Post #386475 by JohnnyP on Wed, Jun 11, 2008 7:19 PM

I carve because I like too.

As a kid I experienced the Tiki Room at WDW and loved it. Those images stuck in my head. I was looking on Amazon for reference books to decorate our garden with similar tribal and primitive carvings and I stumbled across Sven's BOT right after it was published. I bought it sight unseen, I had no idea of what it was and what a treasure it is. I was surprised to find the Tiki Room was part of the book, and that what I liked actually had a name. I found TC shortly after and became hooked (I lurked for years).

Instead of just decorating our garden, I now wanted to create something like a vintage Trader Vics at home. Since I could not afford the tikis and other carvings I wanted I decided to make them myself. I started carving and haven't stopped.

I rarely sell anything I carve and still have most of what I've made. The money from what I do sell goes to buying more tools or add books to my ever growing Oceanic library. I post here because I love looking at all the other artist's work and I learn a lot from other artists threads. I have a long way to go to get to the level I want to be at. While the feedback and bantering in the carving forum is fun, I feel I owe others on this sight. I've learned a ton from other carvers works in progress and want add to the reference material here. I hope to help other starting carvers. I have also met of lot of great people on the carving threads.

I know I carve a lot of different things other than tikis but if you look at the pictures of vintage tiki bars there are a lot of objects other than tikis decorating these vintage locations. There are fish, masks, poles, nautical, weapons, drums, instruments, eating utensils, birds, other figures, and etc. all around in those pictures. All these carvings and objects are part of the package of what a vintage tiki bar was.