CHI - Spring 2009 - (Page 28) ARTIST PROFILE They Will Rock You Joe Anthony Pena and Rocky McCormick bring beauty and the beat to professional education. Joe Anthony Pena and Rocky McCormick picked up the award for International Design Team of the Year at last year’s Peace and Love Conference in Cancun. When Joe AnThony PenA And RoCky MCCoRMICk boARd A PlAne, the speculation begins. Passengers wonder, are they fashion designers? Music producers? Rock stars? McCormick is amused by the attention. “Yeah,” he laughs, “we’re often mistaken for rock stars when we travel.” Though the duo could easily be taken for members of a band, the reality actually makes them prouder. Each is one half of Farouk Systems’ 2008 International Design Team of the Year, a distinction they earned after four years of educating and entertaining hair stylists together around the world. Audiences whistle, stamp their feet and cheer at their shows, but even more important, their attendees leave every event with real-world skills they can take back to their salons, plus an invigorated new outlook on their profession. That, the pair agrees, is why they log hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and spend nearly every weekend in a different city. So who are these guys? Joe Anthony owns Haircolor Dimension Salon and Day Spa in Victoria, Texas. He has been part of Farouk Systems’ educational team for the past 17 years and from the beginning, he says, he’s “followed the program.” Thanks to Farouk Systems products, he says, “Our salon was the first, and remains the only environmentally-safe salon in Victoria.” McCormick hails from a small Indiana town, where he remembers charging $13 per hair cut during his first year in business. At the same time, he signed up with Team Farouk. Two years later, he did his first show in Europe. Four years later, he married a Danish woman he met during a show and moved to Copenhagen. Today, the couple owns Salon Lindholdt in that city, a place McCormick characterizes as “a trendy salon and hang-out.” Pssst. Wanna be famous? Joe Anthony toured for 10 years with Lisa Marie, who now serves as Farouk Systems’ show department director. As Lisa Marie’s career branched off in a new direction, he knew it was time for something new, so he picked up the phone and called McCormick. “He said to me, ‘Do you want to be famous?’” remembers McCormick. “I said, ‘Sure!’ And he said, ‘Then be my new stage partner.’” 28 Volume V, Issue 18
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