When I was in elementary school, I really wanted to be a comic book artist. Toward the end of elementary school and beginning of middle school, I was starting to really get into cars. While watching one of my first DVDs, the sixties Batman movie, I came across a very cool extra with George Barris talking about how he created the 1966 Batmobile. I was sold. I had to be a designer. At the time, I wanted to be a car designer, which would eventually shift. From there, I got really into classic "kustoms," as Mr. Barris called them, and the crazy neon tuner rage of the time through the early Fast and Furious movies. That might explain why subtle design was never my preference....
Somewhere around that time, I started sending Barris Kustom my concept and custom car sketches. They weren't great (I was a kid figuring it out from Rat Fink shirt sketches and any magazines I could find) but I was always given encouragement from Joji (his daughter) and the King of Kustomizers himself. When I finally met him in person at a car show in Pittsburgh, he told me about a school called Art Center, and the rest is history.... Later, when I was learning to pinstripe, Joji had me pinstripe wallets for them to sell at shows. The call from Mr. Barris saying how much he liked them was one of the coolest things for a kid into hot rods. I'll always be grateful for the kindness and support the Barris family has shown me over the years. It's not everyday a kid gets to meet his childhood hero, let alone get to chat with him about Carson-style tops for the street rod he's working on over the phone.
If you don't know his work, be sure to check out the Barris website. Look for his early kustoms before the TV car era, too, because those helped shape the entire custom car world.
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