“Every move we make is about art,” Kirk Slaughter says. And he is not exaggerating. He and Elisabett Gudmann have a unique collaborative relationship. They live, love and work together 24/7. Even when they get frustrated or annoyed, the solution is a walk in the woods – together. They are quick to tell you it is not the perfect symbiotic relationship, but it is clear that they are puzzle pieces that fit together – one does not work without the other.  However, they both have independent artistic visions and have developed distinct bodies of work.

Elis is a down-to-earth, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of woman. She, no doubt, got her blonde hair and blue eyes from her mom and dad, Norwegian and Australian, respectively. Her parents met in San Francisco – that’s where they stayed and raised a family. Elis is self-taught and self-educated in the fine arts. She grew up in a home full of fine art and antiques, took several trips to Europe and fell in love with the culture of art. However, she had relatives who were struggling artists, so she wasn’t always encouraged to follow in those footsteps. But Elis has always chosen her own path. She is fun loving and even a bit of a ham sometimes. When it comes to her art, though, she is dedicated, disciplined and tough. She has a unique artistic vision, and has developed her technique over many, many years and is widely recognized for her wall pieces. The hand fabricated metal panels are laboriously etched leaving detailed surface textures and imagery in relief.  Beautiful patinas are achieved by working with a variety of chemicals and a blowtorch.

Kirk is drawn to representational sculpture and he is also good at it. He’s a trained silversmith who learned the importance of detail by making jewelry. He is also a hotshot welder who has fabricated massive pieces, including a life-sized, bronze triceratops that’s now in the Museum of Natural History in Albuquerque. Kirk honed his skills by working with some of the finest artists in the business. As a teenager in Indiana, he was Roland Hobart’s (known for printing innovations and design of the United States Post Office’s eagle medallion) apprentice. He later worked with the legendary Alan Houser in Santa Fe, as well as Paul Jenkins and Norma Penchanski. Kirk eventually made it to California and stayed put. He’d learned the necessary skills to produce his own work and set up his own working atelier. Museums, high-end collectors and even Neil Young have pieces in their collections. With his earlier work, the Jazz Series, he captured the essence and spontaneity of improvisational jazz movements in bronze. From the billowing cheeks of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and the smooth posturing of Miles Davis, to the soulful spirit of the women of Motown; he has an incredible ability to sculpt emotion into metal bringing emotive characteristics alive in his work.

While Elis was enjoying impressive individual success with her wall pieces, she began to see a relationship with Kirk’s sculpture, and suggested collaboration. Together the work is looser, not tied to realistic detail – the horses have elongated legs, surfaces are rough with exaggerated angles, and figures are fragmented and wrapped. During the 1990’s, they worked on fabricated bronze pieces that were distinguished by clean lines, simple forms, and post-modernist, minimalist aesthetic, a complete departure from their most recent work. Currently, they are working on the Relic Series – pieces that perfectly meld his representational tilt with the abstract that she loves. The bronze pieces are sculpted and patinaed to feel and look as if they have just been pulled from an archeological site. “We bounce ideas back and forth, and approach it in a more organic and intuitive way, letting the sculpture evolve, working in a back and forth fashion, sometimes alone, sometimes together, until we both are satisfied,” she says, describing her working relationship with her long-time partner.

It is interesting that Elis brings a certain freedom to the collaborative process. Kirk is the laid back one, while Elis describes herself as a “type A” personality. Formally educated to be an accountant, she is comfortable in a world of precision, and in fact it is a necessary component of her own work. Her wall pieces balance somewhere between sculpture and painting. She starts with a copper canvas and first etches and then patinas – chemicals activated by high heat – the surfaces. She utilizes a painterly approach of applying the patinas with many layers resulting in a translucent depth to the colors, while simultaneously maintaining a minimalist feel with division of space and color. She applies the patina deliberately and systematically to get the color and sheen she is looking for. Her most recent body of work, the Urban Relic Series, incorporates non-literal expressions of random text, leaving the interpretation up to the viewer. The resulting wall panels are subtle with a translucent earthy feel that makes them seem contemporary and ancient at the same time. “Our collaborative work is a large part of what we do and we’re very dedicated to it,” she says.  “However, it’s also important to both of us to maintain our individuality and artistic identity.”

On a personal level, Kirk defies easy description; he looks like a surfer dude but has never ridden a surfboard. Instead, he’s at home in a boat on the Pacific, observing nature while fishing and crabbing. He does his home state of Indiana proud by packing a mean fade away – as a kid he sank jumpers falling into bales of hay. Kirk also does yoga, loves to bake and even started the first chess club in his hometown of Shelbyville. His uncle was a museum docent, so Kirk was exposed to art at a young age. His parents recognized his natural talent and sent him to art classes at the Heron School of Art in Indianapolis. As a young adult, he cast his first sculpture in silver and later learned how to weld, paving the way for his career as a sculptor. While the life of an artist can be spent in solitude, Kirk’s constant companion has always been music. He’s seen a diverse array of concerts from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee to Bob Marley and Iggy Pop. “Music has always been an influence on my life and work,” Kirk says. “I see many parallels between musicians and sculptors.” He talks passionately about classics like Lucinda Williams’ “Fruits of My Labor” and can pull a rare recording of Van Morrison’s “T.B. Sheets” at just the right time. He has hundreds of albums, spanning all genres. Some of his favorites include old Bill Cosby to a rare 1968 live Woody Allen recorded in San Francisco, a ton of soul from the Stax soul selection collection, and of course the classics: Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Coltrane and Nina Simone.

