It is said that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And considering the double-dealing that goes on in Sinatra’s city of insomnia—where the “New York skyline” rises out of a desert of dancing fountains and everything is lifelike, but not quite real life—this marketing slogan is something I appreciate.
It’s different here. A lot of what happens in Ventura County spreads out to the world at large, from our agricultural industry to local companies with an international reach.
That’s something to be proud of. So we opted to narrow the focus of our Made in Ventura County theme, filling the editorial well with features that spotlight local products and individuals whose work leaves the nest and flies—not due to slick marketing or luck with the trends, but because they’re just so good.
Take, for example, DW Drums (p. 26). Here’s a local company that blew up for all the right reasons. The story, in a nutshell: Don Lombardi’s passion for drums leads him to open a small teaching studio called Drum Workshop. Along with his prize student, a teenager named John Good, he starts making products for drummers—things they really need, like specially designed seats. And, hey, they’re good. So the world’s top drummers endorse them. Which leads to more growth and more brainstorming about how to make better products. Not better business, mind you. The company’s focus on topnotch products has, from day one, been its key to success.
Now, nearly forty years after Don Lombardi opened that little teaching studio, his son, Chris, a Thousand Oaks native living in Camarillo, runs the family business, located in Oxnard. Don and John keep busy with R&D, happily tinkering, creating new products that improve drumming. And the beat goes on.
Meanwhile, in Ojai… Most Ventana readers are aware that Ventura County is full of artists. Singling one out for a magazine article is no easy task. Do we profile a talented sculptor? A painter? A metalworker? A leathersmith?
George Stuart (cover and p. 32) made it easy. His art encompasses all of the artistic mediums above and more, and his end products—quarter life-size portraits of history’s most famous and infamous personalities—are frighteningly realistic, inside and out, from their anatomically correct wire skeletons to their hair and scalp, made of Icelandic sheepskin.
But though his artistic talent was the initial draw, in the end it was the uniqueness of what he does, combined with his delightfully quirky personality, that most appealed to me. Stuart is an engaging character: a witty eighty-something who comes at you from unexpected angles, much like his anomalous art.
Maybe someday we’ll see a miniature replica of the Ojai Valley in the permadusk of a Las Vegas hotel—an off-pink moment alighting the “Eiffel Tower” or the not-quite-grand canals of Venice, NV.
Then again, perhaps it’s best if Stuart stays close to home.
10-01-2009
