My Love Affair With Masks; Entry #19--The Tiki God

justusagenstum (63)in #art • 8 years ago

This is the first piece in what I refer to as my "Carolina Beaches Driftwood Collection." I have an old high school buddy who lives down at the beach...long haired hippie in a chartreuse micro-bus kinda guy, real down to earth, likes to surf and create things out of driftwood. He has a little curio shop down there that he runs with his missus, and I visit him every time I am in that area. Originally he collected driftwood from the beaches and made furniture out of it...nice end tables, coffee tables, chairs, couches, bed frames...you name it and he could make it out of driftwood if you gave him enough time and materials.

During one of my trips to the beach we decided to have sort of a class reunion with some of our other old high school buddies. We invited a few dozen people, lit a nice big bonfire and reminisced throughout the night. Since we were on a deserted section of the beach, bathroom breaks consisted of climbing over the nearest sand dune for a little more seclusion. One one of these trips I stumbled...quite literally in fact...over a small piece of driftwood. I grabbed it up as I returned to the party and offered it to "Smize," the driftwood king of creation. I jokingly said, as I handed him the piece of wood..."Hey, look what I found, maybe you could make a mask out of it." That was all it took, we spent the next half hour or so hammering out the details of what would eventually become my personalized Tiki God mask. It didn't take him long to finish it and about 3-4 weeks later I made a trip down there again just to pick it up, I didn't want it to get damaged in transit if he shipped it. While I was down there retrieving this piece I went for a nice walk along the beach and came across another piece of driftwood with a very unique shape...I immediately grabbed that piece up and carried it off to Smize with another project in mind, which I will feature in the next post!

My first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth entries in this series can be seen at these links.