RENO – For Troy Van Berry it’s combining his two passions; racing and art. And it all began, like many passions do, at a very young age with some help from his father.
Troy Van Berry stands in his home studio with examples of his racing art.
“I was the kid in school who was always drawing. One of my earliest memories as a kid has to do with drawing and artwork,” he said. “But I remember when I was about 3-years-old that I was always drawing racecars.”
And he recalled, with a laugh, that his mom said it was both on paper and walls.
His father Bob Berry, who sadly passed away last year, was involved in racing ever since he got out of the military in Southern California.
“He was a huge influence on my life because he and his buddies were always racing something or out in the garage working on some sort of racecars,” Van Berry said. “So from a very early age I remember just the thrill of being able to draw racecars.”
He added that around 3- or 4-years-old he figured out a way to draw pipes and other features on a racecar.
“My technique wasn’t quite good enough and I think I was drawing mostly sprint cars at the time,” he said. “I remember just how exciting it was to me that I figured out to draw these things the way I wanted to. It’s one of my earliest memories of feeling that feeling of success through making something of my own.”
Although the family moved many times Van Berry and is older brother continued to take art classes.
“In school I always took art classes. My older brother was also an artist so he sort of came before me and the teachers he had I had also,” he said. “The teachers he had I had so once I got there they knew I was his younger brother and also a good artist. I had an extremely wonderful art teacher in high school, his name was Charles Sanderson, a very well known regional Kansas landscape painter.”
With this encouragement he started to focus on the classes needed to get into college. When that time came Van Berry’s family lived here so he began his college time at UNR.
Then his family moved to this area where he began college at UNR but they moved back to Kansas where he earned two art degrees from Wichita State University.
“I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and ceramics so to this day I’m still a huge sports fan of all the Kansas sports teams,” he said.
He added that there was another huge change when he was about 8-years-old.
“One morning we woke up, Dad came and got us boys who were probably sitting in the living room watching cartoons and he’s like ‘hey guys you’ve got to go out and see what’s in the garage.’ And we walked out and there was a go kart.”
Now that his father had a kart he took the family to races in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri and Nebraska. When he was around 10-years-old his father started letting him drive but didn’t feel he was ready.
Then after two years he was able to race and did so until his father turned it into an enduro kart, which meant lengthening it. Van Berry wasn’t able to reach the pedals so had to stop racing.
During his summers in college he would visit his brother, who lived here and worked at Bizarre Guitar. His brother got him a part time summer job with Star Sound Audio.
“So when I finished with college there was a position available at Star Sound and I knew I wanted to get back here to Reno. And that’s when I started my career in the lighting business,” he said. “I took my artistic skills and transferred those over to do lighting for concerts and those kinds of things.”
His brother brought him back to racing after buying a Junior 1 Comer kart for his son. Then one day, while out at Desert Park Raceway, a guy let Van Berry take some laps in his shifter kart.
He added that it was over his head as he didn’t know how to shift the kart.
“So I went out there and looped about 10 times but had a blast and I was hooked,” he said. “After a couple of years after that I bought my a TAG kart and started racing but had to be in the Masters class because I was already past 35. By the second race I was up to speed and making podiums so I race for two or three years.”
He stepped away from racing and focused on art when his marriage was failing. When that situation ended he came back to racing.
“Literally the day she left me I went out, sold my wedding ring an bought a kart for my son Berry. At that point he was turning 10 an I wanted him started in a junior kart,” he said.
After taking a bare bones kart, rebuilding it and putting a Clone motor in they were ready to go and have been racing every since.
Once back in karting with the Northern Nevada Kart Club he noticed they had a need for an announcer.
“Since I work in the industry I’m comfortable being on a microphone so I pretty much volunteered to jump in and see if I could do it,” he said. “They allowed me to do it and I realized it was something I really enjoyed so I’ve pretty much been the announcer ever since.”
After college he was producing art more for galleries but now he began to see a different path.
