You go down the resplendent Las Vegas Strip, beyond the Paris, the New York New York, the Luxor, and the other resorts whose architects seemed to have been working from the image on a postcard, and you keep along Las Vegas Boulevard in the direction in which the city is unfolding; and then, you catch the 215 east, as far east as the beltway takes you, beyond the new suburbs of Henderson, Green Valley and the Sunset shopping region, and then you merge onto Lake Mead Parkway, that large road that splits the arid land toward Lake Mead, turns into Highway 564, and delivers you straight into old Henderson, where streets named after longstanding trees are tormented by desert gusts this time of year; and now you take a right on Pueblo Boulevard, and then stop about a quarter-mile down.
There, to your left, at the front end of that commercial strip of businesses such as Brake Masters and the Mineral and Book Company, is Shawn Ealy's studio, its front door facing the distant Strip from which you started. But you don't stop there: You go in—in, in, in—into a narrow entrance hall, lambent and loud with restless colors, its walls aligned with artistic marvels and merits, its climate like that of a shed with a single fan; and then you continue into Ealy's workshop, a rectangular garage crowded with framed photos and magazine covers, murals and works in progress, as well as a chalkboard with a long list of work to be done. It's a breathless world, in reality.
And there's Shawn himself, bald, affable and understated, fiddling with the tools of his trade. And now, on this hot and windy Friday afternoon, you go even further, and you enter Shawn Ealy's air compressor, just as it's turned on and propelling air through six inches of hose, into an air gun the size of a pen, where it instigates a vacuum that siphons a pearlized green paint from the bottle attached below into a fluid stream of air, which is then mixed into Shawn's own visions and inspirations, his talents and his urges and all the hot creative pulses that make him an artist. You are a seamless extension of Shawn Ealy, who after 18 years of earning his daily bread by no means other than his airbrush and innovative ideas, has become more dexterous, efficient and profitable with his art than ever before.
And now you're sprayed, smooth and almost weightless, onto the hood of a 2004 Hummer H2. One that's unmistakable and cannot be missed because most of it has already been painted by Shawn: painted with the grandiose and gaudy themes of Las Vegas—the face cards and the big cash and the stacked casino chips and, of course, the women and the lights, too; and painted with the meticulous details for which Shawn is known nationwide—details that give the final product its definitive character.
And so you are now airbrush art, a young medium which doesn't date back much further than the men who airbrushed sexy women and their irresistible names on World War II fighter planes, glossy and three-dimensional and very efficient, offering the effect of an image jumping off its surface and capable of being at once artsy and spectacular, something like Las Vegas' Bellagio Resort and its spectacular fountains, the simulacrum of which has already been airbrushed to perfection by Shawn on the Hummer, right alongside you.
And now you're also part of Shawn Ealy's extensive body of work, a half a lifetime spent using an airbrush to render images, letters, pinstripes, racing stripes and microcosmic personalities onto any of the world's myriad canvases: illustration boards, police cars, motorcycles, trucks, shirts, pants, jackets—a woman's naked body—school gymnasium walls, helmets for bikers (like Carey Hart), for skiers (like U.S. skier Kristina Koznik), for firefighters (like Henderson's fire department). In essence, you are now part of that process by which paint is blown onto life's blank surfaces, giving them volume and iridescence and a stroke of beauty. That is, giving it life.
A body of work which had begun in 1988 with a tiny stand at the swap meet, where Shawn painted shirts and jackets and miscellaneous items for a little less than nothing, and which through it all has remained embedded in old Henderson, right where Shawn's roots are—far enough from Las Vegas and the Strip to see it for what it is and what it is not, and yet close enough to draw inspiration from its radiance, its luridness, its over-the-top attitude, so quick and fearless to stretch all limits. And which now warrants an income that Shawn calls "unbelievable," because the type of money he makes now had been unfathomable to Shawn when he started painting on bedsheets and old T-shirts in his mother's garage back in the late '80s, during his days as a student at Basic High School.
A body of work giving testament to not only the personalities of all those who have commissioned him to airbrush their personal belongings, but to Shawn's character as well. His childhood, spent under the violent tumult of his father's roof, and his formative years, in Henderson's tree streets and then Section 4 housing (just behind the shop), submerged in poverty, is apparent in everything he produces. The fear and the pain (like in his screaming phantoms), the anguish and the resolve (like in his crucified black Christ), and even the triumphs too (like in his emerging Southern Nevada sunrises): It's all there. As is God, he says. In all of his work, be it skulls with diabolical countenances on a Harley or an angelic brown-skinned woman in her purest form on canvas, there abounds that spirit of creation—and not just creating to create, but creating something that would seem alive long after its creator has vanished.
A body of work whose axis is dug deep in old Henderson, a place that has not, compared to Las Vegas, changed much. One of Shawn's old buddies, Alan, who stopped by Shawn's shop on Friday afternoon to commission him to airbrush the uniforms of his little boy's bicycle race team, says, "It's like one family out here. I'd say 90 percent of the guys we graduated with are still in Henderson. Some move away, go to Las Vegas, but they just come right back."
