Unwrapping Desire: The Erotic Art Bazaar Celebrates Queer Creativity and Kinky Craftsmanship

This year, the naughty list is overflowing with sex toys, leather, and trans creativity at the holiday edition of the Erotic Art Bazaar. 

“Hoe-sted” by Gay-Oddities and Hit Me Up on Dec. 15 in Chinatown, the Erotic Art Bazaar market treated holiday shoppers to a vast array of curated DIY vendors selling art and zines, fetishwear, hand-blown glass sex toys, impact toys, jewelry and body modifications.

Kutch Ironwood (left) and JackOfAllTrades (below) joined the Erotic Art Bazaar this year to sell impact toys and commission custom furniture.

“I definitely capture a lot of trans bodies,” Harlow Halberg, a transmasc painter and artist, whose digital illustrations and collages typically depict homoerotic themes, said in a breakdown of their work. “My main subject is just queerness, in general.”

Featuring work by Halberg, Three Fifty is a trans and queer collective that self-publishes zines and a transerotica magazine, Trace. The magazine features essays, poetry, comics and illustrations exploring intimacy through the lens of trans and non-binary folk across the sexual spectrum. Halberg had drawn up the cover of the latest issue of Trace.

The latest issue of Trace Magazine featuring the cover designed by Harlow Halberg. (Photo Credit: ThreeFiftyCollective)

Upon entering the second floor of the market, visitors encountered Kutch Ironwood, a welder turned artisan, who crafts impact toys and custom furniture like beds and crosses. “I’ve always been a carpenter and welder,” Ironwood explained. “Then I became kinky and thought, why not make my own stuff?”

Posture devices and steel paddles are displayed on the humiliation table, all crafted by Kutch Ironwood.

Displayed on a "humiliation table" of Ironwood’s design were hand-forged steel paddles with polished wooden handles, collars, and photo prints featuring Jack, who was captured and bound with black rope below the humiliation table.

What initially drew Jack to kinkplay was the loss of freedom, choice and decision making. By being locked or tied up, or contained within a steel cage, he alleviates any sense of internalized shame. “There’s a bunch of different, like, kink avenues that I’ve gotten to explore and I'm really enjoying the one that I’m on right now,” Jack said. 

The Erotic Art Bazaar provided gathering space for all sexualities and genders, motivating artists and shoppers alike. That ethos of DIY and self-determination resonated with Fitz Griffith, an artist hand-crafting intricate chainmail necklaces, and leather collars adorned with spikes and bondage rings.

“Knowing that there are people that enjoy what I do is enough to be able to not listen to the people that don’t,” Griffith said.

Fitz Griffith’s hand-made chainmail jewelry, spiked chokers, and harnesses.

Fran Janal, known for Whimsy Kink, features their hand-blown glass sex toys and other wearables at the Erotic Art Bazaar.