Description: About the Poster Offered is a signed artist print #51 serigraph signed by the “Big Five”; Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Wes Wilson, and Rick Griffin in 1986. This is an oversized poster measuring approximately 20” x 26”. Postcard is also included with this poster (Please see last 2 photos #8 & #9). Serigraphs are produced by applying layer after layer of ink on to the paper, one color at a time, until the piece is finished. The finished print is more brilliant in color and requires a much higher degree of work by the artist and the printer than do offset reproductions. The result is artwork of exceptional quality. This serigraph is in pristine condition. I hesitate to identify any poster as “mint” as someone will surely take a magnifying glass and find a spec; although this one looks as pristine as possible. I can assure you though that it as good as they were on the day of production. In addition, many/most pictures on this poster contain a round ‘shadow’ in the mid-upper portion. This is due to a spec inside my camera lens. Anyone wanting me to take a picture with the poster only, please let me know and I will accommodate. Pictures are the best description on the condition of this poster. I have taken many and will provide more upon request. I have gone through great lengths to insure that my posters have been maintained using only archival materials. I have preserved them on acid free paper mounted by protective corners stored flat in binders. On most of the photos of posters that I will be offering you may notice these corner protectors. Shipping Info : To best insure their safe shipping I will therefore recommend using Fedex/UPS to mail this poster flat. Should you want a cheaper alternative and are willing to accept responsibility, please contact me. I know that many sellers roll the posters into a container which is much cheaper but may lead to slight damage of wrinkling and handling issues which, due to my view of these being not only pieces or art but historical offerings, I hesitate to do due to the thickness of this poster. Domestic Shipping and handling policy: Shipping, Insurance and Handling fee (plus signature confirmation for items $250 and above) for shipping poster flat within the 48 contiguous US via Fedex/UPS Ground/USPS - $75 . There will be a surcharge of $15 for shipping flat to Hawaii/Alaska. Additional unframed posters will be free of shipping charge. If you purchase multiple posters, please wait for the invoice reflecting the shipping discount. *We do not accept any other form of payment other than PayPal. ** Returns are not accepted for this item unless there has been an error in posting. Refunds will be accepted at full refund cost if item sold does not match the description above. Returned item must be in original condition as sent. Reimbursement will be for the cost of the item only. PayPal is the only payment method. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need to see additional photos of the item and I will respond to the best of my knowledge. The item(s) are from a smoke-free household. Pictures are of the actual item being auctioned. *Your feedback rating is important for me, so please contact me first if you are unhappy with your purchase. Please give us opportunity to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Stanley Mouse Bio Stanley George Miller (born October 10, 1940), better known as Mouse and Stanley Mouse, is an American artist notable for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs for the Grateful Dead and Journey albums cover art. Born in Fresno, California, Mouse grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He was given the nickname Mouse as a ninth grader in honor of the endless rodent sketches scattered throughout his notebooks. He was expelled from Mackenzie High School in 1956 for mischievously repainting the facade at The Box, a popular restaurant across the street from Mackenzie. Following his junior year at nearby Cooley High School, Mouse completed his formal education at Detroit's Society of Arts and Crafts, but finding classes in life drawing and painting to be a bore, he instead discovered an outlet for his creative energies in the airbrush. By 1958, Mouse had become fascinated by the Taint movement that had begun in California a decade earlier. Having developed skills using an airbrush he began painting t-shirts at custom car shows. There he met and worked with Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, the leading exponent of Weirdo Hot Rod art. Mouse was also strongly influenced by the art of Rick Griffin with whom he would later collaborate on posters and album covers. In 1959, Mouse and his family founded Mouse Studios, a mail-order company, which sold his products. In 1964, he was invited to help in the design of Monogram automobile model kits using the "monster" cartoon characters he had developed to compete with Roth's "Rat Fink" character. In 1965, Mouse travelled to San Francisco, California with a group of art school friends. Settling initially in Oakland, Mouse met Alton Kelley. With Kelley, Mouse experimented broadly with composition, lettering and imagery: Kelley came up with the ideas and Mouse executed the designs. Their work evolved into a characteristic style filled with visual puns that captured the playful, anything-goes spirit of Haight-Ashbury. Kelley, a self-taught artist, had recently arrived from Virginia City, Nevada, where he had joined a group of hippies who called themselves the Red Dog Saloon gang. Upon arrival in San Francisco Kelley and other veterans of the gang renamed themselves The Family Dog and began producing rock music dances. In 1966, when Chet Helms assumed leadership of the group and began promoting the dances at the Avalon Ballroom, Mouse and Kelley began working together to produce posters for the events. Later the pair also produced posters for promoter Bill Graham and for other events in the psychedelic community. Mouse's work for Graham was typified by a new stylistic diversity, with his posters drawing on inspirations ranging from art deco design to British tavern signs; a poster for Cream was so well received by the band members themselves that Eric Clapton even invited the artist to London to "flame" his Rolls Royce. In 1967, Mouse collaborated with artists Kelley, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson to create the Berkeley Bonaparte Distribution Agency. Mouse and Kelley also worked together as lead artists at Mouse Studios and The Monster Company producing album cover art for the bands Journey and Grateful Dead. The Monster Company also developed a profitable line of hot rod memorabilia. The psychedelic posters Mouse and Kelley produced were heavily influenced by Art Nouveau graphics, particularly the works of Alphonse Mucha and Edmund Joseph Sullivan. Material associated with psychedelics, such as Zig-Zag rolling papers, were also referenced. Zig-Zag was one of their first posters for a concert headlined by Big Brother and the Holding Company. ''We were paranoid that the police would bust us or that Zig-Zag would bust us'' Mouse said. From 1966 to 1969 Kelley worked on more than 150 posters for concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore, publicizing the most famous bands and artists of the era, among them Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Butterfield Blues Band and Moby Grape, as well as the Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, and Country Joe and the Fish. They created three posters for concerts headlined by Bo Diddley, who died on Monday. ''Kelley would work on the left side of the drawing table and Mouse on the right,'' said Paul Grushkin, the author of ''The Art of Rock: Posters From Presley to Punk'' and a longtime friend of both men. ''They turned out a poster a week.'' At the time the posters were put up on telephone poles. Everyone who attended a concert at the Avalon received a free poster advertising the next show on the way out the door. Some were sold in head shops for a few dollars. Today mint-condition posters by Kelley and Mouse can command prices of $5,000 or more. Producing posters advertising for such musical groups as Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Grateful Dead led to meeting the musicians and making contacts that were later to prove fruitful. In 1968, Helms and Graham began turning to other artists for their poster work and Mouse's career languished. After brief periods in London and Massachusetts, he moved to Toronto where he ran a Yorkville waterbed store called The Waterbed Gallery with the walls featuring his artwork. Mouse returned to California to live in Marin County near Kelley. The pair resumed their partnership in 1971 producing commercial artwork related to the Grateful Dead and later Journey. The pair is credited with creating the skeleton and roses image that became the Grateful Dead's archetypal iconography, and Journey's wings and beetles that appeared on their album covers from 1977 to 1980. Mouse and Kelley continued to work together on rock memorabilia until 1980. In 1989, Mouse illustrated the cover of The Grateful Dead Family Album, a photographic music reference book written by Jerilyn Lee Brandelius. Although production was limited, Mouse and Kelley's 1978 Blue Rose poster, created to commemorate the closing of the Winterland Arena, is considered a classic from this decade. Mouse continued to produce album cover art and other music-related graphics through the 1980s. Early in the decade, he moved to New Mexico where he began producing fine art in a variety of media. In 1993, Mouse required a liver transplant, which the Grateful Dead raised money to pay for. In 1999, he contributed a portrait of Skip Spence to the tribute album, More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album, being a collection of