Shawn has harvested most of his business from seeds he planted and cultivated in old Henderson. He has never advertised, and for building a network Shawn has relied strictly on word of mouth: His friends telling their friends and family, who then tell their friends and family, and so on and so on—until, in the end, just about all of Shawn's clients can be traced back to old Henderson in one way or another. Even his sole full-time aide, Dale Brown, 24 years old now, was once the eighth-grade boy who used to hang out with Shawn all day, not only because his dad owned a neighboring shop but because he thought that the artist and his vibrant work, displayed on trucks in magazines, were the coolest things in Henderson. And since airbrushing as an art is so versatile, and Shawn is such a protean artist, his talents can be applicable to any of his townspeople. Young men who dream of participating in the car shows, older men who ride choppers, girls seeking matching ornate shirts for Sadie Hawkins, proud mothers who would like to see a portrait of their equestrian daughters on the living room wall: They all call on Shawn.
"This town has been good to me," he says.
And a body of work that doesn't discriminate. He's donated large-scale murals to several schools in Henderson, and he's airbrushed a 60-year-old man's Chevy SSR and matching trailer for $152,000. But his favorite, he says, are projects for guys like Martin Erickson—a cook at the Henderson jail for the past 18 years who had heard of Shawn's work; who had, paycheck by paycheck, saved enough to commission Shawn to do something on the tank of his motorcycle that might be as sensational as all of Shawn's work paraded at shows and pictured in magazines; and who, upon receiving the motorcycle back, with its masterful and haunting artwork, a monster roaring and salivating with fury, was completely overwhelmed.
"With Shawn, you don't hope for it to turn out amazing," Martin says. "You anticipate it."
And that's why Mike Chavez, a 31-year-old loan officer who uses his Hummer (the vehicle to which you are now being applied) to help advertise his business, went through a mutual friend to get to Shawn. "The intent was to draw attention," he says. "It's mind-boggling to see people's reaction to Shawn's work."
And further: "I wanted to go with the Las Vegas idea because that's where I live, that's where I work. And so I told Shawn that and let him take it from there."
Shawn is now just about finished with the project. It has consumed his faculties for a good two months, and even interrupted his dreams. He is charging $27,000 for the job. It had started with a lot of thinking—just thinking, thinking, thinking—and then the Hummer was cleaned, dewaxed and degreased, then taped and papered off. Because Mike Chavez gave Shawn free rein, there were no preliminary drawings. Just a freehand, paint-as-you-go approach, with guidance coming from only an occasional photograph. Oftentimes inspiration hits Shawn midcourse—themes and motifs reveal themselves while he's airbrushing—and so he goes with it. For instance, with this Hummer, in the fine texture of the $100 bills he was painting to represent Vegas, he saw the nascent flowers, and so he flowed his dollars into green roses that adorned the hood, a seamless efflorescence.
And now Dale seals the car with clear coat (just as women do with their nails) to protect and flatten the paint; then he polishes it to make the images glossy and translucent like glass; and now, to finish, he cleans it.
"One of the pioneers told me that we're the last generation of real airbrush artists," Shawn says. "Because of technology, you know. Computers and Photoshop do it all."
Yet Shawn chooses to believe the work of an artist's hand will always have an inimitable place in society, especially Las Vegas', which needs that human authenticity to neutralize the artificial marvels. Though he has a website with an address bearing his name, Shawn has resisted modernity, opting rather for the simple and natural: He still uses the same tools he did when he started airbrushing, despite the technological advancements in the medium; he doesn't use the Internet, and thus he can't be found on any of the worldwide airbrushing websites; nor would he even use a cell phone if his accountant hadn't induced him into carrying one; and if he's not in old Henderson painting in his swampy studio, there's a good chance he is at his ranch in Sandy Valley, riding the sand dunes on four-wheelers and go-carts or fishing in the nearby lake with his greatest creation—his son—or just basking in the organic pleasures of barren Southern Nevada.
And now, on Saturday, June 17, you roll out of the garage, cruise back down Pueblo Boulevard, go west on Lake Mead, across new Henderson, back to the Las Vegas Strip, east on Tropicana and to the Hooters hotel-casino, a new resort striving to appeal to the Las Vegas prototype with its lurid and colorful promotions. That's why you're there now. It's a bash to celebrate Shawn Ealy's 36th birthday, complete with spectacles emblematic of Las Vegas, such as world record-breaking karate stunts, a succession of beautiful women, each more beautiful than the last, and several of Shawn Ealy's projects—canvases and helmets and bikes and, of course, the Hummer, all painted in the flamboyant style typical of him, just as if he had taken postcards of the city, abstracted their colors, themes and personalities, and applied them to his own multiplex body of work.
"I can't help it," Shawn says. "Las Vegas is just in me."