AMERICAN STRIPER
By Jon Lee Cope Photos by Mickie Winters
Yes, the city banned Derby cruising, when thousands would gather along Broadway to party and see souped-up cars. But everybody knows Derby Week is still the time to show off your wheels. Especially if you have a car painted by Josh Culver, the best automotive artist around.
Being a “striper,” which is car-industry vernacular for the person who hand-paints lines and intricate designs on an automobile, requires a few talents, not the least of which is a steady hand. Other qualities important to the craft include imagination, use of space, an eye for color and, above all, patience. As an adolescent, Josh Culver spent three years practicing the art of making a straight line with a brush and One Shot, his paint of choice before even touching an automobile.
Auburn-haired and built like a bantamweight, the 31-year-old is a family man, having met his wife Brittany at the Logan’s Roadhouse on Dixie Highway, a popular spot for Louisville’s car culture. They have two kids: a newborn daughter named Andy with Dad’s red hair and Caleb, who at eight shares his father’s love of all things on wheels. Culver grew up middle class in the Wyandotte/Oakdale area south of the city. His father was a “body man” who supported the family by pounding out fenders back when cars and men were made of steel. Early on, Culver’s dad saw his boy’s interest in lowriders. The aesthetic originated in East L.A. when first-generation Mexican-Americans began to take old unwanted cars and, through innovation and panache, turn them into lowriders — classic cars modified to sit low, painted in layers with different colors and textures to catch the California sunshine. Culver’s heroes — automotive artists like Bill Carter, Mario Gomez and Walt Prey — mastered the method: metal flake, gold leaf, airbrush, graphics, flames, pinstripes. Culver studied Hot Rod, Custom Car and Lowrider, magazines that featured pretty women and flashy cars, or vice versa. “I couldn’t help it,” Culver says. “I would look at the car pictures in those magazines, and I would start picking them apart in my mind. And then put them back together. It was a puzzle, and I could finish.”
When Culver was 12, he and his dad built and painted a lowrider bicycle out of an old Schwinn three-wheeler, the kind with a basket for groceries and Social Security checks. After a year of work on it, Culver was showing off his candy-cobalt-blue lowrider trike and doing the scene with a gangster lean the likes of which the River City had never seen.
In the world of lowriders, there is one Holy Grail: the 1964 Chevrolet Impala. Rappers call the sedan the “Six Four.” Car enthusiasts seek out this classic for its clean long lines — before Chevy adopted more of a Ralph Nader styling. In 1992, on Culver’s 15th birthday, his old man presented him with a ’64 Impala, which, Culver says, “every single old-school lowrider from coast to coast covets. And I have one sitting right in my own backyard.” Culver befriended a Louisville striper named Jim Roby, who acted as Culver’s Mr. Miyagi, slowly and patiently teaching the trade. Culver pestered the old master “like a fly.” The project took 11 years to complete. When it came time to do the final striping, the older painter walked away, telling Culver, “You can finish this yourself.” Culver had found his calling. “After that, I didn’t care about anything else. I just wanted to paint, and I would paint anything. I had no choice in the matter,” Culver says.
Culver showed his Six Four at the 1995 Carl Casper Custom Car Show in town and met a man named Lee Huff, who had a 1963 Impala that was fully restored and ready for paint. Culver got the job. “I hit it right out of the ballpark,” he says. That car caught the attention of Saul Vargas, Lowrider’s technical editor. “People kept telling me that there was this kid in the Midwest named Josh Culver, and when I saw that Huff Impala, I knew that he was for real,” Vargas says.
“He is taking the old-school greats and bringing them into the new century. He is that good. But it is more than that. People are now beginning to copy his style.” At a “Painters Bash” in L.A., Vargas remembers artists saying, “This white guy from Louisville can paint!”
Culver, whose garage is in Iroquois, has done more than 100 cars, mostly for clients in the Midwest. Like a skateboarder, he gets money from sponsors, including Japanese paint company Iwata. In town, he has also done work for Spinelli’s. And this year he painted a Gallapalooza horse.
Back in 1995, Culver made a decision to sell his beloved ’64 Impala and use the profit as seed money to start Culver Customs. It was a Sophie’s Choice. He still keeps track of the car, which he sold for the mid five figures. The car has changed hands on more than one occasion. Someday, he says, “I will buy it back, and my son and I will turn on the radio and go for a ride.”
Louisville Magazine