Passion for Paint

Written by Charlie Durgin

Bakersfield has its name on the map for some pretty blue collar things. Oilfields, race car drivers, and some of the best high school football in the nation. There are more cultivated accomplishments of note to be found, though.

Two Bakersfield artists put the Golden Empire on the map with world-renowned artwork.

Craig Fraser’s Air Syndicate and Dion Giuliano’s Kal Koncepts have paired their strengths to become one of the finest custom shops in the country.

But Fraser cringes at the artist label, even though his finished product can only be called art. Fine art even.

“I’m an illustrator,” Fraser says. “As custom painters, we are responsible to the customer, whereas an artist can just paint whatever he wants.”

Fraser feels that he and Giuliano are more guns for hire, wielding airbrushes and masking tape to make customer’s dreams come true, and they don’t mind the distinction.

“Michaelangelo and Rembrandt were both commissioned artists, they were illustrators for hire,” Fraser explained. “Rich people commissioned them to do private work.”

Utilizing your creativity while pleasing a customer who has told you what they want is a special task, and you don’t have to be Bill Gates to get your hands on their masterpieces.

“You know, people are a lot more concerned with what’s on the side of the tank on their Harley than in what’s hanging on the wall of some gallery,” Fraser said.

And they aren’t just for the custom car set.

During a recent visit to the shop, Fraser was spraying away on a guitar that will make its way to retail shelves at the Guitar Center. He’s also got stencil sets he designed on Wal-Mart shelves.

But it wasn’t always a cutting edge custom shop.

“Dion bought it from his stepfather Arlen Kurtis back in 1986,” Fraser said, “and it was a boat factory on South H that was based out of Glendale, California. They had a tremendous history in racing boats and Indy cars. Frank Kurtis [Arlen’s father] was the most winningest race car builder of all time, more even than Ferrari.”

The company also was building starter carts for the SR71 Blackbird military plane. The government was having trouble building a starter cart that could fire them up and get away quick enough, but the company came up with something that would do the job. Dion bought the shop in 1986 when the contract expired for the starter carts, “just to keep it alive and do custom painting,” Fraser said.

Fraser is the most outward of the pair, constantly writing how-to columns and articles in industry trade publications and penning books, and handling the pair’s PR. He’s also traveled the country, and planet—with stops in exotic locales like Japan—teaching his skills, and he took a circuitous route through higher education, including a study abroad trip to Italy, but it’s a good fit.

“Dion’s Sicilian. I hate to make it about this...but, getting to know Italians like I did when I lived there, I know Sicilians are reserved with strangers,” Fraser said.

It doesn’t mean he’s a wallflower, by any means though.

“When it comes to getting things done and making deadlines and keeping things together, that’s all Dion,” Fraser said.

Giuliano knows what he owes it to.

“It’s probably my background in athletics; that’s probably why I work the way I do,” he said, alluding to his career as a nationally-ranked pole vaulter in the ‘80s. He still holds the record at Cal State Northridge.

“Seventeen feet six and a half, and it’s still there,” he said of the record he set in 1985. Giuliano credits the sport with keeping him in college. After wrapping up his career at Northridge, and carefully putting away his All American awards—four for the pole vault and one in the decathlon—he began training for the 1988 Summer Olympics. Ranked 10th in the country with room to improve, he tore his Achilles tendon in training and decided to pursue his current vocation.

“I have no regrets. I don’t think I’d be in the position I’m in now if it weren’t for athletics,” Giuliano said.

He’s an assistant track coach at Stockdale High School, and his daughter has carried on the family pole vault legacy with the fourth highest Freshman jump in the state this season.

He would get another fortunate brush with Olympic greatness, anyway.

“We actually airbrushed rifles for the Chinese Olympic team about six years ago,” he said.

If you didn’t catch the Chinese Rifle team on TV, you aren’t out of chances to see their work in motion. They airbrushed several cars featured in the film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Fraser values the unique balance in their working relationship.

“He’s a very skilled fabricator, owning back to the experience he had when this was a boat shop, and he enjoys doing fiberglass and carbon fiber work. He’s also excellent at laying out designs, so if I’m out of the shop, he can do that.”

The merging of Giuliano’s Kal Koncepts and Fraser’s Air Syndicate has been quite successful.

They’ve earned the endorsement of the prestigious House of Kolor paint brand, which isn’t very easy to come by. They earned it in one of the most direct ways you can.

“We are the only painters to ever paint one of Don Komalski’s bikes,” Giuliano said of one of the founders of House of Kolor. “He’s one of the top three custom painters in the world, and he let us paint a bike for him.”

But the men have a pretty decent pedigree when it comes to endorsements.

“Dion and I did all of Jesse James’s bikes and cars for a while. We did pretty much everything for him, from murals in his home to t-shirts,” Fraser said. “I even striped his George Foreman grill one day. He wanted everything, from his toolboxes to his computer tower to his Foreman grill, to be unique,” Fraser said, pointing out the limitless customizing possibilities, and his own ability to make that happen.

“Most artists have just enough right brain to be creative, but not enough left brain to get it done,” Fraser says.

The pair have 60 plus magazine covers between them, and have been the subject of hundreds of magazine features in the last decade, so the left brain, and Dion’s Sicilian blood, promise many more in the future.

Hype alone does not make a shop, though.

“We were the first ones to start incorporating different paint styles, making things look like they were floating and ripping apart,” Giuliano explained, “but we’ve taken it a step further, and we’ve always tried to be a little different. We’ve never been against using new materials, unlike some of the old-school guys who didn’t want to switch from lacquer to polyurethane, or to the pearls and flakes.”

Between Giuliano’s sport-honed drive and the illustrator’s sensibility displayed by Fraser, Bakersfield has a world-class custom shop right in its backyard.

Article appeared in our 26-2 Issue - June 2009