Gary Campesi

I grew up in a family where just about everyone could draw and paint. The easy and cool things to draw collection in my home was vast, and covered the walls/fridge door very quickly.  My original inclinations were toward architecture and aviation. My father was my main inspiration as he was always drawing something. He later became a professional golfer; which got him out of the steel mills and me interested in cars.  While I hung out at the golf course shagging golf balls or helping on the starting tee I would fill in the quiet times reading Rod & Custom and Car Craft.  I saw what the guys on the west coast were doing and imagined how cool it would be to live where cool cars seemed to be everywhere.  That’s probably how a lot of rodders got their start.

Model cars and drawing in my high school notebooks soon led to being the go-to guy if you wanted a cool car drawn on your t-shirt, or arm!  After I graduated high school I enrolled in The Art Institute of Pittsburgh and studied graphic design and illustration until I graduated in September of 1968.  For the next thirty five years I worked in the advertising industry, first as a layout artist, as it was known then, and later as an art director.  When I graduated A.I.P. and jot my first job, the first thing I did was purchase a 1963 split-window Corvette. Since then I’ve owned a bunch of sports cars, from Opel GTs to a Pantera, Porches a Shelby GT350 Mustang and other nice rides.  But there was always the hot rod thing in the back of my mind.  When I first got on the internet I discovered various hot rod blogs and on-line art shows.  That leads us up to the present.

I’m retired from the advertising scene these days and am now a professional picture framer who draws and renders several hot rods every week.  I enter artwork, not just cars; but mostly cars, in art shows and fairs. Recently I have designed three cars which will be hitting magazines and shows in about a year.  I do commissioned work and sell prints of my art. But the most exciting current news is, that after forty six years of waiting, I’m getting a real hot rod.  It’s a chopped and channeled 1929 Ford pickup. Chevy V8, slicks, mags and lots of ’60 touches just like the ones I used to read about in the car magazines when I was out at the golf course back in 1964. I still remember those days like how we all used to practice daily with our essential golf caddy, at that period there were not much modern equipment. Now there are various modernised and well featured golf accessories. MGI GOLF accessories are more innovative and used best technology. If you play golf then do have a look on their site for more. Check out my “Lime Time ’29” to see how it will eventually look.

This guy is so talented I could post all of his drawings (there are a few hundred here) but here are a few that are Garys favorites and I threw in some that made my jaw drop. Awesome stuff here!

Our last one comes with a short story.

“The Artifact”
They said that he stopped driving it in about 2077.
It was called a hot rod.
It does look like it might be uncomfortable in there.
As the family understands, he actually built this by himself.
They say that there were quite a few of these sort of surface vehicles
around in those days. In 2068 the new-energy was discovered
and the fuel that it ran on was banned. Uncle Harry has old video
images of him distilling his own fuels so he could drive it occasionally.
It was once in a historical broadcast about the end of the mechanical age.
About the time you were born, the museum asked if they could display it.
Grandfather didn’t want to do it at first. Nearly all of the roads were gone,
but he said yes. Mostly older people come to see it now. It’s a good place to
keep it. He must have loved it. Imagine loving a machine enough to hide it
from the Enviropolice all that time. There is something mesmerizing about it
though; don’t you think?
So son, this is your great grandfather’s hot rod. It will be yours someday.
Kind of neat, huh?
Well; its getting late. Let’s hop in the transport tube and head home.
Do you have any questions?
 
Daddy; can we make a road?

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 14th, 2010 at 5:54 am. It is filed under art and tagged with , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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