The rise of rock 'n roll heralded my arrival in this
world: 1964, September School, church and home were the circles of my life
back then - like just When I was about 9 years old, an older gentleman by
the name of Ed Miller By the time I reached high school, I had started using
an airbrush to paint During high school, I pursued two passions: art and
skateboarding. With the While still in high school, I was fortunate enough to
do freelance I seemed to have found a niche in California, because
in two years my I was also getting a lot of illustration work from car
show clients. I met After a couple years of constant sunshine - I actually
missed the rain! - I After four years of working 40 to 50 hours at a "real"
job, then another 40 I soon earned a reputation as being very good and
fast. A lot of my projects Around 1997, I started to work more on large offshore
race and pleasure In 1998, I bought our first Dodge Viper in the hopes
of changing its The next few years saw us doing custom painting,
design, radio station We struggled for years to stay small and to fully
understand what we were It may sound strange, but we felt we had come up with
the chemistry to Since we started, we have done specialty work for
every major motorcoach and In the automotive field, we have been breaking ground
for years, buying and We have begun using our acronym, TAOD, but it still
very much stands for The In the future, we would like to be known for the art
of what we do, the art With TAOD where it is today, I can focus more on
training and showing off I look forward to the people I will meet and all the
stories I will have to Dean Loucks Artist in Residence
21, to be exact. I made my grand entrance
in the sleepy Midwestern town of
Goshen, Indiana, population
13,700. It wasn't an out-of-the-ordinary
occasion - intense
labor, some loud yells no doubt, a few pushes (thanks
Mom!) - and
there I was.
about every other Midwestern kid, I guess.
But while my contemporaries were
embarking on stick figures in
front of square houses bordered by wide swaths
of blue sky and
green grass, I was taking a somewhat different approach.
They say
my artistic talent was evident at an early age, and I was
drawing
long before I could
spell.
saw me doodling in church. Apparently, he
was impressed because he bought me
my first oil and watercolor
set. He was always asking me to paint something
for him. It
didn't matter what - landscapes, trains, planes, seascapes -
he
wanted anything I could do.
t-shirts and murals - I even did the body
work on my first car and helped
paint it. If I had to pinpoint
it, I guess I'd say my automotive
illustrating goes back to the
Etch-A-Sketch when I was 6. I loved drawing
cars on that
thing.
latter, I was semi-pro and sponsored by
Gordon & Smith (G&S) skateboards. I
also attended a
vocational school for commercial art. I won first place in
a
state contest and an honorable mention in a national. I liked
to use lots of
different media - automotive paint, watercolor,
oils, acrylics, colored
pencils, charcoal and chalk. I diligently
learned how to work each medium
into a piece of art I could be
proud of.
illustrations for local van conversion companies and
advertising agencies.
After graduation, a place called Design
Studios hired me. From there, I
moved up the ladder, so to speak,
and got out of art and into management.
Six years later, I heard
the call of the road and I hit it. I loaded up the
car and headed
out west - California was my destination. I figured I
could
pursue both my passions - art and skateboarding - full time
in that sunny
vale.
distinctive, airbrushed, one-of-a-kind t-shirts
were selling for around
$100. My highest priced t-shirt sold at
$250, with a jean jacket going for
$600.
Sweet.
with all the big firms: Hanna-Barbera,
Universal Studios, Disney, Marvel
Comics and Wallace Green
Studios, where I did freelance airbrushing and
layout work. I was
impressed that these companies would meet with me even
though I
didn't have a college degree.
headed back home to Indiana, where I still
had my first house. With a brand
new concept and an abundance of
ideas of how airbrushing and murals could be
taken to a new
level, I started buying all the equipment I would need, while
I
labored away in my basement.
to 50 hours per week working in my basement,
I decided something had to go.
You guessed it. I left my day job
and went solo. Projects continued to come
in and, with a desire
to be the best, I decided to hire some help. But
rather than hire
too many people, I figured it was more cost-effective to
keep
purchasing faster computers and state-of-the-art equipment.
Before
long, I was running three computers: one printed copies of
my designs, one
cut vinyl stickers and one was used for
designing.
were radio station graphics on trade
show displays and vehicles, t-shirt
designs and airbrushed
murals. As we began doing more custom paint, I
traveled wherever
I needed to go to get the work, such as at motorhome and
boat
factories. For local projects, we rented space at body and
paint
shops - a step that saved me from having to buy a building
and increasing my
overhead.
boats. After a couple years of painting these
47-foot boats by myself and
with the help of two employees (still
in my basement), I decided to hire a
full-time painter. A very
good, long-time friend of mine, Mark Hughes, came
on board as my
business partner.
appearance through color, self-designed parts,
and interior, suspension and
engine mods. We were getting ready
for the custom car that was to come - we
just didn't know it
yet.
graphics, full paint jobs on Provost
motorcoaches and boats, photo
retouching, catalog layout,
business cards, signs, murals, stencil cutting
for other
companies, and just about any other form of art. Then we
decided
it was time to get focused. We bought a
15,000-square-foot building in
Elkhart, Indiana. For the most
part, we tried to stop traveling and bring
the projects to
us.
doing before doing it for our customers.
With our new shop, we could now
produce - with the help of up to
17 employees - the most outstanding murals
large and small, the
most fantastic custom paint and graphics, and the
greatest
automobile conversions. "Build it and they will come" became
true.
Also at the time, taglines began popping up in our minds:
"At 200 mph, you
have no friends," "Looks are everything," and
"Can you handle the
attention?" These were all based on our
customers' experiences with what we
had created for
them.
"steal time" by creating something so visually
stimulating that people had
to stop, look and ask questions. Hey,
we didn't work so hard all those long
late nights for just a
paint job. No, we knew it was all for the art. And we
knew it
takes time to get the public to understand the massive effort
that
goes into applying changing pearl effects and gradients that
fade color over
a stretch of 40 feet and are not blotchy. We
wanted our customers to
understand that time costs money and, in
the end, they would end up with
something that no one else would
have.
boat company, and have unveiled our
marketing ideas and designs to all major
automotive companies
through other companies. When a boat or motorcoach
company is
searching for a new look, they come to us to create it for
them.
Magazines have recognized this uniqueness and have placed
many of our
designs on their
covers.
driving many different cars from exotic to
domestic, searching for cars that
we could develop specialty
items for, such as custom paint, carbon fiber
panels, wings,
splitters and ground effects. The experience of having
these
vehicles at our disposal was crucial in understanding the
car designer's
thought process. Feeling and testing the
durability of different finishes,
having the time over months to
really understand what a designer was
thinking when creating the
original project - these are key points in
developing something
better.
"Art" of Design. These days, we use
Sikkens paints and Akzo Nobel Chemical Company. We are also a dealer for HRE rims,
TUBI exhaust, Corsa Exhaust, Asset-Iwatta
and Tire Rack for rims
and tires. Our expansion into these markets ensures
that when we
design a project, we take other top companies with us on
our
endeavors.
of taking care of customers, the art of
creating a rim and tire package that
perfectly fits the car, and
the art of design to continually come up with
new and different
ideas - ideas that most people would never think of. In
the end,
we'd like to be known as the company that could do it all and do
it
correctly.
more of the true art that inspired me so
many years ago. Training others
around the country in the unique
styles I develop will continue to grow in
importance for TAOD. We
also will be retailing a distinctive line of apparel
and car
accessories, such as mats, carpets, interior items, and waxes
and
polishes. Yes, great things are in store for us and our
customers.
share because of my
art.