Article By: Amelia “Killer” Rose
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rowing up in Atlanta, GA, Curt Green of Bare Bones Leather was always fiddling with something, be it his dad’s lawnmower or his bicycle, which the neighborhood kids lovingly called “Frankenstein” because he switched the parts out so much. Along with his tinkering, he loved to draw, so much so that he would frequently be found in class drawing rather than doing his school work. No matter where they were, his mother always kept a pen and paper in her purse for him to sketch with, and by the time he reached his teen years Curt went from drawing to painting murals and working with clay (he actually still has a clay head that he made that hangs in his shop. Apparently, he’s quite scary, but his name is Bob.) Once high school was over, he went off the join the Army, where he began drawing tattoos for his brothers and was given the opportunity to paint a mural on the wall in the mess hall at Ft. Jackson for the Special Olympics. Upon leaving the Army, for once in his life, Curt was without art. He lacked ideas and drive and felt empty. After a trip to the local convenience store and a few minutes flipping through the pages of a chopper magazine, a fire was lit in his belly,
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and he went out to buy an airbrush kit. Curt airbrushed on pretty much anything someone would pay him for; gas tanks, baseball helmets, etc. He spent about two years airbrushing until he met someone who would change his life for good. Curt met Tim Quick, owner of Outlaw
Custom Seats around 2008, who was interested in his artwork and soon after asked him if he’d like to be his apprentice. Immediately he became obsessed with the art of tooling leather and studied not
only the current uses of leather but also the history of the art of leather craft. Curt studied under Quick for approximately a year and a half until he handed over the tools and he became his business partner. After roughly four years, Quick handed the business over to Curt in 2012, who opened a shop out of his home and changed the name to Bare Bones Leather, which he has owned for an incredible six years. When asked what made him choose leather as his medium he responded with “I didn’t choose leather, leather chose me. Before meeting Quick, I never had even heard of tooling leather nor had I ever seen anything like it, but after that first visit to his shop I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was the medium I was destined to work with.” It’s an amazing moment when you see something and realize that it’s what you’re meant to do for the rest of your life. Not many people get to experience that, and those of us that have and get to do what we love for a living are the luckiest ones. As for what inspires him, Curt’s answer is enough to make anyone say “aww,” his mother and great-grandmother, two very important women in his life. As a young child, he remembers watching his great-