“Once I got back into karting, I started thinking about what I wanted to do about racing art again,” he said. “So I did my first piece and had just a ton of really positive response from everyone because it was a highly realistic work, which most people respond to.”
One example of Troy Van Berry’s racing art.
courtesy – Troy Van Berry
Besides the enjoyment of producing art that people enjoyed he also realized that it was commercially viable and might provide a pathway to extending or starting a second career producing racing art.
“Basically I want to develop my racing art and style to try to break into the motorsports world. Not just with karting as I love all forms of racing,” he said. “I kind of started in the karting world because that’s what I’m involved in now but as time goes along I do intend to branch out into other forms of motorsports.”
One person he’d like to follow is Sam Bass, a very well known motorsport artist. The goal is to branch out and hopefully get commission work out of it.
“In other words, some racer or some family that has their kid racing and wants a picture of them. I’m hoping as I become more known to start lining up commissions,” he said. “Then as I line up more commissions for more work I can transition into doing those types of projects.”
While he likes all forms of motorsports both karting and motorcycle racing offer something that appeals to him.
“I really like that with karting and motorcycle art as well as some of those kinds of things, you get to draw the driver and the driver’s suit. So you get to link the machine and the human element together and to me there’s a lot of attraction as an artist.”
He likes the fact that the driver or riders can be seen while competing. This is unlike stock car, Indy Car or Drag Racing where, for safety reasons, the driver is pretty well hidden inside their racing vehicle.
Another one the areas he’s expanding into is producing logos for either teams or series.
“Once I started working with the Northern Nevada Kart Club I saw their logo was sadly in need of a redesign so I took it upon myself to spend the time and create a new one,” he said. “Once everybody saw it they loved it and immediately wanted to adopt it so that’s how I became the designer for the NNKC logo.”
Northern Nevada Kart Club logo designed by Troy Van Berry.
Graphic courtesy – Troy Van Berry.
Van Berry added that he can design logos for organizations as well as teams and individual racers. Not only that but he can also create graphics for karts, vehicles, driving suits and anything else.
Another area he’s working on is helmet design.
“When I was a kid, 12 or 13, my dad used to paint his helmets,” he said. “So when I was racing karts or riding dirt bikes I painted my own helmet. Once I got back into karting I could see everyone was using these custom painted helmets and those designs attracted me. Now that my son is racing I’m starting to paint his helmets.”
Here again the response to this form of racing art is getting him some attention and he’s already painting one for Nevada Kart Sport owner Rodney Rivera.
Troy Van Berry holding an example of his helmet designs that he painted.
“I really enjoy the air brushing so as I’ve starting doing that I’ve had people say, ‘hey that’s a really cool design, are you interested in doing one for me?'”
Looking ahead Van Berry said, “I am looking at this as a way to develop sort of a new career for myself as I move away from lighting work as I get older and want to move away from more of that physical work. I want to figure out a way to start making more money with this racing art so I can transition into a pretty much straight forward artist career”
Van Berry is currently adding color to this piece of racing art.
courtesy – Troy Van Berry.
While he doesn’t have a website at the moment, that’s a work I progress, he is on Face Book.
“I’m the only Troy Van Berry on Face Book so it’s very easy for anybody to find and contact me. And they can see examples of my artwork, racing art and helmet designs as all are on my page,” he said.
This local artist has found a way to combining his passion for racing as well as his passion and talent for art.
OTHER RACING NEWS
- There will be a special announcement from a local off road racing team on Tuesday as well as a post on this site as well.The radio show is Teresa’s Garage that is broadcast at 2 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesdays, I’m a regular guest on that show as well.
You can hear it live on 1180Am KCKQ if you’re in the Reno, Nevada area or stream it live on amm.streamon.fm. And the show is repeated Monday through Friday at noon Pacific Time on www.pullingradionetwork.com.
Teresa’s Garage graphic.
Courtesy – Teresa’s Garage radio show.
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