cover versions of songs by the co-founder of Moby Grape performed by such artists as Beck, Tom Waits and Robert Plant. Stanley Mouse filled a lawsuit against the producers of the film Monsters, Inc. in 2002, alleging that the characters of Mike and Sulley were based on his drawings of Excuse My Dust which he unsuccessfully pitched to Hollywood producers in 1998. A Disney spokeswoman responded that only the characters in Monsters, Inc. were "developed independently by the Pixar and Walt Disney Pictures creative teams and do not infringe on anyone's copyrights". Mouse now lives in Sonoma County, California where he continues to paint. Rockin' Roses Gallery in Healdsburg, California features Stanley's art along with other artists such as Grace Slick, Mickey Hart, Jerry Garcia, Bill and Adrianna Weber and Bob Siedemann. The gallery features the iconic rock posters of the sixties in San Francisco, creations of Mouse and Alton Kelley and also Mouse’s more recent works in oils. Alton Kelley Bio June17, 1940 – June 1, 2008 Alton Kelley was born in Houlton, Me. and grew up in Connecticut where his parents moved to work in defense plants during World War II. His mother, a former schoolteacher, encouraged him to study art and for a time he attended art schools in Philadelphia and New York, but his real passion was racing motorcycles and hot rods. He applied his training to painting pinstripes on motorcycle gas tanks. Both independently and in tandem with longtime collaborator Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley created some of the most distinctive and enduring images in rock music, his collages adorning countless album covers and concert posters. After working as a welder at the Sikorsky helicopter plant in Stratford, Conn., he moved to San Francisco in 1964, settling into the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. With a group of friends he helped stage concerts in 1965 at the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, Nev., by the Charlatans, an electric folk-rock band. On returning to San Francisco, Kelley co-founded the Family Dog, a collective of likeminded hipsters and activists who regularly held dances at local venues like the Avalon Ballroom and Longshoreman's Hall. He also turned to art, creating countless collages and decorating his home with bursts of Day-Glo paint and pop art designs. He soon assumed promotional duties for the Family Dog events, designing and distributing their posters and handbills; after Kelley met kindred spirit Mouse his work reached new heights, with Kelley selecting photos and assembling the collages while Mouse handled lettering duties and other technical details. ''Stanley and I had no idea what we were doing,'' Kelley told The San Francisco Chronicle. ''But we went ahead and looked at American Indian stuff, Chinese stuff, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, modern, Bauhaus, whatever.'' Kelley and Mouse's collaborations succinctly captured the spontaneity and wit of both, and together they emerged among the most popular and renowned artists of the psychedelic era, their success cemented in 1968 when they were invited to exhibit their work alongside that of Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin, and Victor Moscoso in a joint show that dubbed the group "the Big Five." Many of Kelley's most memorable pieces were created for the Grateful Dead. He and Mouse inaugurated the "Skull and Roses" inspired by a 19th-century engraving from ''The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam''. This poster advertised the concert at the Avalon Ballroom in 1966. It portrayed a skeleton wearing a garland of roses on its skull and holding a wreath of roses on its left arm. The Grateful Dead later adopted this image as its emblem. Mr. Kelley and Mr. Mouse also designed several of the group's album covers, including ''American Beauty'' and ''Workingman's Dead.'' One of their first posters, for a concert headlined by Big Brother and the Holding Company, reproduced the logo for Zig-Zag cigarette papers, used widely for rolling marijuana cigarettes. ''We were paranoid that the police would bust us or that Zig-Zag would bust us,'' Mouse said. From 1966 to 1969 Kelley worked on more than 150 posters for concerts at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore, publicizing the most famous bands and artists of the era, among them Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Butterfield Blues Band and Moby Grape, as well as the Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, and Country Joe and the Fish. They created three posters for concerts headlined by Bo Diddley, who died on Monday. ''Kelley would work on the left side of the drawing table and Mouse on the right,'' said Paul Grushkin, the author of ''The Art of Rock: Posters From Presley to Punk'' and a longtime friend of both men. ''They turned out a poster a week.'' At the time the posters were put up on