships and grants including the Arkansas Arts Council Fellowship in Painting in 2012, a Middle East Studies Grant to create an image archive in Israel in 2016, and a National Women in the Arts Grant to do the same at the Smithsonian in 2019. She is represented by OnCenter Gallery in Provincetown, MA. Her work is amongst private collections throughout the country and abroad. She hikes regularly, enjoys making homemade pasta, and consistently attempts to make the best cup of coffee possible. She serves as art faculty at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. She splits her time with studios in both Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley in New York.