Cammo's Corner - Volcanoes of the World

I don't want to keep invading Buzzy's thread with my attempts at carving, so here's Cammo's Corner, where everybody is welcome and every day is Carving Day!

(That means YOU should be carving, not me, I can only grab an hour or two a week to do this stuff...)

Here's the first stages of my "Danger Mask" - designed after the early days of Tiki collecting, 1907-1935, when Man Ray started photographing 'em and Paris galleries were going crazy over the new Tribal/Tiki look.

So this is sort of a Melanesian/Fang/Streamliner 30's mask.

Paper drawings, I blew this up to a big sheet at Kinko's -

The mask, carved and stained, but the face is just starting to emerge.

This sucker is big, you can see my heel to the left.

Details -

It's stained with English Chestnut, two heavy coats. I plan to carve in the face, then sand off some of the stain to give it an eged look.

This idea of staining first, carving last is interesting...

Laytah!

[ Edited by: Cammo 2009-05-16 11:00 ]

Hey!!! I get to be the first to reply in Cammo's Corner!

This is one really cool design Cam! It is really coming along! Going to sell? Babalu wants!

Schooled by the finest.....Capt. K and Master G

[ Edited by: Babalu 2008-02-26 11:46 ]

This is coming along beautifully. Love the English Chestnut.

When's storytime?
This mask is gonna be INCREDIBLE!
Love the whole ManRAy,Duchamp, Picasso, Cubist/Surrealist homage going on there!
Those guys were just dialed into the legitimacy of Polynesian artforms!
Way to go CAMMO!

On 2008-02-26 10:39, Cammo wrote:
I don't want to keep invading Buzzy's thread with my attempts at carving, so here's Cammo's Corner, where everybody is welcome and every day is Carving Day!

Happy Carving Day Cam!

I'm going to go call our buddy BillCrud ...
He can post on your thread now. :D

That TikiMod piece you're doing inspires me to have a martini.

Buzzy Out!

Very cool, the top picture it looks like its made
out of iron almost.

Love it!

Babalu - Sold! That'll be a million bucks!
No, seriously, wait till it's done before you want to hang it on yer wall. It might end up looking crappy.

Buzzy - send that Crud guy over here. He isn't getting on yer nerves, is he? Naaaaah.

Hey, everybody else, thanx for the cheers. Maybe I should hurry up and finish the blighter. The left side of the nose is done, the right side for some reason is taking longer.

The secret is - it IS made of iron!

Looks awesome, great design :D

I REALLY like this style. You've really captured that period of break through design. Nice.

I pitched in this morning and finished the Danger Mask off. It was pretty simple, actually.

Define the nose, slant in the mouth, and sand the stain a bit to age it:

So the question is - should I use a semi-gloss poly coat for the finish? I really like the natural palm color of the face, and don't want that to change much.

Go poly?

Loving the vintage modern vibe on this :D Looks like a designer piece from the 60s that has been sitting on thrift shelf waiting for someone to realise what it actually is! :D :D

Hey Mister Rodgers , That is friggin' kool !!!!!!!Who would have that the crazy guy vending next to me years ago at The Long Beach Tiki Fest could have so much hidden talent . Im on the beach carving a 6 footer and handing out free tiki wood chips and Cammo is selling a kids book and raffleing off pineapples . His kid thought we were both nut . He probably still does . Anyways , keep chipping at it old man .

Cammo, I Love this guy! I Love nice straight, crisp lines you are getting, they Don't come easy.I Love the contemporary look too, again I Know it Ain't Easy! Hell I might even try the Stain'n carve method too as it seems to get great results.
Dooin' it Well.

Tres Tiki Moderne !!! More like that, please!

Raymond - Who'da thought that greasy guy next to me 18 years ago complaining about how hard telephone poles are to carve and selling woodchips out of paper bags for 5 bucks a pop would some day go on to carve amazoid pieces like you're doing now????

Benz - This carve the basic shapes, then stain dark, then carve again thing is really fun. I was going to paint the face with that primitive 'milk paint' look that Maikai is doing on his ultra-cool leetle itsy bitsy Tiki diorama box he's making, BUT the natural palm wood looked so nice when it popped out I'm going with that.

And those straight parts are done with a Japanese backsaw, but the fronts are all just a straight 1/2" super-sharp chisel. African carvers loved to show off by doing flat planes - they got them mostly with adze hacking, holy crap!

And since nobody 'chipped in' about the finishing coat, I'm going gloss. Real smooth, sandpapered between coats glossy glosserama.

