Story on Oceanic Arts - Tiki rises. Tiki falls. Tiki rises again.

http://www.chieftain.com/life/1132558908/3

LeRoy Schmaltz (left) and Bob Van Oosting, owners of Oceanic Arts, stand with crafted carved tikis at their store in Whittier, Calif. The two still draw inspiration from an epic 1960 trip across the South Pacific.
Creative Californians keep tiki culture alive

By GARY A. WARNER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS

SANTA ANA, Calif. - Tiki rises. Tiki falls. Tiki rises again.

Through all the cultural ups and downs of the past half-century, there’s always been LeRoy Schmaltz and Bob Van Oosting, the reigning papas of Polynesian pop culture.

Since 1956 they’ve churned out thousands of tikis, masks, lamps, bamboo-covered bars and other pieces of tropical exotica in distinctly untropical, unexotic Whittier, Calif.

With onetime art student Schmaltz doing the carvings and Van Oosting handling the business and books, their company, Oceanic Arts, has had an unrivaled influence over the rise, fall and resurrection of tiki pop culture.

‘‘LeRoy and Bob were there at the beginning, and they’re still going strong,’’ said Otto von Stroheim, editor of the San Francisco-based TikiNews magazine and Web site. ‘‘You can’t understate how much they mean to tiki. Their art is all over America.’’

Oceanic Arts tikis adorn the legendary Mai-Kai restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., nightclubs in Germany and ski resorts in northern Japan. When a hotel in Tahiti needed a 20-foot tiki, it turned not to native carvers and local trees but to Schmaltz and a huge chunk of ponderosa pine. It was shipped by freighter to the South Pacific.

In addition, Oceanic Arts has helped thousands of suburbanites transform their tract homes into little slices of paradise.

‘‘We call ourselves suburban savages,’’ said Kevin Bullat, 45, of Huntington Beach, Calif. ‘‘My wife, Debbie, and I like to live aloha,’’ said Bullat, steel-pedal guitarist for the Hawaiian music group The Smokin’ Menehunes.

‘‘Out front, our house looks like you are in Southern California. But inside it’s a jungle. We have a couple of LeRoy’s tikis and a lot of other things we’ve picked up at Oceanic Arts. I love the stuff.’’

Oceanic Arts has moved among a series of nondescript warehouses over the years. Anyone looking for a location inside a gigantic A-frame Polynesian hut or even a massive Tangiroa tiki out front will be disappointed. But, Bullat said, that’s part of the charm.

‘‘I mean you are going to Whittier!’’ Bullat said. ‘‘You go through all this gritty, urban environment and end up at a warehouse that looks like all the other warehouses. Then you step inside. It’s paradise within tilt-up concrete walls.’’

Tikis of all shapes, sizes and colors climb to the rafters. There are Polynesian war clubs, raincape thatch, outrigger canoes and Maori shields. Many are carved by Schmaltz and his helpers using hammers and chisels. Sometimes for show, Schmaltz designs a large tiki using a chain saw.

What would it cost you to go tiki?

Tikis carved from coconut logs range in price from $60 for 20-inch-tall tikis to $320 for a 5-foot-high, imposing statement. Smaller ones made from palm fronds run $12.50 each.

Looking for carved wood shields, masks and war clubs? They start at $22.50 and go beyond $300.

If your interest goes toward Easter Island, Hawaiian and Cook Island objects, you can get 20-inch plaster castings for $32.50.

To complete the look, you can grab raincape thatch panels, 4 feet by 3 feet, for about $12.50. Large thatch umbrella covers (palapas) cost up to $120.

And if you are really serious about going native, how about a 20-foot-tall carved tiki? They crafted a 5-ton tiki that was shipped to Tahiti. It would cost about $25,000 today.

The business includes a small retail operation where they sell professional-quality tikis for backyard pools and rent props like fiberglass puffer fish and colored balls in fish netting for everything from movie shoots to family birthday parties.

You can rent a palapa thatch 6-foot Polynesian bar for $75.

At Oceanic Arts in Whittier, Calif., tikis of all shapes, sizes and colors climb to the rafters.

Van Oosting, 69, and Schmaltz, 70, still draw inspiration from their epic 1960 trip to the South Pacific. Van Oosting mortgaged his Corvette and used the cash to finance the pair’s 37,000-mile three-month jaunt. They crisscrossed the Pacific, landing in Fiji, Tahiti, New Caledonia, Dutch New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia.

‘‘We went to a lot of areas that were primitive, though they may not be so primitive today,’’ Van Oosting recalled. ‘‘I remember being in Huahine, one of the outer islands of Tahiti, and they would shut off the electricity at 9 p.m. At one airport, the landing lights were gallon cans of paint thinner that they set on fire.’’

