Post #59422 by tikitony on Tue, Nov 11, 2003 1:10 PM

nice words Tiki Mon. I have a hard time considering my tikis art. I think of "art" as something that's challenging culture, I feal like I'm just supplying culture. Maybe I feal this way, because I have a fine arts education, where craft alone was not considered enough to be thought provoking. I'm not saying that you couldn't use tiki as a vehicle to make something thought-provoking, but it will probably never be considered "fine art". Maybe thats my confusion, "fine art" vs. "art", is there a difference? Also, the cultures that we have "borrowed" tiki from is hardly considered. Chiki tiki and I were just talking about this dillema as were others in the post "Just a piece of wood?" by jungletrader. Since we are mimicing a cultural artifact to make it our own, we dillute the original meaning of these once religous/ ancestoral images. Since the start of the Polynesian Pop era carvers have created a new genre which allowed non-islanders the permission to carve tikis, but I still struggle with whether I'm harmfully misrepresenting Polynesian culture or not. Because all of us here embrace tiki, and purchase tiki, it sometimes makes me forget about the cultures which I'm taking from. I wonder, if there's anyway we could repay (not monetary) the culture we borrow from? I think one of the most brilliant people we have on TC is Basement Kahuna, he knows more about cultural tools, and implements that he shares with us, more than anyone I can think of. He knows polynesian pop but also cultural background which we should all take the time to learn, because thats the meaningful knowledge that should be passed along, especially since that's the cultures we're borrowing from. By knowing the cultural signifigance of artifacts and sharing, maybe this could be our contribution back to Polynesian cultures. So, to get back to your OG(original) words Tiki Mon, the artists here should learn and share their knowledge of Oceanic cultural when displaying their work. After all, its not just wood, paper, canvas, metal, or clay when we're finished with it! tHanks for the post Tiki Mon.