Elis and Kirk first bumped into each other at a health club in Placerville in the mid-1980’s. He was an accomplished sculptor who was in the process of carving out his own fine art career. She was just 19 years old, taking a break from college and looking for a meaningful direction. He got her a job at an art foundry and that sealed their fate. With Elis’s support, Kirk soon left his job to pursue his art full-time. He returned the favor when she returned to college to complete her degree. Born to be teammates, they truly are each other’s muse. “When I met Kirk,” Elis says, “my creative juices started flowing and everything fell into place.” Eventually they set up a joint studio in San Francisco at the Hunter’s Point Shipyard.

In the late 1990’s, space became available at the Old Creamery in the rolling hills of Southwestern Sonoma County. Kirk and Elis jumped at the chance. The country setting with its open meadows that meander to the sea provided the perfect environment for creativity. Artists converted the creamery to studio space four decades ago and it became a haven for eccentric and enterprising artistic personalities. Christo and Jean Claude lived there during their installation/performance of Running Fence from 1972 to 1976. When Elis and Kirk got there, they found one of the main characters in the Bay Area Beat Movement, Wally Hedrick, living at the Creamery. Hedrick was one of the seminal artists in the 1950’s California counterculture. Listening to his stories day and night provided them a wealth of wisdom. Hedrick was in his seventies at the time and still worked almost every day with his muse in the back of the art communal. If he wasn’t working, he was watching his beloved San Francisco Giants. “Some of our favorite memories from the Creamery,” Elis says, “were simultaneously listening to old time jazz and watching the Giants with Wally. Every time they hit a homerun, he rang a bell that hung outside his door.” Elis and Kirk spent a very productive eight years in Sonoma County before moving on to their dream.

“All we wanted was five acres and a barn,” Kirk says. Easier said than done with California real estate prices, but they persevered and eventually they found their Shangri-La in the Foothills of the Sierra – even if it was the ultimate fixer-upper. “It was in rough shape,” Kirk says. “The real estate agent didn’t even want to show it to us because it was in such bad shape, but we knew we wanted it as soon as we saw it.” It was a property only a couple of artists could love  – an old chinchilla farm built in the 1940’s. Essentially, it was an old barn and two acres of land just a few blocks from downtown Grass Valley, but it felt as remote as a cabin the backwoods. They would have to gut the barn, but to Elis and Kirk the old place was perfect.

Four years later, a good deal of money, and a whole lot of elbow grease has transformed the barn into a showcase. It is a two story, 5000 square-foot post and beam constructed building; the first floor has been converted into a modern living space, a couple of studios, a welding room, wax room and a patina room – which used to be an old freezer. The gallery is upstairs; a 25-foot ceiling, open space, and restored wood floors provide a beautiful stage for completed work.  A scuffed-up, old Grand piano sits in the middle of the room, surrounded by sculptures, Elis’s wall pieces, and true to his Hoosier roots, Kirk mounted a regulation height basketball hoop on the far side. It’s not for show – he is known for his trick shots over the track lighting.

The barn sits on two acres covered with mature fruit trees – walnut, apple and persimmon – along with a few maples providing fall color. People are scarce, but a couple of burros from the property next door visit often – Omar is the sensitive one that sings, and Mooner is the devious stud with the kooky libido. Kirk thinks they are funny, so he feeds them pears and carrots to keep them coming back. The back lot is mostly woods, but at the far side of a small clearing sits a large teepee where adventurous guests have been known to stay.

Kirk and Elis like to travel, but these days they are happiest in their own corner of paradise. The work is everything, and the days blend together – Sunday is no different than Monday. Kids are not in the plans – the art and an old dog named Sonny are enough to keep them busy.  Elis and Kirk are continuing work on the Relic Series.  “The pieces in this series focus on the figurative and equine, and evokes the primitive and timeless with their broken and aged surfaces, patina finishes and unique forms,” Kirk says. The sculptures are designed to remind viewers of ancient artifacts that have an apparent history but still require people to fill in their own details.  Although utilizing a multitude of original sculpting materials, from concrete and steel, to found objects and sculpting wax, the final piece is ultimately realized in cast bronze.

By their own admission, they have been flying under the radar for years, quietly honing their skills and developing their artistic voices.  And things are starting to come together for them. Recent exhibitions of their work in New York, Chicago and Santa Fe were extremely well received. They just about sold out at their last New York show this past spring. “It was very exciting!” Elis says. In addition, Elis just completed a large site-specific project for prominent private collectors in Philadelphia, hanging alongside a groundbreaking, major piece by Dale Chihuly, and others. “From the beginning our work has been well received, and we’ve had a number of important patrons who believed in and encouraged us,” she says. But they’re not resting on their laurels. “We’re in a pretty good place right now. We’re very proud of the work we’re producing, we love the place where we live. We’re happy. We definitely are looking forward to working on a larger scale and have had a number of inquiries about enlarging some of the bronzes to heroic size.” The goals for these two are ambitious. For Kirk, who likes to talk in musical metaphors, “The grand plan is that we’re searching for our ‘White Album.’” How will they know? “It’ll be a breakthrough in a sense,” Elis says. “A meaningful breakthrough that inspires – a unique creation.”

Written by: Ben Bamsey & Erin Clark

Artworks Magazine: Winter 2008