Michael Dormer

Michael Dormer

Michael Dormer (born 1935 in Hollywood, California, U.S.) is an American artist, cartoonist, writer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and creator of famed cartoon personalities Hot Curl and 1960s' TV star Shrimpenstein.

A childhood protégé of artist Louis Geddes, Dormer won national recognition at age 12 by taking first prize in a National Fire Prevention poster contest. At 18, Dormer was working as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist for local and national periodicals and creating experimental works of art.

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 1963, Dormer and his friend, Lee Teacher, sculpted Hot Curl,^[1] a 400-pound (180 kg) concrete statue, and installed it on the rocks near the surf shack at La Jolla's famed Windansea Beach in San Diego, California. The sculpture of a mop-haired, 6-foot-tall (1.8 m), 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, which featured the first film appearance of Hot Curl^[2] and “Little” Stevie Wonder. 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.^[3]

File:ShortStories.jpg

Short Stories, 1981, aluminum and plastic

In 1967 Dormer and Teacher created and launched Shrimpenstein, an off-beat children’s television show which aired live weekdays on Channel 9 in Los Angeles. The program, which featured a miniature Frankenstein monster, created when his creator, Dr. Von Schtick, accidentally dropped a bag of jelly beans in his monster machine. The wacky adventures and double entendres of the little monster and his eccentric pals enchanted children of all ages, including Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack.

In 1968, Dormer painted his first aluminum piece. Over the next 20 years, he continued to explore the limits of the medium, creating sculptural paintings that draw the viewer into a magical looking-glass landscape.

Dormer lives in Ocean Beach in San Diego, California. His art is a continuing experiment; each new burst of creativity yielding art that somehow twists the strands of his life into some strange window into another world.

External links

• Michael Dormer's official web site
• Hot Curl's official web site

References

1. ^ San Diego Historical Society, retrieved 19 Sept 2007
2. ^ Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema: Interviews with 20 Actresses from Biker, Beach, and Elvis Movies. Tom Lisanti. ISBN 978-0-7864-0868-9. 2001
3. ^ San Diego Union-Tribune, Aug. 8, 2006, retrieved 19 Sept. 2007

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Name	Dormer, Michael
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Date of birth	1935
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