telephone poles. Everyone who attended a concert at the Avalon received a free poster advertising the next show on the way out the door. Some were sold in head shops for a few dollars. Today mint-condition posters by Kelley and Mouse can command prices of $5,000 or more. With the waning of the 1960s, Kelley and Mouse diversified. They formed Monster, a T-shirt company, in the mid-1970s. They also designed the Pegasus-image cover for the Steve Miller album ''Book of Dreams'' and several albums for Journey in the 1980s. After sharing a 1979 Grammy Award with Mouse for their cover of the Steve Miller Band's Greatest Hits collection, Kelley published the duo's joint biography, appropriately titled Mouse and Kelley. He continued to produce posters and other printed graphics throughout the years to follow, shunning the emergence of digital technology to work by hand on a variety of pieces for the Fillmore and other Bay Area venues in addition to countless other showbiz clients. A resident of Petaluma, CA, in 1996 Kelley also appeared in the film documentary The Life and Times of the Red Dog Saloon. ''Kelley had the unique ability to translate the music being played into these amazing images that captured the spirit of who we were and what the music was all about,'' said the Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart. ''He was a visual alchemist -- skulls and roses, skeletons in full flight, cryptic alphabets, nothing was too strange for his imagination to conjure.'' Alton Kelley died on June 1, 2008 at his home in Petaluma, Calif. He was 67. The cause was complications of osteoporosis said his wife Marguerite Trousdale Kelley. In addition to his wife, Kelley is survived by three children, Patty Kelley of San Diego, Yossarian Kelley of Seattle and China Bacosa of Herald, Calif.; two grandchildren; and his mother, Annie Kelley, and a sister, Kathy Verespy, both of Trumbull, Conn. Victor Moscoso Bio Victor Moscoso (born 1936 in Oleiros, Spain) is an artist best known for producing psychedelic rock posters/advertisements and underground comix in San Francisco during the 1960s and 1970s. Moscoso was the first of the rock poster artists of the 1960s era with formal academic training and experience. After studying art at Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959. There, he attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where he eventually became an instructor. At a dance at the Avalon Ballroom, Moscoso saw rock posters and decided that he could "make some money doing posters for those guys." In the fall of 1966 he began designing posters for the Family Dog and also produced posters for the Avalon Ballroom. Under his own imprint, Neon Rose, he did a series for Matrix, a local night spot. Moscoso's style is most notable for its visual intensity, which is obtained by manipulating form and color to create optical effects. He relied on innovative optical effects that gave his psychedelic posters a unique "vibrative" quality. Moscoso's use of intense color contrasts and vibrating edges and borders was influenced by painter Josef Albers, his teacher at Yale. Given Moscoso's artistic sophistication, it is not surprising that he was the first of the rock poster artists to use photographic collage in many of his posters. Jeffrey Morseburg writes in his biography that Moscoso distilled the understanding of color relationships that he learned from Joseph Albers into his poster design work. He would create an optical effect in the viewer by alternating deeply saturated primary colors. The juxtaposition of colors would create the illusion of the poster moving back and forth in space. Moscoso used more conventional typefaces than some of the other designers, usually letters with large serifs, but he bent and twisted them into interesting shapes making them difficult to read. Moscoso was among the most gifted and influential artists to emerge from the '60s counterculture, pioneering not only the psychedelic concert poster designs made famous during San Francisco's Summer of Love, but also making his mark in underground comix. Alongside Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, and Alton Kelley; the “Big Five”, with whom his work was celebrated during the famed 1967 "Joint Show" -- Moscoso became one of the most famous of the psychedelic artists to surface during the mid-'60s, due to his provocative work for the Family Dog's dances at the Avalon Ballroom, and his Neon Rose posters for the Matrix earning international attention. By 1968, he had turned his focus to underground comics and storytelling, becoming one of the contributors to Robert Crumb's infamous Zap series; he also gained renown for his cover art for performers like Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Herbie Hancock, and David Grisman. Moscoso additionally designed countless t-shirts and billboards, later winning a pair of CLIO awards for his animated advertising projects; he