Sal Salandra: Homoerotic Embroidery of Leather, BDSM & Catholic Iconography

Sal Salandra (born January 1, 1946) is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in homoerotic embroidery he calls “thread painting.” His pictures pull leather gear, BDSM scenes, and gay sexual subcultures into the same visual field as American pop figures and Catholic iconography—needlework that treats the dungeon and the sanctuary as neighboring rooms rather than opposites.

Catholic Boyhood and Hairdressing Career

Salandra is a second-generation Italian-American who grew up in Edgewood, New Jersey, with three brothers and three sisters. A devout Catholic who considered the priesthood, he still fills his art with Christian imagery. Severe dyslexia ended that clerical path; he became a hairdresser instead and worked in New Jersey for fifty-five years. In 1993 he and his husband left their West Village apartment for East Hampton, New York, carrying that mix of Catholic memory and queer domestic life into the studio later.

Thread Painting: Leather, SM, and Sacred Motifs

He first picked up needlepoint in 1980 while bedridden with the flu, using a kit from his mother-in-law. In 2015 he began figurative human forms; that shift produced his trademark homoerotic motifs. Leather, BDSM, and other gay sexual subcultures collide with pop culture and Catholic saints. He cites corporeal punishments built into Catholic tradition as inspiration for BDSM scenes. Many works assemble multiple smaller scenes into one larger composition. Writing in the Brooklyn Rail, Osman Can Yerebakan describes him blending Hieronymus Bosch’s chaos with the flat pseudo-perspectives of Middle Eastern and South Asian miniature painting.

Outsider Art Fair and Solo Shows

Inclusion in the January 2020 New York Outsider Art Fair brought new attention. At seventy-four, the self-taught artist mounted his first solo show, “Sal Salandra’s Thread Art Paintings,” at East Hampton Shed’s mobile extension East Hampton Tow on July 4, 2020. A 2021 solo followed at appointment-only Club Rhubarb, then a 2022 group show in the Netherlands. Works often hang in “candy-colored” frames that heighten the clash between cheerful presentation and explicit leather content. For BDSM culture watchers, Salandra shows SM iconography can live in needlepoint as readily as in photography—stitched late in life by a former would-be priest whose memory of ritual Catholic punishment became the grammar of erotic thread painting rather than a reason to stay silent about leather, bondage, and desire.