Holiday Arts Tour Stop: Kelly Moore Bag and Embellishments

17th annual Holiday Arts Tour, November 20-23, 2014 Today's Tour Stops include Kelly Moore Bag and Embellishments. Here you will see works by Joey Slaughter and Emma Melville, as well as hear the music of Monty Russell.

Ruston is fortunate in that Kelly Moore  Clark, of Kelly Moore Bag, is one of our local ladies. Kelly ships her camera bags around the globe and she's opened a brick and mortar store right here in downtown Ruston.

For this year's Tour she will host Joey Slaughter. Joey's artwork investigates the "look" of digital information as it is transmitted around us, providing an overabundance of stimuli and therefore, distractions. He combines the hands-on acts of painting and sculpture with digital media, using a blend of tight and loose, machine and man, all working together for a unified whole. The combination of these traditional and non-traditional processes is important to Slaughter, and allows for a play between spontaneity and precision. Joey is Associate Professor of Art at Louisiana Tech's School of Design, as well as Graduate Coordinator and a Gladys Lawson Rogers Endowed Professorship in Liberal Arts. Check out this recent article about Joey in the November issue of Bayou Life.

Monty Russell will kick off the Tour's Friday performances with a show at Kelly Moore Bag from 5-6pm. Monty Russell is a singer, songwriter, Americana radio personality, and concert promoter based in Northern Louisiana. After having been taught to accompany himself by sliding a knife blade over an open E tuned guitar at the age of 8, and having been immersed throughout his youth with the honky-tonk, gospel, western swing, and blues music played by his Grandfather Leon Russell, a rural self-taught barrelhouse piano player, guitarist, and fiddler, Monty set out on a musical journey that has lasted over 30 years. He has played theatres, listening rooms, festivals, honky-tonks, churches, and any other place people would listen.

Over the past decade, he has shared the stage with the likes of Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, Billy Currington, Gary Allan, Little Feat, Merle Haggard, Reckless Kelly, Blues Traveler, Irma Thomas, Marcia Ball, Charlie Daniels, Confederate Railroad, Bucky Covington, Robert Earl Keen, Delbert McClinton, David Alan Coe, Pat Green, Jerry Jeff Walker, Paul Thorn, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Del McCoury, Radney Foster, Reckless Kelly, Pete Anderson, and many others.

Just down the street a bit is Embellishments, a privately owned shop that offers a wide selection of gifts, home decor, bamboo bedding, jewelry and more. Tanya Florence, shop owner, will be hosting Emma Case Melville. Emma is a local potter who's recently begun a line of functional ceramic items, called Chene  Clay Company. For this year's Tour she will be offering an assortment of niche items, such as shaving bowls and yarn bowls, in addition to other more traditional pieces. A shaving bowl--what a great gift for the hard-to-shop-for man! Of her new business Emma says, "My family comes from a place in Louisiana called Bayou Chene. They were a hard-working people who lived off the land and water. Though the community of Bayou Chene was forced to disperse to make way for a spillway, Chene Clay Company is a continuation of the spirit of my family and the people who worked hard to live good lives and give back to their community."  Emma made some beautiful mugs for NCLAC during our Fall 2014 Membership  Drive. Thanks, Emma!

Holiday Arts Tour programming is free and the public is invited to enjoy! HAT is supported in part by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council and administered by the Shreveport Regional Arts Council. 

HAT: Create! at Makers Union and Rumo's

Today's Holiday Arts Tour descriptions are for artists at Makers Union, 206 North Vienna, and Rumo's Barber Shop, 203 West Alabama Suite 3.

Brand new on the block is Makers Union, an artists' collective organized by architect Cassidy Keim. Makers Union is a shop & studio featuring work from artists and craftsmen in a variety of disciplines. For this year's Holiday Arts Tour, the shop will feature Jake Dugard and Joey Slaughter.