also worked in music video. There’s always some education to be had from looking at comics by artists who are better known for their work in other media. Victor Moscoso is one of two members of hippie-era San Francisco’s legendary Zap Comix collective whose work on rock concert posters is arguably more notorious and influential than his comics. (Rick Griffin accompanies him in this category.) That isn’t to say, however, that Moscoso’s comics have wielded anything less than a tremendous influence over the past few decades, despite the fact that they remain somewhat under-discussed. Moscoso brought color printing to the medium’s underground, did work in Zap that anticipates the most adventurous of today’s experimental comics, and brought a cubist-inflected fine art sensibility to his pages that echoes in the work of cartoonists from Gary Panter to Art Spiegelman. But the most striking thing about Moscoso’s comics work is just how effectively he was able to translate the action and effect of his stroboscopic posters into sequential form. Moscoso has spoken of attempting to create posters that worked more like comics than advertisements, forcing the viewer to spend time carefully reading them rather than imparting information as quickly and effortlessly as possible. Moscoso still lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Wes Wilson Bio Wes Wilson (Robert Wesley Wilson) is generally acknowledged as the father of the 60s rock concert poster. In 1968, he received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts for “his contributions to American Art.” He pioneered what is now known as the psychedelic poster in which blocks of letters were used to create shapes which seemed to bend and vibrate in place. Wilson grew up more interested in nature and the outdoors than in art. He studied forestry and horticulture at a junior college in Auburn, California, then attended San Francisco State, where his major was philosophy. After college, Wilson joined Bob Carr, whose basement print shop was known as Contact Printing. As Carr’s assistant and partner, Wes Wilson did the basic layout and design for most of the work Carr brought in through contacts in San Francisco’s North Beach coffeehouse poetry and jazz club scene. In 1965, Contact Printing was well-positioned to serve San Francisco’s burgeoning counterculture. It produced handbills for the San Francisco Mime Troupe fundraising benefits, the so-called ‘Appeal’ parties, as well as for the Merry Prankster Acid Tests. Both were linked to the newly reborn dance-hall venues through a series of benefit concerts, so it is no surprise that the dance-hall promoters soon found their way to the Contact press. Wes Wilson’s first poster was self-published. Done in 1965, it features a swastika within an American flag motif, a protest by Wilson to the ever-increasing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Wilson designed the handbill for the Trips Festival. He attended the event and was deeply moved by what he saw and experienced. Wes Wilson had also been doing the posters for promoter Chet Helms’ shows at the Straight Theatre. It was Wilson who designed the original logo for the Family Dog and who did the posters for the brief series of Family Dog shows at the Fillmore Auditorium, and then for the first series of Family Dog shows at the Avalon Ballroom. Soon he was doing that work plus doing the posters for Bill Graham’s shows at the Fillmore. After several months, Wilson stopped producing for the Family Dog venue and concentrated almost exclusively on posters for Bill Graham’s Fillmore events. He cites that with Chet Helms and the Avalon Ballroom, he was often given a theme around which he was asked to improvise, while with Bill Graham and the Fillmore, he was given complete freedom to design whatever he wanted. Wilson enjoyed the added artistic freedom. Wes completed 56 posters for Bill Graham in only 14 months, averaging one poster per week for the Fillmore. His first poster for the Fillmore was the second concert BG 2 (the only concert that did not have a band) and he did all posters to BG 26 picking up again at BG 28 through BG 51 and then again at BG 53 through BG 58 and then BG 62. Wes told me that Bill hired him as he was the only person that Bill knew who could design, print, and distribute a new poster every week. Wes’s other major breakthrough was in his use of color -- inspired by the light shows of the concerts themselves, he mixed colors with wild abandon, resulting in jolting visuals that perfectly captured the revolutionary essence of the music his art promoted. His work quickly moved beyond the confines of the psychedelic subculture into the mainstream, resulting in profiles in magazines including Time, Life, and Variety; however, in May 1967 he stopped producing posters for Graham, claiming the promoter had failed to honor their existing royalty agreement. He produced BG 69 with the poster depicting a