Eric Slayton
Artist and furniture designer Eric Slayton pulls from his passion for nature in creating his minimalist, organic, sculptural pieces. For the past six years, he has been designing and fabricating out of his studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, using an assortment of bold “reclaimed” and industrial sourced materials. Each piece is truly unique by highlighting the richness of the tones and textures inherent in his discerning material pallet.
After years dedicated to art, ecology and ornithology Eric was hungry to explore this new creative expression. He began by generating a list of descriptive words to use as guiding principles – words such as dynamic energy, organic elements, and clean intentional lines. In time he added words like rich, steeped, and time-marinated. The resulting synthesis is an aesthetic that truly encapsulates his vision. Slayton uses bold industrial materials such as thick steel plates including rusted Corten, large form cast concrete columns, and recovered structural wood blocks and planks. He combines these rough textures with more refined elements of polished bronze, mirrored stainless steel, polished cast aluminum, glass, and even animal suede.
The delicate balance between the “rough and refined” requires the skilled eye that he has, and each decision about leaving or removing the materials random character is conscious and deliberate. The resulting pieces have an unassuming simplicity that is well described by a Japanese term Wabi Sabi, which roughly translates to “a beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. At the end of the day Eric produces pieces that he is personally moved by. Doing what he does because it matters most to him and he is motivated by the personal growth that is a result of his practice. Slayton’s clients also tend to be driven by the same motivations and desire to surround themselves with an unassuming simplicity that is honest and alive.
His creations to date represent only the first few upper most layers of a thick rich layered bed of detritus.