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Seth Ter Haar

Seth Ter Haar is an artist,

curator, and FisherOfMen,

based in Milwaukee, WI.

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Gothic Kneeler reimagines a traditional piece of Christian furniture as a modernist object of solitary devotion. Designed for a single body, the kneeler draws from both Christian liturgical forms and transcendentalist thought, particularly Henry David Thoreau’s writings on solitude, self-reliance, and spiritual clarity found through individual communion with nature. Constructed from hardwood, the structure is anchored by a twisted Gothic arch formed from two intersecting planes set at a 120-degree angle. As the viewer moves, the arch visually shifts from Romanesque roundness to Gothic pointedness, holding aloft a small tabletop while framing a place for the knees below.
Sainted Cruiser with Holy Handkerchief is a material and spiritual exploration of laser burning as both image-making and ritual. The work adapts a photograph taken during a leather night at Dix, a local gay bar in Milwaukee, merging a white short-sleeved shirt, black tie, black trousers, and a leather harness into a self-declared icon: the Sainted Cruiser. The figure stands as someone who has reached, or is reaching, queer enlightenment and is poised to evangelize sexual freedom as a sacred pursuit.The arched form contains two integrated panels. Below, a laser-burned self-portrait in white oak sits against a plywood ground, its scorched surface emphasizing grain, shadow, and bodily presence. Above, the Holy Handkerchief radiates outward in a fan of carefully aligned wood segments. Through engraving and directional grain placement, the panel recreates the folds, drape, and softness of fabric within rigid material. Together, the Romanesque arch and modern restraint frame cruising as devo
Cruising Trophy (Crotch Grab) is one of the earliest works in Ter Haar’s exploration of cruising, created as he first encountered the practice emerging from the social isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Formed during a period when physical intimacy was heavily restricted, the sculpture reflects the tension between sexual shame, trauma, and the cautious reentry into public connection. Using traditional furniture-making techniques and exposed joinery, the work melds white oak and walnut into a phallic form mounted on a wall plaque, presented as both object and offering. The walnut base evokes the shape of underwear, while five protruding white oak prongs reference a hand grasping a crotch, a nonverbal gesture embedded in cruising culture. Hanging proudly from the wall, the piece frames cruising as a coded language of desire, resilience, and survival within queer public life.
Twisted Arches Bench is a sculptural furniture work that reinterprets sacred architectural language through contemporary woodworking. Constructed entirely from solid walnut and white oak using traditional joinery, the bench balances structural clarity with restrained ornament. Two walnut leg assemblies intersect at 120-degree angles, each carved with half-arches that merge to form a shifting visual motif. As the viewer moves, the arch oscillates between Gothic pointed forms and Romanesque curves, inviting multiple readings rather than a fixed symbol. A routed white oak seat rests atop this framework, supported by internal white oak stretchers. One central connector and two quarter-length braces subtly echo the form of crosses when viewed from below, embedding symbolic structure within functional necessity. Minimal yet referential, the bench offers a modernist approach to sacred furniture, concealing architectural devotion beneath clean lines and quiet craftsmanship.
(Religious) Glory Hole is a wall-mounted sculpture that merges woodworking, architecture, and queer critique to confront religious exclusion. Constructed from two solid wood panels aligned at a 120-degree angle, each carved with a sweeping curve, the form shifts between Romanesque and Gothic arches depending on the viewer’s position. At its center, a small bronze, Madonna-like figure is suspended within the opening, transforming a devotional niche into a charged architectural void.
