2 different Totems for sale amazing wood grain

Heres a couple more totems I carved for sale on ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=890908900&ssPageName=ADME:B:LC:US:1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=890906821&ssPageName=ADME:B:LC:US:1

Great to see you're carrying on the family tradition!Do you have a website?Would be great to see the generations working together.I don't know if ebay is the best place to sell artwork,but sometimes you can get lucky.Aloha!

Thanks for your reply. I just started carving not long ago and seem to be having fairly good luck on ebay. I would like to start a website but I work full time and carve on the weekends so I dont know if I could keep up if people liked my tikis. I really enjoy carving and hope to devote more time to carving and less time at my job! Bill came over today and gave me some pointers on this huge cat I am carving for a lady. Watching him makes me feel very honered to be learning from a master and also makes me realize how much more I have to learn.

I was talking about myself not having luck on ebay.I suggested a website because I get a lot of orders off it.You do pretty good on ebay.Actually my husband has sold tikis on there too.He's Tiki by CC.Right now he's got a bid on one.So I'm happy for both of you.It's funny you mentioned working on a cat.My piece of Witco is a cat mounted on a turquoise and white board.It's framed in what looks like the same type of wood.Pretty cool.Keep up the good work!

Ken! Great work, man! If you keep this up, I will have to put you in my Witco book! Did I meet your wife at Bill's house when I showed my Marquesas slide show? I am sure Bill is getting a kick out of you continuing in his tradition. Did I start something there?

I will already have a chapter on Bosko in my book, because he always was, and in his new pieces is even more, inspired by Witco. But please take photos of your work, preferrably on slide film, so that I can mention you somewhere in the book (if you would be into it, that is...)

Thanks Bigbrotiki. That was my wife you met at Bills. I wish I could have seen the slide show also. We love your book, but we have had trouble finding an issue of our own. Bill is having just as much fun as me. He is really thrilled that that his grandbabys as he calls us are interested in what he has accomplished. When I first met bill I was very intrigued by his work. He gave me a carving book he wrote and I proceeded to hack up all of our firewood which still looked like firewood with a bunch of chainsaw marks in it. After you came to Bills we talked alot about Witco and he decided he would teach me to carve. Now I have the bug for carving and tiki items I cant go to a thrift shop without looking all over for mugs, masks and Witco items.

I would be honored to be a part of your book if possible. Also I am looking for books on south pacific art if you have any sugestions.

hey now you should start doing some of the "ID" line- I'd buy one!

Did you know those were made out of old wooden gutters? Not many of those around anymore but I am sure I could find a different medium. I will do a little experimenting and see what I can come up with.

Ben- Wow, that's so cool: direct evidence that I am helping to keep the art alive. That is very rewarding, thanks.
I had a project once, before the BoT, making a film about my dad being a swing fan in Nazi Germany, it was called "Swingboys" (and would have predated the Swing revival a couple of years). Then, out of pure synchronicity, Disney came out with "Swingkids" (that term actually never existed), which was lame, and thus my project was buried, too.
To make a long story short, the greatest result of it was that I seriously worked with my dad for a year, researching his youth, going through his diary, listening to his music, and he loved it. When your own kids get into your history you get the reassurance that something of you will survive after all, it's a great acknowledgement.

South Seas art books are hard to find. Your gramp has "The Arts of the South Pacific" by Jean Guiart. Another classic is "Arts of the South Seas", Museum of Modern Art, 1946, I mention it in my book.
Easier to find and great because of visual variety AND background info is "Oceanic Mythology", 1967, by Roslyn Poignant.
Also, "Hawaiian Sculpture" by J. Halley Cox has been reissued. "Maori Wood Sculpture", 1969, by Terrence Barrow is another fine find.
The rarest would be "POLYNESIAN ART", 1967, by Edward Dodd, (volume one of his "The Ring of Fire" Trilogy). Dodd's writing and method are a little strange (his pre-title is" "A Pictorial Peregrination Through the Shapely and Harmonious Often Enigmatic Sometimes Shocking Realms of...POLYNESIAN ART!) I picture him as a Peter Ustinov character.

All of these you will probably have to find through a bookfinder service, but MY book should be readily available through Amazon.com now that it has been reprinted

bigbro, when was BoT first published?

In September 2000, right after the Kahiki closed. I sent my very first proposal mock up, which had the basic concept and chapters in it, (but less images off course), to Chronicle Books in 1992. Over the years they turned it down three times, as did many other publishers.
In retrospect I am glad, because now, with Taschen, it came out the best book it can be. No whinig about how many color pages, or how many pages at all: I got to ad on pages as I went along, starting with only 180 allowed, to the final amount. They were too busy, and I was the only one who knew the subject, so I got to lay it out and make it pretty much the way I wanted it, no meddling (very little, I picked my battles). A rare occurence in any creative project. Bless Tiki.

Bigbrotiki, the BOT is the reason is got into tiki carving also. I was just taken in by it all. I quit my job, took a long overdue vacation, then came back to carve away. We even tracked down the Lake Elsinore Tikis location, and scored a private tour. Speaking spanish comes in handy.

Wow, the power of books, making people quit their jobs...cool! I hope it all works out, or I'll feel guilty.

