Stuntology is Bartlett’s signature art and performance genre of humorous parlor tricks and messy exploration with everyday objects.
As a musician, Bartlett is a prominent performer and composer of traditional American, Irish and New England folk music on the national contra dance circuit.
At Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, Vermont, he was voted class clown and was known for his banjo playing, drawing and tennis skills.
During this time he played mandolin and tenor banjo with three highly influential touring bands: Uncle Gizmo, Wild Asparagus, and the Clayfoot Strutters, and assisted in reshaping the face of modern contra dance music.
Since 2014, Bartlett has also been a member of the 5-piece Stringrays, with Rodney Miller, Max Newman, Mark Hellenberg, and Stuart Kenney.
In 1999, Bartlett began playing with Illinois native fiddler Garry Harrison, and he was an integral member of the group that made the now legendary recording of original old-time music, Red Prairie Dawn (2000).
Bartlett traveled to southwest Louisiana in 1996 and teamed up with Dirk Powell to make Swamp Ceili, the first radical mixing of Irish and Cajun and Zydeco music.
Concurrent with a long and active music performing career, Bartlett has maintained another identity as a documentarian and drawer of tricks and stunts.
As an offshoot of illustrating a series of books, Bartlett has been hired by the city of Bloomington, Indiana, to do public artwork, notably featuring traffic boxes and murals.
His specialty has been to make participatory “Crankie Shows,” hand-cranked, moving panorama drawings that tell stories that happened in a certain locale.