Along the way, the pair bought masks, amulets and tikis and sketched everything else too large to take back home.

‘‘We wanted to learn more about the cultures, really get out into the remote areas,’’ Schmaltz said. ‘‘At one point we had the best car to rent in Papeete, Tahiti. A Renault convertible. We wanted to keep it longer, but the owner said there was someone else waiting who would pay more. It was Marlon Brando, who was down there shooting ‘Mutiny on the Bounty.’ We didn’t want to give it back because, well, among other things it was the best way to meet girls.’’

Their timing was perfect. The late 1950s was the heyday of tiki. Nearly every American town had a tiki-theme bar, restaurant or hotel. Disneyland had the Enchanted Tiki Room and later added tiki-theme items to its Disney World complex. Trader Vic restaurants sprouted around the country. The Tropicana in Las Vegas was a palace of Polynesian Pop.

Oceanic Arts became the hottest supplier of decor - its highly accurate renderings of South Pacific art were praised for detail lacking in more commercial operations.

‘‘At the height of things in the 1960s, we had our own rail spur,’’ Schmaltz said. ‘‘We were doing huge tikis like the one for the hotel in Tahiti and big architectural features like the entrance to the Kona Kai at the Marriott in Bethesda, Md. We did the Hanalei in San Diego. A lot of that is all gone.’’

The tiki trend subsided in the 1970s, a time when many other companies closed their doors. Tiki bars became fern bars. Oceanic Arts kept afloat by diversifying, making Mexican-style wood signs for businesses and other sidelines. Luckily, the tiki craze ignited in Japan in the 1980s, followed by a resurgence in the United States and Europe during the past decade.

‘‘For 30 out of the past 50 years, we were barely making a living,’’ Van Oosting said. ‘‘But I’m happy to say last year was our best year ever.’’

The pair have no plans to stop any time soon. None of their children and relatives plan to take over the business so they can retire.

‘‘We just keep moving forward,’’ Schmaltz said.

‘‘One day the point will come where we’ll sell, but not yet,’’ Van Oosting said.

They return to the road from time to time for inspiration. Van Oosting recently visited Western Samoa and Rarotonga. Schmaltz went to the Caribbean.

‘‘We’re still dreaming our dreams,’’ Van Oosting said.

Thanks for posting this! I had no idea you could still buy a real Leroy from Oceanic Arts! I thought they were long outa business.

Classic Silver Line Boats

[ Edited by: SilverLine 2005-11-21 16:04 ]

Leroy is my Tiki carving hero..I still have yet to meet the man..and Bob e-mailed me a letter of praise that I still keep in my carving kit like a holy talisman to this day. Nobody ever did it quite like they do it...great guys and a great story!

Is Kevin Bullat "Tiki Bong"?

On 2005-11-21 21:56, saxotica wrote:
Is Kevin Bullat "Tiki Bong"?

It is decidedly so.

I had a very strong sense of deja vu when reading the above article. This is the same article that appeared in the Orange County Register this past June, as was captured in this thread
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=14965&forum=1&hilite=bong%20oceanic%20arts

I checked the OC Register archives, and the first few lines of the articles are identical. Also notice that the same photograph of LeRoy Schmaltz and Bob Van Oosting was used for both articles.

I guess it just takes 5 months for tiki news to travel from California to Colorado.

Vern

They just ran this article again in The Times newspaper out of Martinez/Contra Costa. One of the guys at work dropped it off at my desk this morning (I guess I'm now officially the "guy that's into tiki" at the office). It was pretty interesting, especially since I hadn't read the artilce before, and have just completed a pilgrimage to Oceanic Arts over New Year's weekend.

I'd post a link, but there doesn't seem to be one on their website. The article ran on Saturday Jan 21, 2006, and they edited the ending by cutting out the last two or three paragraphs, and ended the article at the part where they talk about the tiki craze in Japan in the 80's, followed by resurgence in the U.S. and Europe.

Tiki rises. Tiki falls. Tiki rises again

Doesn't your's ? :D

........:)........

On 2006-01-23 14:51, Mai Tai wrote:
They just ran this article again in The Times newspaper out of Martinez/Contra Costa.

::nod:; It was odd -- being from Contra Costa County, I saw the piece -- but last week when I visited my folks in L.A., I was given a copy of the O.C. Register copy from June 4th. I had also visited Oceanic Arts while down there.

This isn't that uncommon of tho Knight-Ridder papers, BTW. An article on my partner and I appeared originally in the San Jose Mercury News, then showed up in a Monterey paper -- followed a couple weeks later by two different papers in Indiana.

Cheers,
Gwen Smith

[ Edited by: gwenners 2006-01-24 08:42 ]