In the youth of our racing enthusiasm, we tend to think obituaries are for drivers. We don’t foresee, or at least don’t want to, that time also will rob us of friends who don’t court risk on the track.
Art Eastman, artist, photographer, writer, editor, passionate enthusiast, and friend, departed way too young, dying on July 29 at just 70. At the beginning of the year a very large aneurism was discovered in his lower aorta which required abdominal surgery. I understand it was a difficult procedure done through the back, below a shoulder blade, and it did not go well. There were complications, as the medicos euphemistically put it, including serious infection that required two further surgeries.
These repeated ordeals left him very weak and partially debilitated, but he seemed to be getting better slowly, and Carole Eastman finally was able to move her husband to a care facility near their home in Lakeland, Florida. But his months of struggle had taken away too much strength.
Most of us, sadly, are familiar with the storm of emotions that sweep through us at such a time. There’s sadness, of course, and a sense of loss not only of the person, but for the place he or she had in our world.
There may also be regret, even guilt, if we realize we neglected to keep in closer touch with our friend. In this case, I had no idea Art was ill until the last week of July, when a mutual friend found out and spread the word.
I called Carole. She seemed cautiously upbeat about Art’s recovery, and said his big problem was, “he’s bored stiff.” He’d love some DVDs to watch, she said—“not Hollywood stuff, he hates that, but maybe some racing things.” I started drawing up a mental list, but before I acted on it, she phoned back with the bitter news.
Selfishly, I confess to relief that I didn’t see Art in his frailty. My memories are only of the vital, forthright, immensely talented man I admired for 20 years.
It was that long ago, late in 1990, when he must have phoned out of the blue from his Lakeland office and invited me to contribute to the magazine he was editing. We met for the first time at a vintage event in San Diego, where Art and I found seats high up in a secluded corner of the football stadium. We must have spent a couple of hours there, far above the happy sounds of the old racecars gamboling around the parking lot, talking about the magazine and the direction he wanted to take it, thoughts about a column I would write, other stories we could do together. Most of all, I believe, we were really enjoying each other’s company. Art was a deep, careful thinker with a deep, resonant voice. Listening to him was pleasurable.
Thus began a thoroughly delightful period of my career, during which I sent in my Fast Lines column (a title launched way back in 1977 when I edited a magazine on then-current racing) as well as numerous separate articles and installments of various series we did on American Specials, Chaparrals and the Can-Am.
To Art Eastman goes the credit for making possible my book on that last-named topic. It was at the 1992 Monterey Historics that Denny Hulme extracted my promise to write that history. One did not refuse the Can-Am’s burly Bear, but as I left our conversation—the last time I would ever see him—I was thinking, howinhell can I afford the time for a project that massive?
I found Art and made a proposal: how about commissioning me to research and write a series of articles, which I would then expand into a longer manuscript. Both he and the eventual book publisher agreed and my labors began.
Photo: Art Eastman
For some years, assignments from Art’s and other publications enabled me to stop by Lakeland fairly regularly. Carole would prepare a fine dinner and we’d all spend the early part of the evening telling stories. Art and I discovered several things in common: we were born the same year and in the same state, New York; he’d studied art intensively and I less so; he’d owned an Austin Healey, I’d wanted to.
Then Carole would honor her bed time while Art, habitually a late worker, would usher me to the corner of the house that was his office. He worked in near-total darkness, no light burning but the soft glow of his Apple monitor. Nor was there really room for more than his desk chair. Surrounded on three sides by tables and shelving piled high with magazines, books, car models and projects in progress, I would assume a variety of perching and leaning positions, trying to fight off body strain and brain fatigue as the night wore on. It was not comfortable, but it was not to be cut short. Spending time with Art Eastman was precious.
Every visit, we’d have a Photoshop project. One time, he took me through the process of scanning a color slide I’d just shot of a Viper in the Sebring night and then showed me how to transform it through “filters” into a kind of line drawing. He made a print, I had the wit to get him to autograph it, and it’s on my own office wall to this day.
Another of our P-shop projects taught me how to use layers, masking and desaturation to produce a bright yellow Ferrari glowing from a monochrome background. The print we made that night went as a gift to the mutual friends who owned the car.
He was enthusiastically involved in an annual car show in Lakeland, and during one visit he showed me photo illustrations he was doing for their various print materials. Starting with an image he’d made of a classic car, he erased all of the background so the vehicle seemed to stand alone in a grey void, as if posed in a cove in a studio. Good enough, I thought.
But then Art greatly expanded the image on-screen and proceeded to slowly, subtly, painstakingly soften the edges of the car’s outline, progressively from front to back. The result was not dramatic, but it was real. It focused your eye on the front of the car and let the rest relax into the third dimension.
He never took any short cuts. For everything he tackled, he poured in as much time and effort as it took to make it right.
Art was well named. He was truly an artist, first and foremost. His devotion to perfection was ferocious, his dedication to accuracy and authenticity uncompromising. Though he had a boyish look, often with a lock of hair spilling down his forehead, whenever something struck him as unprofessional, unethical, unsatisfactory in any way, you heard about it.
One time, as we were at his computer talking about websites, he asked about my favorites. I named a photography site from which I have learned a lot, he typed in the URL, and I waited for a grunt of approval, or at least interest. Instead, I got a burst of invective.
“Why, this looks terrible! That design is awful. Those colors clash horribly! It’s a mess!” Stunned, I kept mum, but I was thinking, hey, you did ask. And doesn’t content count?
He would be equally blunt with anyone restoring a vintage car improperly, or trying to misrepresent its provenance, or driving it ineptly. On the occasion of a major, multi-car wreck somewhere, Art acidly “wrote” his editorial in the form of a cartoonish illustration of exploding stars and fireworks and flamboyant block letters reading something to the effect of, “BIFF! POW! BAM! HOLY VINTAGE RACING, BATMAN!”
Art once visited my home. In preparation, I had hastily “framed” a picture that meant something to both of us, a 16×20 of Chaparrals, signed by Jim Hall and sent as a gift by photographer Roy Query after he’d done a shoot for Art’s magazine. Unfortunately, the only “frame” I had on hand at that moment was a cheap plastic display box meant for posters. When my guest spotted it on my wall, I saw a literal temblor of offence go through him. I braced myself, but for once he held his tongue.
Art, my friend, I wish you could know that the picture has since been properly and professionally framed. I owed you that…and so much else.