Yes, go polyurethane semi-gloss. Just enough kick to show off the grain and keep it looking fresh, not too wet. Thought about suggesting satin instead, but your instincts are right. Protect it, with just a little sheen; lock in the two-tone without darkening it too much.

Boss design, mon. Oooo.

(edit -- yikes, I replied to the last post on pg1 this thread, without seeing your last post Cammo, sorry. Uh, glossy glossarama it is. But I wish you'd mull it over just one more time...)

[ Edited by: Son-of-Kelbo 2008-02-28 19:55 ]

Cam,

That is tight! Nice to see you create your own thread where we can hang. Great piece. It looks very well thought out and nicely precise. Gman likee!

-G$

Carved in Palm? Wow - excellent job!

I'm gonna go semi-gloss. Had a dream about it last night. A big golden glowing native was pointing right at me saying "DEFT SEMI-GLOSS POLY."

Thanks G-Master, hey I might as well post a few long-winded Cammo stories here too, has anybody actually read

these two stories of mine? - the "Bob's Big Talk" mini series? (These are all about my dad.)

Cause I got another one about fishing, but knowing you guys you won't believe it, though every word is true....

Very impressive!

I think you showed me the plans for this mask a while ago. Is this what became of the tounge shaped wood you brought to Balboa Park last year?

Keep up the good work!

It's about time you started your own thread, Cam! Where's Oki??

Nice work he has a great look to him.

Finished. In semi-gloss poly. The grain really came out!

It ended up looking like... I dunno, like warm chocolate.

A bit from the side ....

The back I drilled some really strong screw-eyes into, and did it up with picture wire.

Laytah.

Cammo,This piece looks SWEET and would look Best on my wall!

Benz - eeets yours! Just send me your Visa # and a copy of your signature. Don't worry about the price, I'll just bill whatever the card will accept.

Actually, I don't know why people don't do more wall-hangable stuff, it looks cool and tres trendy in a 1955 sort of way. I want to do something that sits on a table, too. And a mobile, a carved mobile would be neato.

WWBD?
(What would Buzzy do?)

This is one superb, uncommon output. Really dig the steamliner-design, very retro. Like directly taken from the rockin´ fifties. Way cool.
I agree, more stuff to hang-up.

Thanks Tok-Tok, ever met Tik-Tok, the Clockwork Man of Oz? He keeps going as long as you reach into his chest and wind him up. We had this book as kids (my grandma's) and it scared the crap out of me.

Cam, this turned out very nice, bruddah!

You think you could miniturize it and resin cast a few for arrowheads, DEADLY!

Here's another character from the original Oz books that freaked us kids out - I had nightmares of this guy all the time -

It's the "Rumpled Man of Oz"!
Check this out - he's offering a drink to the little girl!

Cam, did you ever see the movie "Return To Oz"?

On 2008-03-06 11:48, T_birdman wrote:
You think you could miniturize it and resin cast a few for arrowheads, DEADLY!

This would make an AWESOME carving village pendant for this year. What say you, Cam?

Yeah, sure. Some other carvers I won't name have been playing around with some seriously nice casting lately. Maybe they'll do something.

Or I can do a few designs and people can vote on 'em.

'Danger Pendants' might be cool, though...

On 2008-03-06 13:55, 4WDtiki wrote:
Cam, did you ever see the movie "Return To Oz"?

I was just going to say that with mention of tick-tock.

The movie is great. So much more evil then the original.

Yeah, 'Return to Oz' was a bizarre attempt by Disney to remake the Wizard of Oz movie. They did it by going back to the original series of Baum books and lifting the later characters he created. They actually promoted the heck out of the movie, aiming it right at 5-year-olds.

The problem was, Baum had turned Oz into a satirical nightmare world - the hall of interchangeable heads (owned by a witch who uses a different head each day to keep herself beautiful!) is one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen, especially when Dorothy has to walk down the hall without waking the heads, and was taken right out of a Baum book....

but hey, back to carving.

The glaze really does look like warm chocolate. Very Cool Cam.

Hey cammo,
sorry for my late reply, did not see your discussion about tok-tok and then tik-tok.
I know the story about the wizard of oz, but I guess it is not as popular in Germany as in the U.S.. Somebody correct me if I´m wrong. I have seen the old version as a kid (in which tik-tok did not appear), but was not familiar to the newer one. There is nothing scarry abot tik-tok in the in the
disney version.

What really scares me: Is this pumpkinhead pointing a mashinegun at the moose?

As a kid I had nightmare about the flying monkeys.
But now, hm?

tok-tok was chosen, because that´s the sound of me doing some carving (mostly, when not using power-tools or knives :) ).

