It could be a fender, or maybe a piece of old furniture or a wall or a canvas.
It truly does not matter to Eric Walker, an East Wheeling man who owns Creative Maddness Custom Airbrushing and Paint in Bridgeport, Ohio. That’s because the man adores art, and he loves a challenge.
“These days I am really concentrating on my art. I love to paint cars, but I also like pretty much everything connected to art,” Walker said. “I do digital art to create logos, web pages, book covers, and I’ll even paint the occasional house. It’s about the creativity for me, and I love it because you can create anything you want in your brain, and then you can put it out there.
“I’m not a fan of copying someone else’s artwork, and that’s why I always create my own,” he said. “I see a lot of artists that will take a photo or something and change it a little, and then they believe they created something new. Stuff like that is not new art. I mean, I know Andy Warhol was really out there, but painting a Campbell’s soup can made him famous.”
His 1,500 square-foot shop is located along Ohio Route 250, and he and a co-worker accept whatever jobs the public brings to them.
“It’s a big enough area for me and what I do, plus I do a program with local kids who are interested in learning what it is I do,” Walker explained. “So, a student from Belmont College comes to the shop three days a week, and he works for me. And he doesn’t work for free, either, because that would not be the right thing. They work hard, so they get paid. That’s how it supposed to work.
“From the very beginning of that program, it was important to me that those students get paid,” he said. “Business is pretty good, too, and it keeps us pretty busy. We aren’t in a situation where we have to chase down business; that’s for sure.”
Art Is Art
Walker’s path was partially paved when he joined the United States Army in 1992. He grew up in East Wheeling, served America for 22 years, and then returned to the same 13th Street house where he was raised.
But he will be the first to admit that when he returned to his hometown, he was a changed man upon his return to the Northern Panhandle.
“Art was my thing when I graduated from Wheeling Park in 1984, so I first went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. But I ran out of funds, so I joined the Army Reserves so I could pay for school,” Walker explained. “But once I saw that I liked the Army, I ended up going on active duty in 1992. The first place where I was stationed what Fort Hood in Texas.
“I did 15 years at Fort Hood, and then I served at multiple bases overseas, and I was sergeant first class or an E-7 when I retired,” he continued. “I was stationed in Cuba at Guantanamo Bay, in Bosnia, and in Turkey, and I did two deployments in Iraq and one deployment in Afghanistan.”
It was the deployments, though, that had the biggest impact on this proud veteran.
“I’m a firm believer that every deployment changes you. Every time you come back, you are different than from you left. Really, you’re a whole different person when you come back; that’s for sure,” Walker recalled. “Now, after serving in Afghanistan, I had a tough time being back in the country and around people.
“I was deployed in 2003 through 2006, and when I would come home my ex-wife would tell me that I was a different person,” he said. “During the first week I was in Afghanistan, we had 22 casualties come in, and that changed everything for me. And it changed me, too. I found myself not wanting to be around other people, and I realized I liked it that way. I still like it when I am by myself. That’s when I do my art.”
