Michael Dormer or Michael Henry Dashwood Dormer (
Hollywood, California
Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, ...
, 1935 - 2012) was an American fine artist, writer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and creator of the 1960s TV show
Shrimpenstein.
Biography
A childhood protégé of artist Louis Geddes, Dormer took first prize in a National Fire Prevention poster contest at age 12. Dormer studied art at San Diego State College and Chouinard Art Institute.
At 18 Dormer was working in art full-time.
In 1957 Dormer established a painting studio in La Jolla and moonlighted as a part-time night club comic and jazz poet at the Pour House, a cabaret in Bird Rock. He also published an art and poetry magazine, titled ''Scavenger.''
In 1968 Dormer painted his first aluminum piece; a technique he developed, which has never been used by any other artist. These pieces are part of private collections across the globe. His vast body of work includes his mid-century Crankshaft series, an extensive collection of nudes, oils, watercolors, sculpture, intricate pencil drawings, charcoals, and murals.
Dormer, with his lifelong friend and collaborator, Lee Teacher, created a counter-culture sculpture
Hot Curl Hot Curl is a cartoon character created in 1963 by Michael Dormer and Lee Teacher.
In 1963, Dormer and his friend, Lee Teacher, sculpted Hot Curl a 400-pound concrete statue, and installed it on the rocks near the surf shack at La Jolla's famed Wi ...
, a concrete statue, and installed it on the rocks near the surf shack at
Windansea Beach
Windansea Beach is a stretch of coastline located in La Jolla, a community of San Diego, California. The neighborhood adjacent to the beach is named Windansea after the beach. It is named after the 1909 oceanfront Strand Hotel that was renamed "W ...
in
La Jolla
La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781.
La Jolla is surrounded on ...
in
San Diego, California
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
. The sculpture of a mop-haired, , knobby-kneed surfer gazed out at the sea with a beer in his hand. The pot-bellied surf god quickly became a nationwide sensation, appearing in SurfToons comics and as a plastic model kit, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Today, Hot Curl appears regularly in
''Surfer'' magazine.
In 1964 Dormer's artwork was featured in the opening credits of ''
Muscle Beach Party
''Muscle Beach Party'' is the second of seven beach party films produced by American International Pictures. It stars Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello and was directed by William Asher, who also directed four other films in this series.
...
'', which featured the first film appearance of Hot Curl and “Little”
Stevie Wonder
Stevland Hardaway Morris ( Judkins; May 13, 1950), known professionally as Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, who is credited as a pioneer and influence by musicians across a range of genres that include rhythm and blues, Pop musi ...
. He also doubled as a talent scout for that film and subsequent surf films, recruiting actual surfers and surfer girls off the beaches of La Jolla to serve as extras.
''San Diego Union-Tribune'', Aug. 8, 2006, retrieved 19 Sept. 2007
/ref>
In 1963 Dormer and Teacher created and launched ''Shrimpenstein'', an off-beat children's television show which aired live weekdays on Channel 9 in Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
. The program, which featured a miniature Frankenstein monster
Frankenstein's monster or Frankenstein's creature, often referred to as simply "Frankenstein", is a fictional character who first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus''. Shelley's title thus compares ...
, brought to life when his creator, Dr. Von Schtick, accidentally dropped a bag of jelly beans in his monster machine. The wacky adventures of the little monster, and his eccentric pals, enchanted, with double entendre, and wit fit for children and adults, grew a great following. Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
and his Rat Pack
The Rat Pack was an informal group of entertainers, the second iteration of which ultimately made films and appeared together in Las Vegas casino venues. They originated in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a group of A-list show business frie ...
sought out Dormer to tell him they never missed an episode.
In the early 1970s Dormer and his wife Flicka lived in Florence, Italy. While there, Dormer began experimenting with holographic photography. The City of Florence later used his methods as an aid in restoring artworks.
References
External links
Michael Dormer's official web site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dormer, Michael
Artists from San Diego
Painters from California
Sculptors from California
1935 births
2012 deaths
Television producers from California
Ocean Beach, San Diego
Writers from San Diego
20th-century American sculptors
American male sculptors
20th-century American painters
American male painters
21st-century American painters
21st-century American male artists
20th-century American male artists