The first thing that J says when we sit down for our interview is that she feels like she’s been getting worse at interviews lately. But the fact that she is used to the interview process tells us everything we need to know.

J. Shia has broken many boundaries. She is an internationally recognised and award-winning custom motorcycle builder from Boston, Massachusetts. She is the founder of Madhouse Motors, a motorcycle repair shop specialising in antique and custom machines. J is the youngest, only living female AND only Arab-American to have a motorcycle acquired by Harley Davidson. Quite the résumé. But the person I speak with is humble and, if anything, unsure of her place in this world she has built for herself.

Madhouse Motors has been running since 2009 and, last year, added a cafe to the premises. As we speak over video, customers come and go in the shop behind her, saying hello as they pass. It seems a genuinely warm, community-led place to be. J employs a team of eight staff and speaks really proudly of the incredible work that they all do in ensuring the success of the business:

“Sometimes I get a little insecure that Madhouse [Motors] comes across a little bit like the J show but in reality it's like this whole entire operation is run by the most amazing, talented, interesting, funny, sweet staff in the world and if there's anything about my career that I could really strongly brag about it's how remarkable my employees are.” 

Speaking about the lessons she’s learned while running her own business, she says that not just accepting mistakes, but embracing them and really learning from them has helped her on countless occasions. She pans the camera for me so I can see rolls of paper stacked up next to her desk. ‘These are all the plans that have failed’ she tells me. But she keeps them there as a reminder to herself that by analysing the failure, she can make bigger and better plans. Of course, working as a motor mechanic this is actually really practical advice.

“As a mechanic, if you're working on something and it breaks, you need to know why. Or if a customer comes to you with something that has failed, you need to observe the failure and analyse it and make sure that you can not only fix it, but prevent it.”

When J speaks about her work she is clearly committed and talented. But when we begin to speak about how she got into the field, this is where she starts to question things:

“I think I used to really love [bikes]. I loved them. I rode a lot. I started riding very young. I was an impressive rider. I was a very playful rider. It became a part of my identity. In my mid teenage years I tinkered with them and was not a great mechanic, but I liked to work on my machines and I had a neighbour who had a Master Mechanic working with him who was teaching me. I would occasionally help people fix things and my father is super mechanically inclined and he was teaching me. I think being a mechanic and a rider was just a cool thing to do. But I definitely had no plans of it ever being a career.”

J actually hoped to become a photographer; potentially a war photographer or something in the documentary field. She had travelled a lot as a teenager, visiting interesting places, getting stranded - a somewhat wild childhood is implied - and had developed a body of work that she then used, successfully, for her application to art school. But it was then that her life took a different path. Two weeks before school started, she had to take on someone else’s child.

This massive change in J’s life changed her relationship with motorcycles as well. Now they were her sole source of income and a way to provide for her and the child. Then, in her early 20s, she was in an accident that almost killed her. It took her more than a decade to rebuild her affection for motorcycles but she still doesn’t ride them to this day. Now, she is much more appreciative of the community that they’ve brought her to, rather than the machines themselves. 

Using the money from her work as a mechanic, J managed to fund her way through art school. In her mid-20s she went from fixing bikes to working with customers to build bikes that they designed. These were then tailored to their specific body type, riding style and aesthetic preferences, from colour to materials and this was something that J could deliver. It wasn’t until 2017 that she decided to design her own bikes, not taking the lead from the customer but instead using her own artist training to play with shapes, colour palettes and composition to create bikes that were works of art, as well as being machines. Essentially, the bike was her canvas, allowing her to tell her story.

This didn’t go unnoticed by the artist community around her. J gained a reputation in the space and went on to be an invited artist at hallowed institutions such as Art Basel, showing at ‘Scope’, and the Institute of Contemporary Art. When I asked whether she felt out of place in these settings, she was overwhelmingly positive. She praises the bold and brave curators that see the work she is doing and how it might fit into a contemporary art space. 

It seems that J is someone who likes, or indeed needs, to be constantly busy and enjoys a challenge. With the custom motorbike builds, managing a business, launching a cafe and looking after a now 14-year old, she has a lot on her plate. When speaking about her work, she says she avoids multi-tasking, preferring to dedicate one week to designing, one week to admin etc. But life's still a juggling act and perhaps this is why J plans to take a pause on everything automotive in the next year or so. She wants to finish a four-wheeled Ducati race bike project first of course.

Speaking about the future, J hopes to spend a couple of years studying the design of electric wheelchairs:

“I believe that motorcycle mechanics - we're one of the better groups of mechanics to work on wheelchairs. My reasoning is we work with small engines, we work with electrical systems, transportation, suspension, comfortability, design, waterproofing. And motorcycles can go so far, electric bikes are booming but wheelchairs have been sort of left in the dust. They're so, so, so expensive and I feel like motorcycle mechanics have a lot of versatility in our skills and we'd be a good group of people to upgrade and modify wheelchairs and it’s something I'm passionate about.”

And she clearly is really passionate about this. She’s already spoken with her staff about taking the time away from the business to focus on this project. Madhouse Motors and the cafe will continue to run, but she feels she needs this space to try something new: 

“I just want to take a pause on motorcycles. It's kind of like what I was saying at the beginning. I've been around them so long. My heart for them has changed. My interest in them has changed. I think again, it's sort of like what I love about them is so different. Now I understand that we have this set of skills that can do something completely different. That can maybe feel philanthropic, instead of something as egocentric as mechanics building cool motorcycles.”

Well, for J, it doesn’t seem like a big ego is her problem. Though maybe a big heart, a big passion and a big desire for change in the world. We can’t wait to see the results.

You can read more about J’s work and Madhouse Motors on their website.