Hot rod hands

GINA DAUGHERTY | CIN WEEKLY

Car detailer Josh Shaw paints pinstripes on a 1950 F-100 Ford Truck at the owners house in Hamilton. (Photo by Leigh Patton/CiN Weekly)

RIDES
• Hot rod hands
• Joshua's creation
• Pimp rides
• Car shows
• Do you have a pimp ride of your own?

Everyone should hope to be the subject of the rumors local hot-rod pinstriper Joshua Shaw is. Nationally recognized for his artistry in hot-rod pulp such as Street Rodder, Car Kulture DeLuxe and Rod and Custom, the Cincinnatian is everywhere - but no one can pinpoint where, exactly.

He is rumored to have flamed Jesse James' Monster Garage. Supposedly, he works for Street Rodder magazine, builder Boyd Coddington and local hot-rod builder Wade Hughes. Word is that when he graduated from college, builders were waiting for him to cross the commencement stage to offer him jobs.

"It's hard to explain what I do because I don't clock in or out, so a lot of really good rumors get started about me," Shaw says.

But the best rumors are the bad-boy ones - that he upset old-timers by ripping doughnuts in a rainstorm, throwing mud onto their nice, clean, barely-driven classic cars.

AN AIRBRUSHED EDUCATION

Shaw, 27, grew up with hot rods in Milford, where his dad drove a semi-truck and his mom taught school. In the evenings, his dad, Dan, did painting and lettering for other truckers. By the time Shaw was 12, his dad made more money painting and lettering than he did driving, so he quit. Now both of them are booked two months out.

When Joshua Shaw tells me he'll be painting chrome onto a '56 Ford panel truck, I think he's painting onto chrome. What he is actually doing is using an airbrush and paint to make it look like chrome.

"It's paint, but when he finishes it and adds the clear stuff on it, you'll swear it's chrome," explains Doug Wimberly, owner of the F-100 panel. "You'll have to go up there and touch it to know it is not chrome."

When asked why he chose Shaw to paint chrome onto his classic, Wimberly, somewhat taken aback, says, "I wanted the best to do it. Everybody and his brother can put pinstripes on, but not everybody can do airbrush and get it right."

As Wimberly and I watch Shaw tape off the car, mix paint and begin to airbrush, I ask him if having us standing over his shoulder will be distracting. He laughs.

Joshua Shaw paints a Ford emblem on the hood of a 1950 F-100 Ford truck. (Photo by Leigh Patton/CiN Weekly)

Back in high school, he had all kinds of sunburnt roller-coaster warriors staring him down. He worked for four summers at Kings Island in the airbrushed T-shirt booth, and it wasn't uncommon on Friday nights for him to airbrush 150 to 200 shirts.

"Up until then I didn't like people watching me work, and then at Kings Island they stick you in the booth and there are 100 people standing behind you, watching you, eating corn dogs and yelling at you," Shaw says.

So no, he doesn't mind us watching.

WHO IS JOSHUA SHAW?

Contrary to what is rumored, no builders were waiting for Shaw when he graduated from the Columbus College of Art & Design. So he came back to Cincinnati and started helping Wade Hughes build hot rods.

It's completely foreign to most people how this process works because most people's cars are stamped from an assembly line. But in the custom car culture, builders and owners dream up cars and then build them, using artists such as Shaw to draw their concepts.

The '32 Ford coupe five-window that won the 2003 street rod of the year was drawn and striped by Shaw. Builder Fast Lane Hot Rods in Iowa used Shaw's concept as the guideline while building it.

He's striped many of the nation's top cars, and his and Hughes' work has been seen in scores of magazine articles and covers. But even when car owners meet him, they don't believe he was the one who did the work.

"I'll tell them the car turned out well when I see it finished at the shows, and they'll say, 'You've never seen this car before,' even though I laid out the flames and striped it," Shaw says. "It's probably because I'm young. Even when I was little I'd get shrugged off and it used to make me so mad. I had good questions, I knew what I was talking about."

Now those same guys call him and want him to stripe their cars. If they were nice to him when he was younger, they get his normal rate. If they weren't, he charges them double.

Joshua Shaw stands in front of his and his father’s shop in Miami Township. They have been collecting antique gas station signs for over 20 years. (Photo by Leigh Patton/CiN Weekly)

He can charge what he wants because his work speaks for itself - Shaw striped three of the five finalists for street rod of the year in 2003. The owners don't always see his face, but they see his work.

Shaw's big break came when he and Hughes ended up building Street Rodder magazine's road tour car in 23 days last year. When it came time to drive the car to California, Hughes encouraged the driver from Street Rodder to take Shaw with him. Hughes told him, "I've got a young kid who could go with you. He's a good mechanic and he helped build the car. If it goes down, he can fix it."

Other than an axle bearing needing repair on the side of the road in Memphis, Shaw and the driver made it to California and became friends over the long stretch of highway. When they sat down to lunch in Bakersfield with reps from Street Rodder, sitting with them were some of the country's top hot-rod builders. As the builders waxed on about the cars they wanted to build and what they would look like, Shaw quietly drew what he heard on napkins and placemats.

"When we got done with lunch, I was able to give the builders the drawings of the cars they were talking about," says Shaw. "At that point, they were like, 'Who are you?' "

By the time he got back to Ohio, some of the biggest builders in the country were calling him for concept drawings. And as soon as he did one, they all wanted him. When it came time to stripe the 2003 street rod of the year, George Poteet's '32 five-window Ford coupe, Poteet sent Shaw to Iowa to do it.

"There are plenty of capable pinstripers in Iowa," Shaw says. "And everybody asks me all the time, 'Why did they send you to Iowa?' I tell them, George knows that I know enough about traditional hot rodding that he'll get what he wants the first time. There's a '50s look to pinstriping that the old-timers won't teach you. I was lucky enough to have my dad."

That old-school look is exactly what Street Rodder likes about him, too, says editor Brian Brennan.

"He's an artist and an enthusiast, and the combination of both comes through in his work," he says.

RUMORS REVEALED

Apart from telling his ex-girlfriend he was being interviewed for a story about "Cincinnati's top 50 bachelors," the rumors about Shaw are largely untrue. He does do work for Hughes and builders Boyd Coddington and Bobby Alloway, but he doesn't actually work for them, and he's never met Jesse James.

The one about him ripping doughnuts in the grass and flinging mud at old-timers' cars is true, though, including the part about the Louisville cops showing up and kicking him out. He laughs when he talks about it, and admits to loving the looks on everyone's faces when the rain hit.

"There were 14,000 cars there, and when the rain hit, everyone was freaking out trying to get out of there," Shaw says. "They were going crazy. I see building a hot rod as a piece of art that's built to perform, not to trailer it. It's meant to be driven, and it's meant to be driven fast and hard."

Already, at 27, Shaw's talent has garnered him offers from big builders, but his mentor, Hughes, thinks freelancing is best for his career right now. While he's young, he can work for everybody and broaden his horizons, Hughes says.

"I used to have two other guys who laid out flames for me, and they were very good," Hughes says. "But honestly, Josh is 27 years old and is probably better than they are."