Magic in the metal: Ogden hot rod artist keeps the romance of car culture alive
Artist Gene Chambers of Studio-66 Hot Rod Art.
Gene Chambers was asked to paint Engine No. 119 for the 150th Anniversary of the Golden Spike.
Gene Chambers art.
Gene Chambers' studio at The Monarch.
"Gas Cafe sign up Echo Canyon" by artist Gene Chambers of Studio-66 Hot Rod Art.
"Flat Out Roadster" by artist Gene Chambers, who specializes in automobile memorabilia and car culture art.
"Ford Woody" by Gene Chambers.
Inside Gene Chambers' Studio 18 at The Monarch, where originals and prints are displayed in the workshop.
Being a licensed Rat Fink artist allows artist Gene Chambers to paint the "anti-Mickey Mouse" character created by his childhood inspiration, Ed Roth.
“Hot Rods are my passion, but the graphic arts are my craft,” said Utah painter Gene Chambers of Studio-66 Hot Rod Art, whose work is inspired by the custom car culture of the 1950s and ’60s.
Chambers paints hot rods and roadsters with a smooth and illustrative feel, a style that evolved from his background in graphic design, advertising and sign painting. His cleanly structured and hyper-realistic paintings reveal rusted Chevys, reflective Corvettes and close-up views of old car parts or used tools.
“I can see joy in the junk, especially if it’s car junk,” Chambers said. “That old rusty oil can, a well-worn toolbox or a door panel from a 1932 Ford — there’s magic in that metal!”
Chambers studied graphic design at Weber State University in Ogden, where he also worked for a sign company painting billboards. His preferred medium is still the oil-based sign enamel he used on the job to achieve clean lines and lettering. In between acrylics and oils, enamel is more liquid based, he said. It can be thinned down to do washes similar to watercolors.
While attending WSU in the 1970s, Chambers worked as a painter and designer at Lagoon Amusement Park, where many of his murals in the Pioneer Village are still intact. He also helped paint scenes on the merry-go-round that were repainted last year. But on the murals, his imprint remains; there’s his street scene of Washington Boulevard from the early 1900s and an old mansion reminiscent of the ones up 25th Street with a fancy carriage in front.
He eventually shifted his career to advertising, graphics and marketing over the course of a few decades, winning several Addy Awards for his efforts — until about 10 years ago when Chambers decided it was time to return to his original passion for painting. He began working in the evenings and on weekends, slowly shifting full time to the life of an artist four years ago — or more specifically, a hot rod artist. “I should have done this earlier,” he said.
Chambers has been drawn to car culture since he was a kid, building hundreds of model cars and mimicking the illustrations of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, an artist, car designer and key figure of Southern California’s car culture in the ’50s and ’60s. Roth, who passed away in 2001, was Chambers’ biggest inspiration when he started painting as a boy and continues to influence him today.
“I carry that inspiration with me to this day,” Chambers said, “and I’m proud to be a licensed ‘Official Rat Fink Artist.'” He was recently inducted into the Rat Fink Artist Hall of Fame.
Roth created Rat Fink in 1965, the “anti-Mickey Mouse.” A rat instead of a mouse, Rat Fink was “stinky and sweaty and nervous,” Chambers said. Car culture embraced the dirty rodent all these years.
Chambers had a love for cars as long as he can remember. He played with Tonka trucks as a kid and it’s been automobiles ever since. Nowadays, kids have other toys to move on to, said Chambers, who watched his grandson quickly graduate from toy cars and trucks to Star Wars and Legos. “When I was a kid, we didn’t have those other things,” he said. “We just kept to cars.”
Now, Chambers can be found in his studio every day painting cars on canvas or pinstriping on anything from surfboards, skateboards, old tool boxes or a vintage fridge — “man cave art,” he calls the auto memorabilia. It’s what his painting on canvas evolved from years ago. “I’ve gone full circle from doing this to start and now back to doing it again.”
After a hard hat tour of The Monarch during the renovation, Chambers jumped at the chance to have a workshop where he could also display his artwork. “It’s been everything I hoped it would be,” he said. Prior to The Monarch studio, he worked out of his garage and sold his art at car shows. The change has been a good one; being surrounded by other artists, and the Open Studio Nights and other activities that bring people to his studio, exposes him to a whole different audience.
Chambers’ artwork has been in several publications including Pinstriping & Kustom Graphics Magazine, the Australian hot rod magazine Cruzin and “The Rolling Bones Book of GOW” (gas, oil and water). He was recently inducted into the Utah Hot Rod Hall of Fame.
Twenty-eight original Hot Rod Art works by Chambers are currently on exhibit at the Weber Library. For other works, prints, metal art and art by commission, visit Studio 18 at The Monarch or find Gene Chambers online at studio-66.com and Facebook @studio66HotRods.