I updated the FOM Gallery to include a drawing made for this year’s Hula Hop in Columbus. The event includes two Retro shindigs, occuring August 10th & 11th as the sun sets. Friday night is a revival of the “Polynesian Dinner with Show”; Saturday is a mini-festival with food, kustom cars, and a slew of live bands. Hopefully, I will be able to attend both if my work schedule permits.

Neither a religion nor a cult, The Fraternal Order of Moai is a club interested in the recreational arcanums of our previous century. We have no research degrees, only our memories of adventurous times before global warming and MTV ad infinitum. Admittedly, I have only a wisp of a connection to the Exotic or other Post-War frivolity. I’m Generation X, which means I didn’t see tikis at the local Polynesian lounge, or race Vespas around Cold War military bases. Instead, someone my age would’ve seen pan-cultural oddities on field trips to museums, during family slide shows, or perhaps even in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Having parents that travelled the world turned out to be an influence I didn’t discover till I was out of college. Retromodernism sprouted in pop culture then, with its shagadelic art, hot rods, and reverb guitar soundtrack. We, the FOM, are glad these things can persist with our help…and a few strong pieces of bamboo.

Hence, in this gallery, you will see art and projects that have drawn a creative jolt from the past. Genres may end up scrambled, but it should all be strangely familiar!