This story first appeared in the July edition of KC Studio.
Somehow, Fredy Gabuardy keeps winning rock, paper, scissors. His twin, Francisco, says it’s happened five times. And that’s aggravating, because the winner calls the creative shots on one particular canvas.
Fredy says he had a great idea for the piece, but Francisco wouldn’t hand over the controls. But that didn’t end up mattering.
“When we did it again,” Fredy says, “and I won for a third time, it was like, ‘Oh boy, now I can pursue my idea even further.”
They’re working on an exhibition for the Kansas City Public Library called Cadejo that runs from July 5 to September 21 in the Central Library’s Guldner Gallery. While they’ve technically been collaborating since they were in utero, this is only their second time working together professionally, and, like all collaborative artists, they had to work out a process.
Growing up in Nicaragua, Fredy and Francisco played in the woods, building and setting traps for rabbits and creating miniature cities from scraps of wood. They moved to the United States when they were 11 and eventually graduated together from the Kansas City Art Institute.
They’re both mixed media artists, but their styles aren’t hard to differentiate. Francisco works with a collection of personally meaningful symbols like spikes and pie graphs; Fredy is a builder, so his work often includes sculptural elements.
While they’ve technically been collaborating since they were in utero, this is only their second time working together professionally, and, like all collaborative artists, they had to create a process.
“Rock, Paper, Scissors,” mixed media, by Fredy and Francisco Gabuardy. (photo by Anne Kniggendorf)
The canvas includes a secret feature on the back — tally marks.
The two feel a push and pull between them, which is reflected in the show’s title.
Francisco explains that a cadejo is a mythical dog-shaped spirit that appears to travelers late at night on isolated stretches of road.
“It’s like the same spirit, but it’s two sides of it, kind of like the yin and the yang; they kind of complement each other,” he explains.
Rather than encountering cadejo on an isolated road, Francisco felt him in the studio.
“It’s late at night,” he says, “and you’re having your thoughts, and you’re trying to paint on, like a canvas or whatever form you’re working on, and sometimes it leads you to destroy the piece itself … It’s like fighting you back.”
That fighting back happened often enough as the brothers collaborated on the pieces in the exhibition — and cadejo may or may not have been the guilty party.
Sometimes, Francisco says, they just weren’t communicating well. “Our egos were leading us to not the right path. We didn’t see the journey. You might want to say that was the bad cadejo in there.”
That gets a laugh from Fredy, and he says, “I agree. We go based on the history that was taught to us that the bad cadejo doesn’t have a good side, but we’re like, no, in our code that we created, there is a good side of that bad cadejo…”
“Because,” Francisco adds, “that helped me be better with him and vice versa.”
Cadejo: Collaborations of Francisco Gabuardy and Fredy Gabuardy runs through September 21 at the Central Library's Guldner Gallery.