"7 degrees of Tiki" Warning - Homoerotic art by Kemush/Gabe Florian

All roads lead back to Tiki Central...It's a fact!

#1- Sabu and Dr. Z go on the weekly hunt to find thrifty treasures awaiting them out in the wild.

#2- The two hunters garage sale trip yields love letter from Jay to Tanya mentioning a visit to an Alpha Beta supermarket

#3- Alpha & Beta...supermarket & first two letters in the Greek alphabet

#4- The Greek alphabet enable the Greeks to write stories of Greek Mythology

#5- Humorous homoerotic Greek God Mythology illustrations by "Kemush/Gabe Florian" are found
Zeus with Ledo

WARNING! Homoerotic images...
Access to more of Kemush's/Gabe Florian's art
Link 1 (adult site)
Link 2 (adult site)
Link 3 (adult site)

#6- Gabe Florian was the art director for 12 years at Steven Cranes Luau and designer of the highly coveted "Warrior Mug" made for Steven Crane among many other wonderful works.

#7- Gabe Florian's art discussed and images shared on Hanford Lemoore's Tiki Central chat forums

There you are folks...the proof is in the pudding!
Anyone else have 7 degrees of Tiki to share?

[edited by Hanford to fix links]

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore on 2005-01-31 23:02 ]

[ Edited by: DawnTiki on 2005-02-01 09:40 ]

Wow, I had no idea...I mean I knew Gabe was gay, but never knew of his "Kemush" Alter Ego.
Dawn, I am not sure ALL research findings need to be shared on Tiki Central. While I have a risque (female) nude sketch done by Gabe hanging in my bathroom, there might be some here on TC who would rather not have known about this site. A warning about the DVD links is in order, gay old man porn is not everybody's bag.

Gabe is a great artist, and a funny guy, but maybe he would prefer to keep his Tiki past seperate from his current follies.

I don't think he's having any "current follies" being as how he's dead.

I also don't think he would care what we "tiki folks" think about his sexuality.

I DO think, however, that as an artist he might be a little miffed at the notion that we separate the "gay stuff" from the "tiki stuff". He was an artist, and a damn fine one as far as I can see. There's nothing more indecent in his pictures than I've seen in some of the other work by certain artists who, on occasion, put a tiki in their drawings of nude women equipped with kinky accessories. Art is art.

Dawntiki did not pry into his private life to find this. It was found by searching the Internet. The webmaster of the site was happy to provide the links. The sketches are posted with the blessing of his longtime partner. As far as the "old man porn", you didn't have to look at the rest of the site, the links are just for Kenush's art, and you WERE warned of the adult nature.

I for one am glad to see more work of ANY kind by the artist who designed my favorite mugs.

There you have it... I knew I was going to get some slack about my posting the links to Mr. Florian's art but I never thought it would come from BigBro. :( I really, really just want everyone to know that NEVER in any way was this post ever meant to be disrespectful or bring shame to Gabe Florian or his work.

In another thread, another poster on the forums asked if anyone had any access to any of Mr. Florians other works.
A few nights before that I had read the Mug makers article in The Tiki News #17 and remembered that the article said Gabe Florian did work under the alias of Kemush.

So I was on a quest.
I found a man who was friends with Gabe and had some of his drawing, he offered to send them to me. After I saw them and saw the level of his talent, I weighed whether or not to share them with TC.
I asked several people on TC including Hanford if they thought this was too much for this forum to handle, I asked the man who sent them to me as well. He said I had permission to share them with this forum, and anyone else who I might think would enjoy seeing them. He also said that he thought that Gabe would be smiling on the other side about someone being interested in his art. I received no negative feedback about these when I asked what might be the right thing to do.

I've had these images for a few days now, wondering what I should do with them.
After all we are all adults here, these images aren't all that "porny" I really wish they had something to do with Tiki other than the connection to who he was when he was alive.
I think they are beautifully done and have value and should seen by those who are interested.
Somehow by not sharing them, I thought it might bring some sort of shame and dishonor to his legacy...even if no one knew about it other than me, so I decided not to do that and share the links so that those who are interested might gain a little insight to who and what he was about.
Not being very articulate I hope I have been able to convey my feelings and thoughts on why I saw nothing wrong with sharing the images here, without offending or upsetting anyone in the process of trying to explain it all. There you have it...

