Artists reclaim 1970’s home

An original painting by artist Robin Barcus Slonina hangs in her living room. It is a depiction of Wonder Woman gazing toward her alternate, upwardly mobile self, asking, “You mean it’s really possible to have it all?”

Slonina is the physical manifestation of her metaphorical question, and the answer appears to be, “Are you kidding?” She is successful, beautiful, articulate and happily married to Jimmy Slonina, an actor and performer in Cirque du Soleil. They live with their effervescent 6-year-old son, Leo, in a two-story bungalow in Rancho Bonito Estates near Alta Drive and Campbell Road.

Jimmy Slonina is a clown in the cast of “Mystere” at Treasure Island and an alternate cast member of “O” at Bellagio. Robin Slonina is a producer and judge on the reality TV painting competition series “Skin Wars,” which is in its third season on the Game Show Network. She owns a thriving business called Skin City Body Painting in the downtown Arts District.

Their three-bedroom, 2,900-square-foot house was built in 1973 and is in a well-preserved neighborhood close to downtown. From the street, it looks as though it might be the Brady Bunch’s Las Vegas lair until you enter and take in the 1960s kitsch, vintage furniture and original modern art.

Robin Slonina said she hunts for furnishings at downtown stores Retro Vegas and Patina.

“I think you have to let the home speak to you …. This was built in the early 1970s, but I’m still throwing back to more of a 1960s vibe because I think the house kind of wants that. You’ve got to listen to your environment when decorating,” she said.

Leo’s bedroom has a “secret closet” built into a dormer where his pet ferret resides, and the walls have a custom green-dot paint job created by his mom. There is no television in his room; in fact, there is only one in the house. There is an oversized upholstered chair in the room where his parents often read to him. It was reclaimed from a neighbor who was disposing of it after her husband passed away.

“She was happy to see it go to a good home,” Robin Slonina said.

The guest bedroom is painted an iridescent dark silver. It also serves as Jimmy Slonina’s office, and houses his soundproof booth where he does commercial voice-over work and editing. One wall holds memorabilia from his many gigs, including emceeing Pink’s “The Truth About Love” tour and being in the original cast of “Le Rêve” at Wynn Las Vegas.

The large master bedroom includes a spacious bathroom with a separate tub and shower, bidet and toilet areas. The cabinets and tops are original; the lights and cabinet pulls are vintage, and add character to the space. The second bathroom has newer tile around the tub, but still retains the vintage charm of the countertop and hardware.

A large four-poster canopy bed occupies one side of the room, and an expensive Italian-design leopard print chaise lounge purchased from a consignment store sits in the other.

There’s a deck off the master overlooking the backyard. Sometimes they dive from it into their 9-foot-deep pool.

“This was originally a rental home,” Robin Slonina said. “One day we got a phone call from a neighbor. We had rented the house to college students, and our neighbors called frantically and said, ‘Do you know that those kids are jumping off the roof into the pool?’ And I think they were expecting us to be angry, but my husband and I looked at each other like, ‘Wow! You can do that? That sounds like fun!’”

The backyard has been maximized for entertaining, with lots of seating, a large dining table beneath an awning and potted vines winding up the support posts. On the far wall, visible from the interior windows, is a wide, original mural of the Strip in silhouette and a reproduction of one of Robin Slonina’s paintings with a woman perched in a martini glass.

In the center of the first floor is the kitchen, with original cabinets and white tile countertops. There’s a pass-through window for serving to the patio, a must-have for any home of that era. A carved space on one wall is where a countertop gas grill once existed, but was removed and, “We just converted it into coffee world,” Jimmy Slonina said. The other side is a brick fireplace in the den where they keep the television.

“It’s (the) heart of the home, where Leo and I snuggle and watch movies,” Robin Slonina said.

It’s a spacious room with hardwood floors, lots of seating and a window overlooking the patio. Blue shag carpeting covers the floor of the dining-living room, which has a mirrored wall that brings in extra light.

Before moving here, the couple was living in Jimmy Slonina’s two-bedroom house in The Arbors of Summerlin. In 2005, he said he got swept up in the real estate fever, along with his fellow cast members who had a year or longer work contract and wanted to put down roots here.

“A friend of a friend was selling her house, and I just kind of looked at it and liked it,” he said. “My co-workers had moved into their own homes, and sheep that I am, I just followed suit and purchased it.”

It was so small, Robin Slonina said.

“There wasn’t even a room big enough for me to stretch out and do yoga. Then when the market went belly up, we had to get rid of one of them. It was always our intention to have this as an investment property because we kind of thought it was too big for us; but when we had to choose one or the other, we were like, ‘Let’s keep the party house downtown.’”

The house had been in foreclosure when they bought it, and “the whole place was trashed when we moved in. I put a good solid three months of work into fixing it up,” Robin Slonina said. “I’m pretty handy. I can do basic things, like repairing drywall and painting. Jimmy put the flooring in upstairs.”

They spent less than $15,000 initially on repairs and replacing things.

“We searched for the best deals. We pulled favors from friends, had painting parties. We just did everything we could to save money and get this place ready to move in — and by the way, I had an infant that whole time, and my husband was on tour with Cirque du Soleil,” she said.

The couple, who hail from Chicago, met here after being set up by mutual friends. Robin Slonina had arrived here, and when her mother came to visit, she took her to see Jimmy Slonina perform in “Le Rêve.”

“He rolled with that pretty well,” and since he had the next night off, he invited her to a show. She accepted his invitation with the stipulation that Mom had to be included. “And he said, ‘Sure, bring your mom,’ so I knew he was a good guy right away because he had no problem hanging with me and my mom.”

They were married in 2007 in a circus-themed ceremony at Tule Springs Park.

They throw parties fairly often and frequently welcome overnight guests, often artists traveling across country, including the band Mucca Pazza.

“One of my biggest challenges is how to keep things organized, but in a beautiful way,” Robin Slonina said, indicating the several hand-painted trunks that serve dual purpose as storage containers and coffee tables.

The couple recently returned from working in New York City. Jimmy Slonina was in a revival of “Vegas Nocturne at The House of Yes” (formerly at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas), and he participated in the New York Body Painting Day, “a big event where more than 100 fully nude models are painted in a park, and then they go on tour of the city in double-decker buses, have photo ops and an after-party. It’s not a competition, just a special day for artists and the public to come together. It’s nice to have something in the news that’s not tragedy and horror. It’s kind of nice to have something like this that’s really just about body self-acceptance, creativity, and human connection and fun.”

They were happy to return to the low-humidity desert and their neighborhood hangouts like Rebel Republic, Herbs & Rye and The Golden Tiki.

The Sloninas have no regrets about choosing to keep this house and letting go of the suburban one. They like the mature trees, the larger lot and their deeper pool that is no longer permitted in new construction.

“We miss the quiet and Red Rock, but this is not a 1,800-square-foot cookie-cutter house,” he said.

“I did enjoy that you could look all around and see this beautiful view of Red Rock. It was such a presence in your life when you live in Summerlin. I do miss being that close to nature, but I feel like the flip side of that is now we are much closer to culture. He works on the Strip; I work in the Arts District; and we’re both five minutes from work here,” she said.