Jake Dugard is a designer and 3rd year MFA candidate at Louisiana Tech. Jake is working to erase the line between fine art and design. Like most kids growing up, Jake wanted to be an astronaut or a professional athlete, but he always enjoyed writing and illustrating stories. It wasn’t until a visit to Louisiana Tech University in 2005 that Dugard learned about design. Four years later, he graduated with his BA in Communication Design and started working full time for a marketing firm and as freelance designer. Now he's back in school for his Master's Degree in Communication Design, is a partner in Makers Union, is an active member of Guild (the design club for Tech's School of Art), and is married to Stephanie Dugard, another artist on this year's Tour. Jake is responsible for the brand new logo for the Arts Tour this year that's at the bottom of this post. Last year he was at Rumo's, and screen printed on site, which was a big hit. He also had some Ruston map prints that sold like hot cakes. I'm ready to see what he'll have this year!

Joey Slaughter is Associate Professor of Art and Graduate Program Coordinator at Louisiana Tech. He's also my husband, which makes this post sort of hard to write. Joey is a maker that crosses boundaries. He makes paintings and sculptures, but not in the traditional sense. He's involved in the "new" blending of digital and traditional, where laser cutters and Illustrator factor into his work as much as paintbrushes and pencils. His work is inspired by our modern world and the technology we use to communicate. Before I gush I'll give an example: we renovated a house last year. He used old door frames, original paint and all, to make frames for assemblages. These frames were seamlessly integrated into the art pieces themselves, which depicted contemporary imagery that he designed based on instruction manuals.  They were basically 3D wooden paintings, and I really liked them. Now, I'll move on before I sound biased...

Rumo's Barber Shop is a stop on the Tour again this year, with Rachel Johnston and Bethany Raybourn. Rumo's is a good-looking barber shop, and that's just how you feel after you leave from getting a cut or color....or  hot towel shave I suppose. Their tag line is the barber shop evolved, and that's an apt description.  The crew there includes, among others, the Moore brothers, Ross and Russell, and they're always friendly and ready to help (like when your son cuts his own hair...)

Rachel Johnston is a fiber artist who spins her own wool into yarn. Yes--she does. From a big fleece from a sheep. And it's really neat. (And she's going to do a demonstration on Saturday of the Tour!) Rachel will have hand-spun yarns for sale, that she colors with natural dyes, as well as cold process soap and other small fiber-based items. Rachel hasn't participated with Holiday Arts Tour before, but she has worked with NCLAC, both as a former guest blog writer (Art Ed Wednesday) and Summer Arts Camp teacher. She says much of her work "lies in the gray area between art and craft;" she is passionate about her artisan skills, and keeping these historical traditions alive. Rachel is a caring individual, and has many volunteer projects under her belt, including nine trips to Latin America with humanitarian organizations. These trips inspired beautiful projects Rachel planned for students at Arts Camp last summer.

Bethany Raybourn will be on site Friday night, 11/22, from 5-8 playing her guitar and singing those songs of hers...you know...those SONGS....beautiful and haunting and perfect. I truly love her voice and her lyrics and I'm thrilled she's joining the Tour again this year. Her style is nestled in there with indie, folk, and alt-country. You may have seen Bethany play with the Goodness Gracious at ARToberfest or other places around town. And then you may know her from her previous life as a server at Sundown Tavern. Bethany's day-job now is as an English teacher in Farmerville, and she also worked with NCLAC this summer on the daily coordination of Summer Arts Camps.

Holiday Arts Tour this year is November 21-24. Here is the complete schedule.

Holiday Arts Tour is supported in part by a grant from Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Shreveport Regional Arts Council.

Holiday Arts Tour 2010 Featured Artist: Slaughterhead

In the weeks leading up to this year's Holiday Arts Tour, NCLAC will be posting articles about the participating artists here on the blog and on NCLAC's Facebook page. In addition, we will include featured artists in our e-blasts. To subscribe to our mailing list, visit our official site and signup for our Newsletter. Slaughterhead, a husband and wife team consisting of Joey Slaughter and Jessica Head Slaughter, is featured this week.