[ Edited by: DawnTiki on 2005-02-01 00:24 ]

I am very happy to hear that Gabe's partner gave his blessing to post his work, that's mostly what I was worried about. Just because Gabe is dead it doesn't mean he doesn't deserve that consideration.

And I am sorry, but I saw no warning for the adult nature of the DVD links before Hanford added it, that was the other thing that worried me.

As I said I have a lot of gay friends, very talented artists, and for most of them their sexuality is not an issue, it simply never comes up. Just like we heteros do not discuss if we are into S&M or foot fetishism when we talk about Tiki. It is a private matter that does not pertain to our common artistic interests. It has nothing to do with being closeted, just private.

I see that in Kemush's case it was not possible to show his work and keep that apart, he purposely used his talent to express his sexuality, in a very joyful and creative way. (But he did use a pen name).

He seems so much like a child of the pre-aids 70s, where free sexuality was the ideal, his drawing style is very 70s art nouveaux. That expressive spirit of sexual liberation seems so dated now, hard to understand, it came as counter-reaction to the repressive 50s. Hey, with the religious right targeting Spounge Bob as gay we might be headin' that way again. And believe me, that was not the corner I was coming from, my concerns were about privacy and the porn links.

Gabe made some mug sketches for me and Otto. Otto's is a pornographic female sketch that raised our eye brows. Gabe got a chuckle out of that, just like he would have out of this thread.

Your right BigBro, everytime I would go to edit the content of the post, the topic headliner would change too.
I guess the last time I was working on the size of the images (which I gave up on) I forgot to replace the warning notice. It is fixed now.
But the warning by the actual links was always there. Hanford did do something with the appearance of the links, I think.

Again I hope people find some kind of value in his drawings.
I might try to seek out more of his work (hopefully relating to Tiki) depending on how this thread goes.
My intent was to try to make the post "about art" that had been made by a major contributor to the Polynesian Pop culture.
Not at all about the artists sexuality, although knowing the sexual nature of the images I thought this might have to be handled delicately.

It is funny that there has never been a need to defend any homoerotic images that envolved women that have been posted on Tiki Central before.
But I digress, being of the delicate nature I knew they might be here, I tried to work a little humor into the post.

It would be really very sad if that by someone who admired his mugs, finds out he was gay and all of a sudden no longer found value in his mugs or other contributions to the Tiki world.

I really, really, REALLY had no intention about making this thread about his sexuality..."who cares" it was just honestly about sharing a mans work.

Gay, straight..whatever, I hope we can celebrate that some of his work is being shared here. I hope someone finds the content of the original post worth while, informative and maybe a little interesting.

[ Edited by: DawnTiki on 2005-02-01 12:01 ]

On 2005-02-01 09:45, DawnTiki wrote:

It would be really very sad if that by someone who admired his mugs, finds out he was gay and all of a sudden no longer found value in his mugs or other contributions to the Tiki world.

Maybe I was worried about that, but then I am always the first to say that an artist should never censor or alter his work to meet the level of the ignorant and intolerant.
You are right, if anyone has a problem with that, it is really THEIR problem.

And ironically so, the fact that the SCA mugs seem so "flamboyant" looking is not, as the clichee would prescribe, due to Gabe's doing, but Stephen Crane's, who, as Gabe told me, was asking for MORE and BRIGHTER colors when presented with the first sketches. Gabe was more sensitive to the original color palette of the Islands, but followed his boss' orders. And voila, we got the Strawberry Head Ku mug!

Sven, do you know how many mugs Gabe designed that actually made it into being a mug?
K, Gabe Florian..done...now who's the next mug designer on my seek and see what ye shall find list?

just joking...

Thanks for doing the work to help us learn more about my favorite mug artist. Until this week, I only knew him as Florian Gabriel, and I was stymied when my research turned up blank. I thought that for sure someone who was clearly so immensely talented would have left a larger imprint, I'm pleased to learn more about him. Gabe's mugs (he designed mugs for both Steve Crane's Luau/Kon-Tiki Chain and the fabulous-yet-short-lived Mauna Loa in Detroit) stand head and shoulders above all the others, they're gorgeous.

DawnTiki Baby!
We need to get you a hobby! :)

HA! Bite your tongue!

ARGGG! mention of a mauna loa mug!! Some stinkin parrothead probably got it out from under me mug and is sitting with it listening to that buffet/country song(its the area)... I am just bitter, and a cheese burger in paradise >Franchise< opened within 30 miles of me, Time to move west.