Crazy Air Concepts

 

Crazy Air Concepts was born out of desperation and necessity. I picked up an airbrush in 1991 when I was still in the Navy. Completely self-taught I practiced every day while stationed on the USS Oldendorf DD-972 in San Diego, California. When I was finally discharged in November 1993 I chose to remain in California, San Bernadino to be exact, (don't ask why; it involved a girl). Much to my chagrin there were no fortune 500 companies banging on my door begging me to work for them. That is when I decided to put my artistic talents to work. I read an ad in the paper asking for a freelance commercial artist. After meeting with the guy I recieved my first job. I was to design a T-shirt for a local car show. I charged the guy $50.00. He paid me and then said that he would have more work for me. We started hanging out and became friends. Well this guy was pretty innovative and aggresive but like me he was young and mostly just full of ideas. He owned a struggling screen printing shop called Crazy Hair Screenprinting that I became a part of. When he found out I airbrushed he decided that we should incorporate that into the whole scheme of things. We did and I named the airbrush side of our business Crazy Air Concepts.

We worked hard and made friends with several of the local car club guys but then things took a turn for the worse. My girlfriend at the time, (that I was living with), decided that she wasn't ready for a committment and asked me to move out. I had very little income and no place to go so I moved into the warehouse that my business partner and I rented. I constructed a little loft over the office and stayed there. There was no heating and it was the middle of the winter so needless to say it was cold. That was ok though, I persevered and my partner and I continued to struggle on. We scheduled ourselves to attend several car shows where we setup my little portable airbrush stand. We never made more than $100.00 at any of the shows. We tried several other avenues like setting up at nightclubs, screenprinting, and any other job we could find but it just wasn't working. That's when our landlord locked us out of the warehouse, with all of our stuff inside. Luckily me ex-girlfriend was nice enough to let us stay at her house. Two nights later we broke into the warehouse, stole our belongings back and setup in one of our car club friends' sister's garage, (exciting huh?) From there it continued to spiral downhill and that's when I made the decision to move to the gulf coast of Mississippi. That's where I've been ever since.

I began working in the souvenir shops on the beach where I honed my airbrush skills. I have been part of several business ventures and worked at several airbrush shops here but the one steady element has always been Crazy Air Concepts, my baby. My own personal freelance art business that has remained constant since 1993. I have worked car shows throughout the South, designed flyers, business cards, webpages, and logos, painted for celebrities, been on television and magazines, even designed prototype choppers for a local company. I moved into the automotive art world just when Orange County Choppers was getting big and learned how to do body work and custom paint jobs. My work is all over the nation and the web. And even after all this, after I finally reached a pinnacle of success, I'm still not on the cover of the Rolling Stone.