Now back to carving, as u said. Anything new going on for us?

OK, so here's the update;

I challenged Babalu to a power vs. no-power tiki carve but the log I got was wet. And Buzzy seems to have carved 3 Tikis at once using power, no power, and sharp teeth only. So he's da man. Here's mine so far, and this was done with no power of any kind;

Rough it out with a scoop chisel;

Hack the unwanted bits away with a Japanese back-saw, just take your time, these things cut great, no sweat;

Getting there...

Closer...

I'm gonna call him 'ZorMok from the 7th Dimension'. He is here on a peaceful mission; it has something to do with California girls and avocados.

So far this has all been done in 2 sessions. Lots of detail work to go.

[ Edited by: Cammo 2008-03-24 22:45 ]

Word up Cammo! I smell another Moderne work coming out of Cammo's corner....you go brother!

Oops! Sorry. Hope it doesn't smell too bad.

Yeah, I'm trying to do what Man Ray and pals would have done back in 1923 if somebody had given them some Flexcut chisels and a palm log or two. Ray was known for his amazing cheesecake photos and his Dada sculptures, but what he really liked was ultra-moderne primitiva inspired shapes, which just never sold as well as his other stuff. Go figure.

Here's a Man Ray chess set from 1926, dig it man - - -

Finally found the name to this sculpture - it's friggin' amazing.

"Capricorn" by Max Ernst, 1948. That's him behind it.

So here's the ZorMok "progress". I've been letting the lips dry for like 3 friggin' days. It's been driving me nutz because I really wanna carve this thing but I stained the lips and poly'd them, and gotta carve the face out around and up to the eyes. Finally the lips dried and I did this;

This looks simple but this was the hardest thing I've carved yet. All chisel and hand sanding, Buzzy lent me some really small "U" chisels to get the channel.

Now I'm gonna poly the dark areas, let 'em dry for another few days and carve into them. The face is loosely defined now, but I'll go at that outside edge veeery carefully.

Hey, did anybody know that Paul Gauguin was a killer carver???? I'm not even gonna editorialize on this stuff, just check it out!

Bronze;

Sorry, I gotta editorialize. Look at this one - it looks exactly like a 19th century Puck cartoon, but carved! The whole thing balances on those two little teeny ankles!

And look at how modern these are - they look like carved panels from the Royal Hawaiian. These were hung around Paul's front door. They freak me out, they're really stylized, man this guy was good.

Nice looking piece.

A nice lady from the National Gallery in Washington just emailed me this- I asked her about their Mysterious Ernst Tiki Sculpture:

You are probably thinking of Capricorn, by Max Ernst. Here is the link to an image and information about the sculpture on our Web site: http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pinfo?Object=56841+0+none
It still resides on the ground floor of the Gallery's East Building.

Sincerely,
Anne Halpern
Dept. of Curatorial Records
National Gallery of Art
Washington, D.C.

(Thanks, Anne!)

I love your thread Cammo - you're putting the highbrow back into lowbrow! It's like a regular little TC art history class. How good is that chess set? - it wouldn't look out of place in any modern design store. And don't get me started on the Gauguin....
PS your recent carvings are very cool - I like that you don't limit your inspiration to just the regular sources, but have embraced the whole primitivism/modernism oeuvre. I've been looking at the early Maori modernist stuff lately, and it's very interesting to see how it worked in reverse - a Polynesian culture adapting their traditions to embrace Western/Modern modes of expression. Even cooler cause it started in the late 50s/early 60s. You can never have too much art!

Hey Paipo -

Exactly. Seems like ANYTHING from the 50's and 60's is so cool.

Ya also have to keep in mind that all these big deal artists in the late 1900's to the 1920s were crummy scummy outcast geeks. Now their stuff is worth millions, but then they couldn't (literally!) give it away.

Dude, check this out - these two artist guys were wandering through a Paris aviation show, the hot-rod shows of 1922, digging on how cool the motors, etc looked. One guy threw up his hands and said "Painting is crap! It's all over! Look at that propeller, it looks better than any painting I've ever seen!"

He turned to the other guy, who was a sculptor, and said, "Could you make anything as good as that?!"

So the sculptor guy made this. Marble -

And it just went for 27.5 million in 2005.

"Bird in Space" by Constantin Brancusi.

I also love checking your thread Cammo, informative and interesting. The marble sculpture looks pretty advanced in concept for 1922. I also enjoyed looking at the Gauguin carvings. Thanks for all the research.