Acme Tiki Co.
aka. Squeaky Tiki
Squeaky Tiki's art is a combination of four simple elements: lowbrow tiki, retro 3D, screen printed gig posters and funny band names.
Far from a tiki traditionalist, Squeaky Tiki's style draws as much inspiration from authentic tiki and retro Polynesian Pop as it does from punk rock flyers, psychedelia, lowbrow hot rod kustom kulture, Looney-Tunes absurdism and cheesy ’50s sci-fi/monster movies.
Squeaky Tiki cut his teeth way back in the prehistoric days before computers, home printers and social media. Back when "copy and paste" literally meant copying and pasting. These were the early '90s when underground artists handcrafted flyers and zines for DIY music scenes in all-nite copy shops on big smelly B&W Xerox machines. ¢2 copy machines were the medium and the art was created with their limitations in mind. Delicate penmanship and shades of gray were out of the question. That kind of subtlety would get lost, so the art needed to be bold. Heavy black lines were de rigueur. Ahhhh, those big bold beautiful black lines. They were so delicious.
Well times change and ol’ Squeaky Teaks spent the last 30 years mastering the computer as an artistic tool. Rather than letting it dictate his style, he’s held onto his those big bold lines but he uses the computer to push his art into the 3D realm. Here's the rub: he uses modern technology to create an antiquated form of 3D. "Anaglyph" is the official word, but that's just a sciency term for 3D that uses those old red/blue glasses that were all the rage back in the '50s. The computer allows Squeaky Tiki to isolate each element in his art and move them independently forward or back on the three dimensional plane. The result is a multi-layered feast for the eyes... particularly after a couple Mai Tais.
The last piece of the puzzle dates back to Squeaky Tiki's teenage years when he and his friends would sit around drinking beers they'd clandestinely liberated from their unsuspecting dads and make up funny band names. They were, after all, going to all grow up to be famous rock stars and needed to be prepared. Sadly, that dream never came to fruition, but the past time of cracking each other up with lists of funny band names continues to this day. Indeed, some things never change.