The stores name might raise an eyebrow HELLBENT FOR LEATHER. And there's another double-take on the wall inside: a portrait of a Native American chief. On first glance, it looks like a painting. But it wasn't oil carefully applied to canvas that created the face. Its 455 pieces of leather from deer, cattle and young goats, applied in a technique thats typically reserved for cowboy boots. Yet this is an art form that Randy and Claudia Lister are taking beyond its traditional boundaries. And this new territory is not only strengthening their business, but their relationship. The couple makes wall-hangings, denim jackets, portraits, soft sculptures and other items at their Nolensville Road gallery and studio. The more challenging the better. And when customers, many of whom pay several thousand dollars for a complex design, don't challenge them enough, the couple finds their own hurdles. Such was the case with the chief. We needed a challenge, says Claudia. So we pulled it out of the file. The couple spent more than 200 hours creating the work. Their shop and gallery name comes from an old cowboy expression meaning recklessly determined or at a great speed, Claudia says. Were more recklessly determined than at great speed. People look at the name and think were some scary leather sex shop and thats not the case. We knew the name would be controversial; what was more important to us was that people didnt forget our name.
When the process by which the couple creates their leather art is distilled, it seems rather simple. First comes the idea, which is sketched out. Randy cuts the patterns with a surgeons scalpel. The pieces are glued in place, and Claudia sews them on using creative detail in the stitching. Its all aimed at one goal pleasing the customer. Randy went to great lengths to get just the right shade of yellow to match the logo, says Pittsburgh Steelers fan Rob Baird of Kalamazoo, Mich., who had a jacket made to showcase his pride. It took the Listers four months to create the jacket, with Roman numerals representing the Steelers Super Bowl championships around the collar. The more you look at it, the more you see the detail, Baird says.
For Cristal Elkins-Williams of Bloomington, Indiana, the Listers created a portrait of a beloved horse. The couple spent 75 hours preparing the artwork before the first of 251 pieces of leather was cut. It really should go in some sort of museum, Elkins-Williams says. They are the Elvis of leather.
One of the Listers most challenging projects was a jacket for Jeff Allen, vice president of finance for Sony Music Nashville. The custom creation was a Russian Imperial crest incorporated in leather onto the back of a denim jacket, with a leather background of the Russian flag. I wanted to do something in honor of my Russian heritage and the Russian Imperial crest is really striking, says Allen. His grandfather was a general for the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his great-grandfather was a physician for the czar. After showing Randy and Claudia photos of the Imperial crest, the design work began in earnest. They did additional research on the Romanov dynasty, the crest and Russian military uniform to perfect the details of the jacket for Allen. European lambskin was used to create the artwork. It took 179 pieces for the crest itself, with the center shield of the crest requiring 44 pieces of leather in a 4 inch by 4 inch area. Stitching the little antlers on the deer in one of the small crests on the wings of the eagle, making sure that everything is perfectly symmetrical down to the one-sixteenth of an inch or even less. Allen says. Its absolutely incredible.
But a decade ago, Randy knew virtually nothing about cutting leather and Claudia didnt know how to sew. At 24, Randy owned a boot store in Virginia. He sold stock and custom boots and always admired the vintage cowboy boots with inlay / overlay art. One day, Claudia came into the store to buy boots to wear when riding a Harley she planned to purchase. I met Randy and never left, she says. We laughed for three hours straight. I noticed she had a hole in her boots, so I gave her a pair of shoe boots, he says. I designed her boots for her Harley and told her as long as she knew me, shell never have holes in her shoes. She put her Harley money into Randys store. After a naïve business decision forced them to close that store, they picked themselves up by their bootstraps to start over. Randy told Claudia he wanted to do inlay / overlay leather like the great bootmakers. He wanted to put the art onto the backs of denim jackets. Only problem was, they didnt know anyone who could teach them how. They went to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and looked up every photograph they could find on vintage cowboy boots and studied the boots crafted by master bootmakers. Even though it took them longer to learn the craft, the Listers believe they were better off not learning under the wings of someone else. That way, they had no boundaries instilled in them. Randy and I have developed a style that is uniquely ours by following the less traveled way, says Claudia. It may have been a more difficult road, but I think the reward is well worth it.
The couple moved to Chattanooga in 1990 in hopes of working for a leather company. When that didnt work out, they made custom jackets, traveling frequently to Nashville to sell them whenever they needed money. We didnt have a shop then, or a name or a label, Claudia says. All we had was us, our work and selling it out of the trunk of the car to pay the rent. In 1996, they moved to Nashville after looking for two years for a landlord willing to let them turn an old store into the shop and gallery they wanted.
We met, we fell in love. It was destiny we came together and this was conceived out of that love, Claudia says. Randy and I came together; and our minds were able to mesh in a way that we fed each other. My artistic love has melded with his. For Randy, knowing that you get to do what you love, thats part of our business. Im thankful I get to do this with my Miss Claudia. To be able to look at each other, know that well have a one-dimensional thought and through our efforts together take that one dimension into two dimensions and all the way to three.
Nobody showed us how to do this, he says. It was all trial and error, every single bit of it. But it was us pushing each other.

By Jeanne Reisel 1998

 

 RANDY AND CLAUDIA 1989 - 2009