Chai Style Home: Folk(s) at the Lake
Amy and Steve Slotin are experts and collectors of self-taught art which only recently surged in value and popularity.
After 37 years with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and now with the AJT, , Jaffe’s focus is lifestyle, art, dining, fashion, and community events with emphasis on Jewish movers and shakers.
One of America’s most expert collectors and purveyors of folk art, Steve Slotin, and wife, Amy, hopped right off the “city train” to land on expansive and pristine lake property in Gainesville, Ga.
Native Atlantan Steve graduated from North Fulton High School, as his legendary father was head of athletics at the Jewish Community Center. This is all a backdrop for their bustling operation of the Slotin Auction House and Folk Art Show, dating back to 1994 in Buford where their auction hall is a converted old grocery store. Amy said, “That’s where volumes of the most important folk art are bought and sold.”
Now decades of expertise have brought an out-of-the-box and stimulating collection to the Slotin’s own 8,000-square-foot home.
Folk art is deeply rooted in culture and tradition and often passes through generations. For Slotin, it includes handmade elements from new and used, often recycled elements, bold, graphic, and just plain joyful. Animated Steve recounts the circumstances behind each piece.
“Folk art was often overlooked and only recently has come into its own. I get calls that ‘so and so’ died and left yards of supposedly unwanted art. I’d hop on a truck and drive to Iowa and return with a fabulous collection.”
Family members often didn’t understand the art’s importance. It was common to see entire folk art environments like Floyd Graber’s giant religious hand painted signs discarded as trash.
Amy added, “These artists had little to no education and didn’t produce art to sell. They may have been more driven to preach or to decorate their own environment.”
Tour the Slotins’ colorful display of discovering and positioning “outsider” art.
Marcia: What are we seeing here?
Steve: Certainly a wide range — walking sticks, snakes, Bible-driven preacher art, peacocks, angels, devils, eagles, masks, African American art, some photography. Artists like Henry Bridgewater, Mary T. Smith, H.A. Brown, Jake McCord, Myrtice West, James Harold Jennings, B.F. Perkins to name a very few … our favorite collection might be the Lanier Meaders face jugs in the dining room. Lanier’s kiln was just a few miles from Camp Barney Medintz. Initially, it was Southern Folk Pottery I really fell for.
Amy: I call it “self-taught art masterpieces.” These artists had no formal education.
Marcia: How did you stumble into this?
Steve: After I graduated UGA, I sold Cliff Notes. I got fired because I was spending more time looking for art than selling. I was ahead of the curve in the early 1990s when few knew about folk art. The High Museum had no permanent collection like they do now (as does MOMA). I got in on the ground level and began educating and bringing together buyers and sellers.
Marcia: How does the auction operate?
Steve: We have two major sales annually: Fall and Spring, where we include phone and online bids. This last glossy catalogue was 139 pages with almost 1,000 items-pieces from Thornton Dial to Lonnie Holley, Howard Finster, Bill Traylor (a freed slave), Clementine Hunter (African American Memory painter from the Louisiana plantation) and graphically beautiful works of Bahamian Amos Ferguson.
Marcia: How did lake house construction flow?
Steve: We wanted to be away from the bustle of the city, at the foothills of the mountains by this beautiful body of water. The property sat for five years after we tore the old structure down, before we began building. We actually hauled these huge granite pieces for the outside of the house from Elberton (granite capital of the world) and had it polished. If the block of granite has white veins, it’s not suitable for headstones, so we made a whole house out of granite that would have been thrown away — a lot like the folk artists who create out of discarded materials.
Amy: Steve drew the whole plan out first as basically three stacked trailers. Buckhead architect and family friend, Paul Muldawer, designed the front entrance. We wanted it low key. Steve’s parents gave us the mezuzah.
Marcia: Explain how the kitchen came together.
Amy: We never had a designer here. Steve would spring an idea and draw it. After the house had a basic frame, Steve built a mock “cardboard kitchen” with all of the appliances, counters, cabinets built to scale using tin foil. It didn’t last long. A huge storm rolled through and that was the end of it.
Steve: The chairs at the kitchen bar look like they are suspended from the countertop. In reality, they are cantilevered, bolted into the floor behind the cabinetry. It’s great for sweeping — no legs on the ground. On our Alaskan honeymoon we picked up this handmade doll by Inuit artist, Ursula Paniyak, made of seal skin and dressed in a traditional outfit, from Alaska. After we got married, we set off on a four month camping honeymoon.
The long wagon train carving, “Borax 20 Mule team,” has history. Before railroads, 18 mules and two horse wagon trains traveled the Mojave Desert to mine borax. I found this in South Dakota, an artist who created meticulous farm, equipment, wagon, ranch dioramas and bought the entire collection. It fits right over our windows opening to the lake.
Marcia: How does Camp Barney Medintz fit in?
Amy: My dad, Stan Nadel, “Noodles,” came down to open Camp Barney Medintz in ’63. Steve and I met at camp at 17 and married there a decade later. I wore a traditional white gown, and Steve wore denim overalls with a sunflower boutonniere (the invitation noted it was ‘blue jean optional’).
Marcia: Last word.
Steve: I feature Opal, our Curator Dog, with her favorite art on social media. She gets the most likes of any of posts.
Amy: I call Steve “the P.T. Barnum of Folk Art” — building the biggest events with wild interesting art and people.
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