The Queer Art Expo is appropriately being held this Saturday at Los Angeles’s Rough Trade Gear. If you’re the vanilla type, think everything you think you know about leather and add some neoprene and you’ll get a lil’ bit of the frosting on that cake.
But far more important than the venue are its artists, specifically the three Long Beach artists—Boots Bryant, David Shouse Mitchell, and Steven H. Garcia—whose queer slant on drawing, photography, painting and a plethora of other artistic endeavors have earned them spots at the all-queer exhibition.
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Boots Bryant, aka Kevin Johnson, is a photographer who straddles self-admittedly straddles the line between filth and art with captivating brilliance. Think Bruce Weber (an influence on Boots) and his figure studies of Bear Pond lathered with some Elbow Grease Lube and leather surrealism.
The more prudish of viewers might be offended by his unabashed appreciation of the human body in its most exposed state—rather amusing considering Boots professionally photographs everything from weddings to to family portraits—but there is no denying that his photographic take on the world is sublimely immersing.
Long Beach had its first formal invite into Boots’s world when he held his first solo exhibit last year thanks to Vivid Framing & Lighting at Broadway and Linden in the East Village Arts District. Since then, he has continued to show off the queer bicep of Long Beach’s art scene.
“I think there’s no finer piece of art than the human body and I love to photograph it,” Boots said. “Since we live in a society where violence is glorified and nudity is shamed, I of course have called obscene and pornographic by some, while others call it fine art. All of my art is an extension of what goes on inside the body and mind of a living breathing man: some of it is romantic, some of it is angry, some of it is happy, some of it is spiritual, some of it is sexual.”
Boots was given his first big break by the famed fetish’n’kink auteur Rick Castro in 2008. Castro, whose BDSM-focused photography has contributed some of the most iconic images in the underground scene, was and has been one of Boots’s deepest influences. Though this isn’t to say that only fetish-driven artists have inspired Boots. Surrealist photographer and friend Liz Huston has inspired him as well.
This dual trajectory—on one hand, the art of sex, being queer, and nudity, and on the other, spirituality, surrealism, and alternate universes—drive Boots to create his visual masterpieces. It has even partly driven the creation of his alter ego name, a combination of an old pet and a street he grew up on: working for a magazine in 2007, they suggested he created an alternative identity, one that has helped him dive right into the weird.
In other words, the epitome of queer.
“Some would use queer as a synonym for being gay, but it’s so much more than that—it’s much more than just sexual,” Boots said. “Queer is when you don’t fit in to the other labels that people like to place on you. Queer is when you aren’t afraid to be yourself regardless of what anyone may think. Since I use art as a form of free therapy, I feel right at home in the queer category.”
His venture into Los Angeles for the Queer Art Expo will be his first, since prior obligations over past year’s have prevented him from attending. What to expect? Well, he prefers you come see for yourself because that’s what queer art is: experiential as much as it is intellectual.
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David Shouse Mitchell is a man of many talents. Painter and sculptor by day, drag photographer by night, the Long Beacher mixes just enough relatable things with a bag of oddities that his work never crosses a line of offense but doesn’t hit the brick barrier of banality.
“Life is serious enough—I like doing things that I enjoy seeing myself,” Mitchell said. “A lot of my work involves pop culture from a variety of places but let’s be honest: first and foremost I am a big ol’ homo and love over the top shit as much as the next queen. However, I grew up in in a pretty tumultuous and violent home in Kentucky, so I hid in my room a lot.”
The continual hiding—a feeling and behavior that almost every little gay boy experiences and feels comfort from doing—led him, like many ostracized, to pencil and paint as an escape. With instability at home—his stepdad firmly believes that Mitchell being struck by some 7500 volts of electricity is what turned him gay—and perpetually being picked on at school, art was the way out. From drawing pictures of Zira from Planet of the Apes to Olivia Newton John from her Physical album, he was able to create many windows in order to dive into a world of glam, glitter, fashion, and fantasy.
“My closest friends were Laverne and Shirley, Dolly, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman,” Mitchell said. “In fact, I still have a book that I made in 5th grade—with one of those blank journals, y’know?—that is intended to be a Charlie’s Angels episode tie-in book with illustrations.”
This isn’t to say he doesn’t fit the stereotype of artists as downtrodden, overly analytical folk. He often dives into the darker side of his own psychology and nostalgia but ultimately tends to keep it private.