Cruiser II is a marquetry recreation of a photograph taken outside Milwaukee Pride in 2023, marking the artist’s first Pride experienced within a kink and leather space. Captured after meeting friends at a leather pageant, the image reflects a moment of self-assuredness and visibility—leather pants, harness, and body occupying public space without apology. The photograph was taken outside This Is It, the historic Milwaukee bar later closed in 2025, with the very construction element posed against cited as part of the reason for its closure. In this way, Cruiser II functions as both personal portrait and quiet memorial to a vanished queer site. Constructed from plywood with an inlaid figure of white oak, the work emphasizes material contrast: the vertical grain of the body against the horizontal grain of the ground. The white oak burns and chars at a different rate, deepening shadows and echoing the black frame and single leather strap affixed to the surface—an allusion to the harness
69 presents two male figures locked in reciprocal intimacy, rendered through intersecting sheets of white oak veneer. Each body is cut from a separate plane: the left figure’s vertical grain meets the right figure’s horizontal grain, their collision producing a visual hinge where bodies and materials merge. Laser burning overlays these intersections, creating tonal depth that reads as both shadow and touch. The background repeats the combined silhouette of the figures as a patterned field, collapsing scale and transforming the couple into an ornamental motif. The sexual position 69 functions here as a structure of equality and simultaneity. Giving and receiving occur at once, without hierarchy, echoing a devotional logic rather than a pornographic one. Explicit exposure is not meant to shock, but to assert vulnerability as sacred. The work frames queer intimacy as a form of communion, where mutual pleasure becomes a shared rite and a temporary unmaking of the self into something colle
Pool House Pre Horse Meat Disco documents an intimate interval during an artist residency in New Orleans, situating queer encounter within the broader rituals of gay travel and vacation culture. Laser-cut from plywood and mounted within a frame lined in black flocking, the work experiments with varied burn settings to loosen the artist’s previously precise, controlled aesthetic. Abstracted imagery drawn from illicit self-documentation depicts a hooded, handcuffed cruiser, rendered indistinct through ornament and shadow, transforming sexual experience into a form of holy rite or spiritual awakening. The flocked backing absorbs light almost completely, creating a depth akin to Vantablack and causing the panel to appear suspended, untethered from the frame. This darkness contrasts with the warm grain of the wood, heightening the sense of surveillance, power, and temporality. Positioned between anthropology and devotion, the work reflects on the artist’s ability to witness, record, and
Tabernacle and Ark for Queer Spirituality is a sculptural installation that reclaims religious form as a site of queer self-authorship and spiritual inquiry. Drawing from biblical and transcendentalist traditions, the work consists of two elements: a Tabernacle, conceived as a contemporary cabin-like space for reflection, and an Ark, imagined as an artifact meant to hold a personal covenant of evolving spiritual, religious, or philosophical values. Acknowledging the fraught relationship many queer people have with institutional religion, the artist reframes spirituality as self-directed, intimate, and ongoing. The surfaces of the Tabernacle and Ark are embellished using CNC machining and laser cutting, incorporating phallic forms that reference gay cruising culture and earlier bodies of work. Through the fusion of digital fabrication, woodworking, and religious symbolism, the piece situates queer desire, craft, and spirituality within a contemporary sacred framework.
Cruising Procession marks the invention of the artist’s recurring character, the Cruiser, situating cruising as a ritualized act akin to a church procession. The video installation combines handmade CNC-cut elements with worn personal objects to construct a devotional environment rooted in public bathrooms and sacred architecture. A Gothic arch–inspired screen slides beneath a bathroom stall, framing two figures who exchange a small bronze, Madonna-esque statue, borrowed from Religious Glory Hole. This exchange treats sexuality as a form of offering, with the statue functioning as a metaphor for intimacy passed hand to hand. Surrounding props deepen this narrative: boots heavily worn by the Cruiser, torn through by use, rest like relics, while a framed preparatory sketch documents the design process behind the screen. Together, video, objects, and architecture transform cruising into a choreographed procession, blending queer sexuality, craft, and spiritual symbolism into a single
Missionary Screen is a material and conceptual study in concealment, power, and devotion. Using CNC cutting, flocking, and controlled lighting, the work forms a Gothic-arched screen that casts the silhouetted imprint of two figures engaged in sex. The imagery is legible yet withheld and activated only through shadow, echoing the ways queer intimacy has historically existed within systems of moral surveillance. Small cross-shaped perforations puncture the surface, functioning as both ornament and wound, allowing light to pass through acts of looking. The screen mediates between visibility and erasure and implicates the viewer in a quiet exchange of voyeurism and reverence. Drawing on the silhouetted figuration and devotional eroticism of Dutes Miller and Stan Shellabarger, alongside the confrontational use of shadow and power in Kara Walker’s work, Missionary Screen frames sex as ritual, shadow as testimony, and the body as a contested sacred site where belief, desire, and control.
