Meet Shawn
Shawn McQuaid | The guy behind Tide + Tiki
Shawn learned to carve wood from his grandfather, but his love for tiki comes from South Florida's surf and beach culture. Old-school tiki bars, bamboo, thatched roofs, surfboards, and those rare days when the Atlantic delivers a decent swell. That's the world of Tide + Tiki.
He has a knack for looking at a piece of discarded wood and seeing what it could become. Sometimes it's a tiki, sometimes a shark, and sometimes it's a massive shamrock-shaped coffee table with hand-carved Celtic knots for his Irish family.
Some of his favorite pieces aren't even for sale. There's a four-foot tiki god in the living room, a three-foot hammerhead shark in the bedroom, and a bamboo-and-teak tiki bar out back that took months of evenings and weekends to finish. He made them simply because he wanted to see if he could.
When he's not carving, Shawn teaches environmental science, draws on his master's degree in Marine Biology, and spends time exploring South Florida's waterways with his wife and three daughters. His love for the ocean and the natural world runs through just about everything he does.
For Shawn, a good day involves family, sunshine, a little sawdust, and, if the Atlantic cooperates, some waves worth paddling out for.