Is "The Tikis" still "Planet Paintball"? Where there ANY remnants to be seen, like from the giant Tiki (BoT, p.111) that was supposedly toppled and busted up by Danny Balsz ("You won't get this one, @#%$!") when the creditors finally forced him of the land?
I was thinking of proposing a Tiki Central paintball game there (not that I have ever played that)

Bigbro, we know of one more who quit his job because of your book, a new mug maker whose stuff is absolutely brilliant, each one hand made. He'll debut at the hukilau, and he's looking forward to meeting you... we'll post info about him and pictures of some of his stuff on hukilau.info soon.

Your family would have been so proud if they had been present at the Tiki Oasis in Palm Springs. The art of William Westenhaver was the guest of honor and everybody turned out for the spotlight of the weekend, Sven's slideshow of Witco art. I brought 3 tiki novices with me and they LOVED it. It was comprehensively presented in a scholarly manner and I am sure many among us were drooling over the prospect of owning a piece of this cool art. I was, for sure.

[ Edited by: floratina on 2002-07-02 23:10 ]

It is good to hear from people who appreciate Bills work. My wife and I are currently looking into exhibiting Bills artwork in Seattle. We would like to do a show that honors his various artistic achievments. We are very proud of him and would like to see him recognized on a larger scale.

I'd like to get my paws on a piece of your artwork, too. I can only house a small mask in my apartment. I also have to hope that I can bid on something when everybody else is asleep so it doesn't get too expensive (fat chance). You do good work, baby.

Ken-
That larger scale recognition won't happen before the book is out. With it you will have something in your hands that shows the amazing QUANTITY of Bill's work, which is more convincing than single pieces. It will be hard to convey that coherently (that is actually the brunt of my work I am doing right now) before.
Hardly anybody (outside lounge circles) understood the appeal of Tiki until my book surprised them with the amount and variety of creative output that was Tiki inspired. Publishers did not get it by showing them my raw materials, they wanted to see the finished book. The lack of imagination was frustrating.

Another problem is that today's pop culture is so fragmented, split up into many mini cults, it sometimes seems there is no MASS appeal anymore. The best chance for Bill's work is to find appreciation is with A.) the Tiki crowd, and B.) the 50s modern fans, which are often, but not allways the same. His modern abstract paintings from the 50s to the 70s could make a good show when cross-referenced to some of his WITCO stuff, but I am sorry to say, (because I know he is very fond of them), his Marine and Yacht artworks won't find any interest in that group. I will try to have as many of his mod paintings in the book as possible, because they show his talent for abstract modernism which than came to blossom in his WITCO work.

It's been a long time for Bill to get his work recognized, I think it's better to wait a little longer til the book is out and hopefully will get some media attention. Once you are published, suddenly people think "Oh, this guy must have something to him..."

bigbrotiki wrote:

Hardly anybody (outside lounge circles) understood the appeal of Tiki until my book surprised them with the amount and variety of creative output that was Tiki inspired. Publishers did not get it by showing them my raw materials, they wanted to see the finished book. The lack of imagination was frustrating.

I'm really surprised that Chronicle Books rejected "The Book of Tiki," since they've published "Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture," "Pad" and so many books on cocktails. (I was an intern there during my last year of college.)

--cindy

I know, and Jim Heimann and Alan Hess were supportive of it there! Quote rejection letter from Bill LeBlond, OCT'92:
"..I grew up in the sixties and understand what you are trying to do here, but most of the younger members of the staff simply didn't get it."
Fern bar lovers! Get this, the last time it was considered there, according to an insider, they said "oh well, we should have done it years ago, but now Tiki is OVER with" !!!
Still, they did a great book with PAD, and I am looking forward to Alan Hess' revamped GOOGIE.
Jim Heimann is the head of Taschen LA now.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki on 2002-07-03 12:18 ]

Hey Bigbrotiki, yes, the place is still"planet paintball". It was sad to see all of the tikis gone, even the BIG GUY. The gentleman that gave us the tour said that the new owner was going to clean it all up and re-open it. They had to stop the clean-up because the city made them . Permits you know. I was in awe of the creative mind that dreamt this all up. If it wasn't for the 95degree heat, and my poor wife trying to endure the sun, I would have stayed another hour easily. I took all kinds of pictures and will include them in my "gallery" when my website is up later this month.I almost forgot to mention it , but the guy said that they had rented out the place for a wedding the weekend before. Possibly this could be done for a Tiki Central Luau? Fair warning though, the place has a gloomy vibe to it. Broken dreams, broken marriage, and a million dollar unpaid tab to the concrete contractor.

Just in case anyone was thinking it, no I don't have MISS CLEO (sp?) on speed dial.

bigbrotiki wrote re rejection of "The Book of Tiki" by Chronicle Books:

I know, and Jim Heimann and Alan Hess were supportive of it there! Quote rejection letter from Bill LeBlond, OCT'92:
"..I grew up in the sixties and understand what you are trying to do here, but most of the younger members of the staff simply didn't get it."
Fern bar lovers! Get this, the last time it was considered, according to an insider, they said "oh well, we should have done it years ago, but now Tiki is OVER with" !!!

It's their loss. And I thought Bill was such a nice guy!