Purr-Deux is the sort of home-furnishings store you might expect from a welder-juggler and one-time roller-skate-dancer with an art degree. "Eclectic" doesn't begin to cover it.
"We've sold everything," Kathy Hogan acknowledges with a chuckle, conducting a tour of the emporium at 1222 S. Rainbow Blvd. she runs with business and life partner Jerome Ellis. The couple scouts galleries and shows around the country for the store's inventory of the weird and whimsical, including one-eyed-monster clocks, intricately glazed and fully functional ceramic horns, and European license-plate handbags. But it seems they can't keep their own work in stock.
The pair have collaborated since meeting years ago as performers in Osaka, Japan. Ellis, who learned to weld during an Air Force stint, was juggling, and Hogan, who had long worked with stained glass, was on wheels. They ditched their performing careers and started in business with a swap-meet booth that blossomed into the store seven years ago. More recently, the success of their own work—Ellis' welded metal furniture and Hogan's stained-glass pieces—prompted them to open a studio-gallery, Art Z, at 4 E. Charleston Blvd., where they can concentrate more on creativity. The gallery is open during First Fridays.
An Ellis table is liable to have a glass top supported by four tripod legs, three of them comprising metal rods apparently illustrating chaos theory. A Hogan inverted-pyramid vase will incorporate a tranquil kaleidoscope of tones and shapes. The two work together on fanciful female figures for which Ellis creates an expressively posed armature, perhaps with wire-mesh "hose" and shaved locks of copper, outfitted in Hogan's Joseph's-coat of solid-tone and confetti-glass pieces.
"I don't tell him what to do and he doesn't tell me what to do," says Hogan. "It's always a surprise in the end." Ellis describes the creative process as "morphing," or letting design ideas develop one from the other. But their pieces generally launch themselves from curiosity. Says Hogan, "It's always a 'what-if' with us."