Michael Dormer (artist)

Michael Dormer or Michael Henry Dashwood Dormer (Hollywood, California, 1935 - 2012) was an American fine artist, writer, songwriter, entrepreneur, and creator of the 1960s TV con Shrimpenstein.

A childhood protégé of artiste 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 enthusiastic in art full-time.

In 1957 Dormer acknowledged 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 in addition to 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 new artist. These pieces are allowance of private collections across the globe. His vast body of piece of legislation includes his mid-century Crankshaft series, an extensive amassing of nudes, oils, watercolors, sculpture, intricate pencil drawings, charcoals, and murals.

Dormer, with his lifelong buddy and collaborator, Lee Teacher, created a counter-culture sculpture Hot Curl, a 400-pound (180 kg) concrete statue, and installed it on the rocks close the surf shack at Windansea Beach in La Jolla 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 instigation credits of Muscle Beach Party, which featured the first film express of Hot Curl and “Little” Stevie Wonder. He moreover doubled as a facility scout for that film and subsequent surf films, recruiting actual surfers and surfer girls off the beaches of La Jolla to promote as extras.

In 1963 Dormer and Teacher created and launched Shrimpenstein, an off-beat children's television ham it up which aired conscious weekdays upon Channel 9 in Los Angeles. The program, which featured a miniature Frankenstein monster, brought to life afterward his creator, Dr. Von Schtick, accidentally dropped a sack of jelly beans in his innate machine. The wacky adventures of the little monster, and his eccentric pals, enchanted, with double entendre, and wit fit for kids and adults, grew a great following. Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack sought out Dormer to say him they never missed an episode.

In the in the future 1970s Dormer and his wife Flicka lived in Florence, Italy. While there, Dormer began experimenting as soon as holographic photography. The City of Florence progressive used his methods as an aid in restoring artworks.

Dormer lived in Ocean Beach in San Diego, California.

Michael Dormer died at house in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California on 10 September 2012. Shortly back his death he had written this rude statement practically his work^{[citation needed]}:

DORMER ON DORMER

I've always considered myself an experimentalist. My subject issue is often whimsical or mysteriously off-beat. I've been told that my be active reflects my personality lovely accurately.

I follow no particular traditional schools of painting and declare my works in reality excursions into alternate fantasy dimensions. Odd creatures abound in these regions and strange allegories unfold. New languages are born and join together freely subsequent to conjured-up communicative symbols.

My paintings are windows looking out into further places at further things.