‘Lines of Light’ art show features blacklight bodypaint pinstriping
Story and Photos by Paul G. White
Striper Josh is a successful pin-striping artist from the Reno area.
He’s made a career out of hand-painting elaborate, beautiful pinstriped designs on cars, trucks, and motorcycles, using sure and steady brush strokes. But he probably is best known for his artistic flair for painting freehand pinstriping directly onto women’s bodies.
This Saturday night, from 7 to 10 p.m., Striper Josh will be the featured artist at a gallery opening and reception will be inside the luxurious Renaissance Reno Downtown Hotel.
It will be an evening of art, music and socializing in a beautiful venue along the Truckee River. And if you appreciate the beautiful curves and lines of the female form, it’s definitely an event you’ll want to check out with a few friends.
The beautiful photographs feature stunning, colorful, iridescent pinstriped lines on women’s bodies, which are then photographed using special, UV black lights.
The resulting image is a marriage of color, lines, and light that is mesmerizing and beautiful.
Because body-paint art is temporary, Striper Josh and Reno photographer Fielding Cathcart collaborated on how to best document the finished art.
They agreed to use Fielding’s talent as a digital photographer to capture the colorful, florescent paint under black lighting. The images were then edited, cropped and printed onto metallic photo paper.
Each of the 15 photographs in the series is anonymous, never revealing the model’s face or identity.
“It’s less about the person, less about the body and less about the sexuality of it and more about the curves … the natural curves of the body,” he explained. “Just the way the lines work and just the way the lines light up, that’s how I came up with the title “Lines of Light.”
Striper Josh doesn’t plan or draw out his pinstriped designs. Each session takes from three to six hours to complete.
Each model collaborates on the colors in advance and then Striper Josh simply begins creating his designs freehand and straight from his imagination.
Several of the pinstriped models will be at the opening event as well as a couple of motorcycles that sport custom pinstriping by Striper Josh.
~Paul G. White~
All of the mounted photos in the exhibit are for sale. Posters and prints of the artwork are available at their website at http://bodypaintfactory.com.
“Lines of Light” runs through February 21. It is free and open to the public.