Crown of Thorns (Protection Artifact) is a sculptural experiment extending the twisted arches motif that recurs throughout this body of work. Built upon the vertical structure of a cross, the piece uses precise joinery to connect two smaller twisted arches with two larger ones, forming a crown-like geometry. The arches articulate the interior angles of the twisted form and are outlined in white oak, creating an illuminated effect that visually binds the object back to the cross beneath it. Contained within this vessel is a collection of thorns gathered from rose bushes outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. Referencing the crown of thorns worn by Christ, the sculpture functions as both reliquary and talisman. It holds pain, rather than denying it, while offering a form of protection. The work suggests that spiritual and sexual enlightenment is earned through risk and vulnerability—the path forward is not harmless, and contact may wound, but meaning is forged in that exposure.
Chastity Cage reimagines the kink of chastity as an object of agency rather than denial. Traditionally used to prevent erection and to enact submission through restraint, the chastity cage here becomes a sculptural celebration of chosen vulnerability and self-possession. Mounted on a walnut plaque, a white oak block anchors a welded bronze cage whose looping, phallic form projects outward, suspended between containment and display. Drawing from the visual language of trophies and devotional objects, the work reframes chastity as an offering, a deliberate act of giving sexuality away rather than having it taken. In this inversion, restraint becomes generative, producing power through consent, ritual, and visibility. The contrast between warm hardwoods and industrial bronze underscores the tension between control and desire, permanence and flesh. Chastity Cage positions submission not as absence, but as a form of authorship over one’s own erotic narrative.
Tessellate is an experimental wood panel that explores scale, repetition, and self-reliance within sexual space. On the right panel, laser-engraved silhouettes depict two figures drawn from explicit self-portrait photographs, mirrored and multiplied until the body becomes both subject and pattern. The image suggests an act of intimacy with oneself, repeated and abstracted into a tessellated form that oscillates between erotic encounter and devotional motif. This logic of recursion continues outward, where the figure reappears obsessively along the frame’s rim, collapsing distinctions between center and margin, image and structure. The residual burn from the laser engraving is left visible, functioning as an atmospheric trace—an aura produced by friction, heat, and repetition. Black paint and flocking complete the frame, reinforcing the work’s tension between craft, desire, and self-knowledge.
The Boys I Lost to Cocaine, Love Affair is a wood panel work that reflects on intimacy, excess, and disillusionment within Milwaukee’s gay nightlife scene. Developed as part of a larger body of work for St. Kate, the piece emerges from a period when the artist was dating a go-go dancer and fully immersed in the city’s bar culture. That world offered connection, visibility, and a dense social network, but it was equally marked by drug dependency, blurred boundaries, and emotional volatility. Recreating a photograph taken inside a club, the silhouetted figures suggest a tentative negotiation between desire and distance, a will-they-won’t-they moment of intimacy multiplied outward. Installed and photographed in the woods, the work marks a return to cruising and non-monogamy after the relationship’s collapse. The forest becomes both refuge and reckoning, a space of homecoming that acknowledges loss while confronting the deeper, darker undercurrents of queer social life.
Bondage continues a series of laser-cut and marquetry works that use self-portraiture as both subject and structure. The image depicts a kneeling figure bound, blindfolded, and gagged, his body restrained while control is exerted through hair, rope, and posture. This central scene is tessellated into a patterned background, fragmenting the body into repetition and echo, while the physical frame mirrors the act depicted within. Black cord wraps the shadow-box frame, binding the object itself in a way that parallels the figure’s restraint and collapsing image and support into a single sculptural system. Hung to project outward at roughly a forty-five-degree angle, the work interrupts the viewer’s body, requiring a slight downward tilt of the neck to engage it. This enforced posture implicates the viewer in the dynamics of control, submission, and looking, transforming a two-dimensional image into an embodied encounter.
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