If You Can Dream it, They can Build it

Posted by on October 5, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

By: Johnny Duncan

Presenting quality comes easy for the folks at Art in Motion, LLC, a motorcycle manufacturing and customizing shop.

Art in Motion is the creation of Tom and Christine Kapp. They had a dream of building beautiful motorcycles for the discriminating buyer. Their goal was to build a comfortable, custom ride based on the rubber mounted Harley FLH series of motorcycles or other customer-desired frame styles.

Tom’s experience dates back to growing up in an auto salvage yard as a kid in Scituate, MA, working on cars and motorcycles in the early seventies. His educational background is in design drafting, which he put to good use designing packaging machinery, large satellite dish structures, and as part of a team that developed a laser printer. During all this time he had been riding and working on Harley’s and classic cars.

Christine grew up in Austin, TX, and graduated from the University of Rochester in 1984. After graduation, she took design and fashion illustration classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. She then worked in computer consulting for many years before starting, growing and selling her own computer consulting company. She brings the business expertise to Art in Motion and finally found an outlet for her fashion ideas.

After their marriage in 2006, Tom and Christine decided to spend one of their honeymoons at the ProOne Bike Builders event in California. From this event, the dream of building custom motorcycles kept growing. They founded Art in Motion, LLC in January 2007, and put in the time to get the repair, manufacturer, and franchise dealer licenses that would allow them to provide motorcycles to compete with the likes of Eddie Trotta and Orange County Choppers.

When Art in Motion was started, there were no frame manufacturers making frames for the modern FLH style bikes. While at the V-Twin Expo in Cincinnati on Super Bowl weekend, Tom and Christine found that Rolling Thunder Manufacturing had just begun building the FLH frames based on the 2005 FLH. They then researched how other manufacturers at the show put their frames together and found Rolling Thunder’s quality to be unsurpassed.

During this phase of the business, Tom began building his prize jewel, Purple Haze (see above photo). After ordering the frame, they ordered the motor, transmission, wheels, tire, and brakes — everything that goes into making a classic machine. Finally, the finishing details, including the work-of-art paint job by Paul Wong of Aruba, were complete. The bike was shown throughout central Florida and featured at the Rats Hole Bike Show at Biketoberfest 2007 and is now for sale in their shop.

Art in Motion specializes in FLH’s but will build any type of bike the customer wants. Art in Motion also has a BYOB (build your own bike) program where the buyer comes in and picks out the parts for the bike they would like built. Tom purchases the parts and mocks-up the bike and gets all the parts chromed and painted to the customers specifications. When everything is ready the customer will come back to the shop and assemble the bike with Tom’s help.

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