“Funny,” Mitchell said while laughing, “I said a bunch of depressing things just to say my art doesn’t take itself too seriously. Dichotomy. Artists.”
Mitchell’s photo of drag queen Laganja Estranja.
Despite his self-described depressing roots, Mitchell’s artistic side seems to run in the Mitchell gene pool: his father was an architect, his uncle a sculptor, another uncle a painter and painting teacher—and this probably explains his dabbling into a bit of everything when it comes to art, including the creation of his drag persona, Beverly Killbillie.
But if there is a singular influence on Mitchell that sits outside his blood, it the iconic Los Angeles illustrator and graphic designer Richard Amsel. We’re talking about the kind of artist whose illustration of Lily Tomlin for the cover of TIME landed that cover in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection. The kid—he was 22 at the time—whose proposed poster for Hello, Dolly! became the poster for the film.
Far more importantly, particularly for Mitchell, was his now-iconic cover of Bette Midler’s The Divine Miss M album. An appropriate influence if there ever was one.
However, it was none other than Dolly Parton who drew him out of his Kentucky roots with then-boyfriend-now-husband Colin to the grand ol’ hills of the Hollywood sign. Parton was, at the time, working on her 9 to 5 musical at the Ahmanson and the World of Wonder Storefront Gallery in Hollywood was holding a Dollywood to Hollywood exhibit.
“I submitted five pieces that I had specifically done for a Dolly art show in Knoxville the year before and all 5 ended up getting in,” Mitchell said. “So there was no way in hell we couldn’t come to the show.”
And don’t expect a shortage of Dolly at the Queer Art Expo. Mitchell guarantees it. Oh, don’t forget the glitter.
“Art is essentially my therapist,” Mitchell said. “I am queer, therefore my art is queer (as explained in the impromptu therapy session we just had). Plus I like to use glitter.”
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If you are LGBTQ and live in Long Beach, it is unlikely you haven’t—at some point or another—seen the prolific work of nerd-meets-underwear fetishist Steven H. Garcia. He’s kind of like a boyish Tom of Finland who discovered Photoshop and a pile of superhero literature. In other words, he’s awesome.
Influenced by DC Comics guru Michael Turner (Witchblade, Fathom, Soulfire), DC/Marvel Comics master Jim Lee (X-Men vol. 2, Superman: For Tomorrow, Batman: Hush), most notably Joe Phillips. Phillips’s style is one that Garcia clearly mimics but not to the extent of being parody.
“My art is kinda like male fashion underwear models but if they were superheroes,” Garcia said. “Kinda suggestive but not too explicty—well, wait, there a few that are. But that’s the fun, right?”
Fun indeed. Take, for example, his take on X-Men’s Rogue, slinkily twisting her body, pulling back her hair, and showing a set of mammary glands are sure to make both gay and straight want to cop a(n inappropriate) feel. Or take a glance at his Batman, set for an upcoming 2015 calendar: mask off, one leg up and practically naked, the boyish face paired with a daddy-sized package is thoroughly fun.
And his Wolverine? Woof.
Even more awesome is his series of pictures turning Long Beach drag queens and kings into comic-like caricatures of themselves in all their campy glory. Jewels.Landon Cider. Psycadella. Sabreena.
While Garcia might showcasing Long Beach’s LGBTQ community through his art (he often turns friends into imagistic superheros for their computer backgrounds), there is what he feels is ultimately a hole in the queer art scene in Long Beach.
“I show my art a lot: LA Palm Springs, San Diego—on and on,” Garcia said. “I do a lot of the Prides, the Folsom Street Fair… Bent.com in Burbank coming up so I’m doing that. But to be honest, I don’t do too many shows in Long Beach. There’s not a lot of queer erotica art shows happening here but we can always and easily change that. I know there is a ton of talent in our great city so maybe it’s time for that and show of the goods.”
The goods Garcia will be showing at the Queer Art Expo are sure to make every gaymer a happy camper. Sexy versions of Mario (hey, he might be a lil’ chubby but there’s a hot cub in there somewhere), Link, Sora, Guardians of the Galaxy… Nothing short of queer.
“Queer art can mean so many different things,” Garcia said, “but for me, it’s the sexual nature of the subject being displayed: from how gay men love to show off there bodies to being comfortable in their own skin no matter what others think. Expression with outfear.”