Post #128857 by Tangaroa on Fri, Dec 3, 2004 4:22 PM

Hi all - as an early Holiday gift I've decided to share some pix of a little field trip BigBro, Sabu & I took to visit Jim Casey last week.

For those of you who don't know, Jim is a sculptor with an incredibly diverse background. He attended Chouinard Art Institute in the 40s, was a musician & took up carving when he was in the Navy! Due to his friendship with Pacific Ocean Park concept artist Dave Constable, one of his first sculpting jobs had him creating virtually everything (with the exception of the main entrance) at P.O.P. in 1957.

Here he is hacking tikis out of telephone poles...

And the finished result:


I had met Jim before, while doing research on P.O.P. and had found some unique things in his backyard. So I asked BigBro & Sabu if they'd like to play hooky this Wed. and drive out to visit Jim. We all met up at the Del Mar Vista Lanes Coffee Shop for lunch first. Here we are looking at old P.O.P. clippings - (not seen here, Sabu's awe-inspiring, multi binder volumes of Polynesian themed tiki bars & restaurants).

Here's the coffee shops difficult to photograph tiki, standing guard out front:

After lunch, we all piled into BigBro's car and drove to Jim's.... Ja Vol!

BigBro's radio has the coolest logo ever on it:

Anyway - Jim has some pretty neat artifacts from his carving days in his backyard & I knew BigBro & Sabu would be interested.

His backyard has some cool tiki carvings, some of which I know were at P.O.P.

Anyone recognize this guy? No - not Sabu, the guy on the roof...

Here he is after many years exposed to the elements...

Give up? How about this character?

No - not the German Urban Archeologist - the bird?

Yep - Jim carved all the decor for the rarely photographed Aloha Jhoe's (see pages 28 & 29 of The Book Of Tiki)... Here's a couple of vintage photos from Jim's scrapbook.

Here's the bird again, taken from the roof:

Sabu also discovered a rare Witco sword hanging on the side of the garage...

Also out of Jim's scrapbook, he did these cannibal heads that once rested on the top of sticks at the entrance to P.O.P.s Banana Train Ride:

It turns out that Jim did a lot of carving for various restaurants and hotels in the 50s & 60s. Here are some more pages out of his scrapbooks showing tikis for P.O.P. & Steve Crane's Luau...

After our exploration of Jim's backyard, we came back in to talk & look through his "source files" he used back when still sculpting.

Here's BigBro with a nice photo from New Ireland, I believe. When he unfolded it, Jim said, "I haven't looked at that in 40 years!"

Here's Sabu looking through a super-rare 'Cargoes By Carter' catalogue...

And lastly, here's Jim today with some of his sketches for a tiki carving, done in the 60s most likely....

Hope you enjoyed the photos as much as we enjoyed taking them! Thanks again to BigBro & Sabu for playing hooky with me!

Happy Holidays everyone!

---

"Oh mystic powers - hear my call...
From my limbs, let new life fall..."
http://www.christophermerritt.com

[ Edited by: Tangaroa on 2004-12-03 16:56 ]