Post #197879 by Loki on Sun, Nov 13, 2005 7:46 PM

Sounds like the Tiki community is in a stage of growing pains...I for one am new here. I came here out of curiosity with little knowledge, but thats why I'm here, doing my homework. When any community starts to grow, ideas change, influences change and traditions become diluted and forgotten. On the other hand as an earlier post pointed out, new influences are injected into the community. Love them or hate them, they are now part of the group, starting their own chapters in the Neo-Tiki culture. Back in the mid 80's metal music stormed into the main stream. Hardly a day went by that we didnt hear a Winger or Poison song. Right or wrong it did influence our culture. Just watch 'I love the 80's' on VH1 and tell me you dont enjoy the nostalgic trip? It's really no different here with the new carvers. Perhaps we need another term for non traditional tiki sculpture. Call them Car-tikis. Short for cartoon tiki. we should embrace them as part of the community. However we should educate/learn the fundamentals. I have learned so much from reading BK and some of the other forum masters posts and look forward to starting my own unique style of carving. Because of this discussion, I will take more time and investigate more understanding of what I carve. Let us remember, while we may dislike change, it always happens, so lets make the best out of it.