About Slaughterhead The Slaughters live in Ruston, Louisiana with their three-year-old son, Sylas, and infant daughter, Eero.

They make fun, functional, and durable wallets, pouches, and bags using PVC-free, 100% urethane for the exteriors and repurposed linens for the linings. This endeavor began with a wallet Jessica made for Joey on his birthday six years ago, and it has grown to include two bifold wallet styles, two large pocketbook wallet bodies, three what-not pouch sizes, and an assortment of bags.

The birth of Slaughterhead was a creative merging of two already artistic minds. Joey is a painter, a Studio Art professor a Louisiana Tech University, and a graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Memphis College of Art. He is inspired by toys, things that fly, and how-to manuals. Jessica has a similarly artistic background. She is a graduate of the University of Louisiana (Monroe, Louisiana) in Studio Art. She is inspired by growing things, feeding birds, and being efficient.

Together the Slaughters enjoy home improvement projects, listening to and making music, dance parties in the kitchen, cooking, parenting, and occasional grown-up weekends.

Their online store, www.slaughterhead.com was begun in 2006 by Joey, and their present site was designed by ConstantX.

Slaughterhead's Vision Slaughterhead intends to help individuals organize bits of their lives. We create wallets, pouches, and bags to give people a fun place to store their daily items. We have all waited in line behind too many people who try to stuff ineffective wallets back into their bags.

Our wallets and pouches are simple, yet fully functional, with pockets in just the right places. In addition to function, we are also concerned with the materials we use and their impact on the environment. Our linings are re-purposed linens collected locally, and the exteriors are a synthetic PVC-free urethane that looks and feels like leather but is vegan-friendly. We shop locally as often as possible and do our best to minimize or use our scrap materials.

Incorporating design is also an important factor in the process of building the wallets. The use of color and line created through stitching and/or screenprinting gives the work a very unique and handmade feel.

Our business name, Slaughterhead, is the combination of our last names, because we create these items together as a team. I do the sewing, and Joey screenprints and/or laser cuts the exteriors.

Slaughterhead on Slaughterhead (a.k.a. Jessica on Slaughterhead) 1. What's your favorite memory of the arts, and/or how did you become interested in art?

I've always been interested in "making things." I created furniture, clothes, etc. for dolls as a child. I built miniature environments from paper in my closet. I loved making dioramas. Making and building in a creative way were an important part of my childhood, spurred by seeing my grandfather make and build in his shop.

2. What is something that inspires, influences, and/or drives you as an artist?

Living with an artist inspires me, as does surrounding myself with other people involved in the arts. Growing things is also inspiring to me. I am driven by the need to mkae items that people will enjoy using, things that will help them organize a little part of their lives.

3. How do you feel about perfection in art?

Perfection isn't possible, and if it were, then what would be the point in making anything else? It would get boring quickly.

4. What, if anything, do you hope others get from your art?

Since I make functional work, I hope people get an effective item of good quality that they enjoy using.

5. Which do you think is smarter for a working artist: pricing work affordably to make it more accessible or pricing work high to make it more precious? Why?

Such a big question! As a maker of small functional items, I try to make items that fit into each category. People can "save" for buying more expensive, precious items, or get a quick fix with a smaller more inexpensive item. I think it often depends on your audience as well.

Jessica on Jessica 1. Who were your childhood heroes?

My Aunt Carol. I respected her education, her parenting skills, and her compassion.

2. What is the greatest compliment anyone has ever paid you? What about the greatest insult? How did you respond?

Repeat customers are my biggest compliments. My biggest insult was an online customer requesting to return an item she ordered, saying it wasn't of sufficient quality. I responded by accepting the return, of course, and reminding myself that it took four years for the first return, so I shouldn't feel too bad about it.

3. What one word would you use to describe yourself?

Honest

4. What one word would your friends use to describe you?

Hardworking

5. What's one thing about you few people know?

I hum all the time.

Learn More Visit Slaughterhead's website @ www.slaughterhead.com. You can also visit Joey's site at www.jslaughter.com.