TOM  OF  FINLAND  FOUNDATION

Tips Of The Hat And Odds & Ends:

PHOTO: Sergio Fedasz

TOM’s Foundation thanks San Francisco for Lick It! Huge Thanks to Lance Holman and Powerhouse Bar, Sponsors Mr S Leather, BLUF and Eros And Everyone Who Came Out and Showed Support. ToFF is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) Educational Archive and benefits like this mean a great deal to us. We hope everyone had a good time! Tom made the world a (lot) better place and we want everyone to know it. Thank you all for helping spread the word and keeping TOM’s spirit alive.

TOM’s Foundation thanks BENT-CON and Bruno Gmünder for sharing the awesomeness of so many LGBT creative talents. It’s a job we all take very seriously (and have a really good time doing).

Did you see Bob & Tom @ MOCA? Very cool. The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in West Hollywood at the Pacific Design Center extended its hours for guests to view Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland while Honey Soundsystem DJs were featured live, and film loops from original ‘80s porn were projected onto the PDC building alongside curated performances. Generous support for MOCA Pacific Design Center is provided by Charles S. Cohen.

Lotsa mojo @ GoGo! Big congrats to the winners of the 3rd annual West Hollywood Gogo Dancer Appreciation Day Festival & Competition. Thanks to all the Contestants, Volunteers, Judges and Sponsors and everyone who contributed to Frontiers Awareness & Education Foundation and Tom of Finland Foundation. See more photos of the event at Edge Los Angeles.

Gifts to Tom of Finland Foundation and Tom of Finland Seura. Jouni Lepistö donates pieces of his artwork to TOM’s Foundation and Tom of Finland Seura (Society) at ToFS’s annual Membership Meeting in Helsinki.

Friends of Bob & Tom @ MOCA opening events. Miss the opening? We've got some great photos! Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland coverage and additional photos by LA I’m Yours, MOCAtv, Opening Ceremony, Purple Diary, S Magazine / Stalker, and World of Wonder.

It was super for Tom of Finland Foundation and Homotopia to meet with Stuart Sandford in Helsinki. Photo: Stuart Sandford (left) and Durk Dehner.

Tom of Finland Foundation (Los Angeles, CA) and Homotopia (Liverpool, England) visit the Finnish Embassy in London. Durk Dehner, ToFF and Pirjo Pellinjen, Cultural Attaché.

Tom of Finland film meets with Tom of Finland in Finland. Producer Aleksi Bardy and director Dome Karukoski of Helsinki-filmi meet with Tom of Finland Foundation, Tom of Finland Seura, friends of Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland) and friends in Helsinki. Learn more on TOM's Blog Here.

Save The Date! Look for your Holiday Potluck invites! Saturday, December 21, 2013. Holiday Potluck at TOM House!

The prolific photographer, publisher, filmmaker, and entrepreneur Bob Mizer was the first person to publish Touko Laakonsen’s drawings—in 1957 on the cover of his “beefcake” magazine Physique Pictorial — but he also gave the artist his now famous name, Tom of Finland. This exhibition — organized by Bennett Simpson and the artist Richard Hawkins — brings the two collaborators together for their first major museum retrospective in the United States.

Sparingly describing much of the backstory behind the pair’s work with just a few wall texts (a concurrent show in LA at the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive, Art & Physique Circa Bob & Tom, should provide some of that absent historical context), the show instead focuses on a varied collection of both artists’ output, including examples of the Physique Pictorials that Tom of Finland contributed drawings to, which are displayed in vitrines, as well as original artwork of his, and Mizer’s very strange and wonderful “catalogue boards”—grids on which he used to arrange his photographs of loin-clothed, and occasionally nude, male models, under such zany narrative rubrics as “Tijuana Bandit Time Machine” and “Baby Doll.”

And view the Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland exhibition while you are there!

6th December
Finland's Independence Day

TOM OF FINLAND (Touko Laaksonen, Finnish, 1920 – 1991),
Untitled (Detail, from Loggers), 1976, Pen & ink and gouache on paper,
ToFF #76.74, © 1976 Tom of Finland Foundation

Finland’s Independence Day (Finnish: itsenäisyyspäivä, Swedish: självständighetsdag) is a national public holiday to celebrate the country’s declaration of independence from the Russian Republic in 1917. The movement for Finland’s Independence started after the revolutions in Russia, caused by the disturbances from the defeats of the First World War.

14th December 1984
TOM’s Foundation Was Born

The logo TOM designed for his Foundation.
© TOM of FINLAND, 1989, ORIGINAL
© RICHARD CERBARANO 1989, DERIVATIVE WORK

TOM’s Foundation Was Born on 14th December 1984. So, we’re only 29!

By 1984, Durk Dehner decided the time had come to focus on his goal, an altruistic one. He wanted to start a nonprofit Tom of Finland organization, one which would be free of commercial aspects and able to concentrate on preserving Tom’s art and enhancing his reputation.

"Durk was sure that people would support such a preservation effort, but I didn’t think so. They were just my old ‘dirty drawings’ to me. He got to me through my pride; I did want to be respectable. I even went one whole year not doing any pornographic stuff at all, just serious art. I didn’t sell anything so I gave up. People knew me for my erotic work and that was what they wanted — and my cock agreed!"

— Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland)
from Tom of Finland – Life and Work of a Gay Hero

The first goal of the newly formed Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) was to offer a safe haven for the original drawings, which were scattered all over the globe. At that time, Tom estimated he had created upwards of three thousand works. Averaged over a career span of (conservatively) forty-five years, this comes out to a little more than five drawings per month.

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