snake swallowing money with a swastika over its head. Bill Graham was Jewish and not happy with the poster; or with Wes. Wes did not do another Fillmore poster until December 1968. Here are Wes Wilson’s details of the story as told to Collector’s Weekly: I had signed a contract with Bill. I’d been copyrighting my posters, so he said, “We’ve got to work out a contract.” By that time, people were starting to collect posters, so we sat down and worked out a deal. We signed and initialed it. His attorney was supposed to clean it up, make a copy, and then we were going to re-sign it. It was all officially approved, but it was kind of messy because it had all these handwritten notes on it. I was going to get a 6 percent royalty on it, which was pretty good. I knew what was going on at that point. But then he broke the agreement right away. An article came out in “Time” magazine reporting that he’d sold 100,000 posters. So I said, “Look, Bill, I want to see more of my royalties. I’m due $6,000, just for that one thing.” He got all upset, and we went from being friends in the morning to being enemies that afternoon. I was with a couple other people when we went to confront him that day. We were ready to see the books. When things went badly, we agreed to go and fight it out outside. Bill Graham said okay to that, and as we walked out the door onto the sidewalk, Bill quickly turned around, locked the door behind him, and disappeared up the stairs. From that day on, he continued to cheat me out of lots of money by not honoring our honestly agreed-to and mutually signed agreement. Of course, I went to a lawyer, then a couple of lawyers, and they all basically said, “Oh, my God. You left your signed contract in Bill’s trust. You don’t even have a copy of your own; you might as well just forget it.” On the last poster I did for him at that time, I was so mad that I added a snake with a dollar sign in its mouth. Bill had shown himself to be a lying crook rather than an honest person. That was an unfortunate choice on his part, but it was his choice nonetheless. That’s how I lost all of my respect for Bill Graham. After a friend showed Wes a copy of a 1908 poster done by the Viennese Secessionist artist Alfred Roller that contained an alphabet and lettering style similar to what Wilson had been doing, Wilson absorbed the Roller style, altering it in an explosion of lettering creativity that changed the poster scene permanently. His style of filling all available space with lettering, of creating fluid forms made from letters, and using flowing letters to create shapes became the standard that most artists followed in order to put “psychedelic” in the art. The first clear example of this—and a key piece in Wilson’s history—was the poster BG-18, done for a show with the Association at the Fillmore Auditorium. Set in a background of green is a swirling flame-form of red letters. With this poster came a new concept in the art of that time—perhaps the first truly ‘psychedelic’ poster. Wes proudly informed me that this poster was being shown at the National Museum of Modern Art. The Art Nouveau style of celebrated Czech designer Alphonse Mucha was another major source that influenced Wilson’s work. In late 1966, Wilson created a poster for Bill Graham’s Winterland that has been nicknamed “The Sound.” (BG-29) It combines Wilson’s ability to fill all available space with vibrant, flowing letters together with his admiration and respect for the feminine form. It is one of a handful of posters from that era that is considered representative of the entire period. Wilson’s treatment of women and the feminine form is one of his most lasting contributions to the poster art of the sixties. It has been said that the psychedelic poster—as we have come to know it—was defined by Wes Wilson sometime in the summer of 1966. Wilson did his last poster for Bill Graham in May of 1967 but continued to produce posters for the Avalon and other venues. In 1968, Wilson was surprised to learn that he was to receive a $5000 award by the National Endowment for the Arts for “his contributions to American Art.” In fact, Wilson, who was considered a leader, if not the “key” artist, of the psychedelic poster scene, was also profiled in such major magazines as Life, Time, and Variety magazines. Wilson also created a new technique in enameling glass as art and developed a watercolor style, which was well received at his one-man show in San Francisco in 1973. Then, in 1976, Wilson relocated his family to a cattle farm in the Missouri Ozarks. With the publication of the, now classic, poster book, “The Art of Rock ,” Wilson was invited, in 1989, to exhibit his classic poster work at the Springfield Art Museum. The success of the resulting show, “Looking Back: Rock Posters of the 1960s by Wes Wilson,” rekindled Wilson’s interest in the poster scene and he went on to create and publish “Off The Wall™,” an in-depth journal on poster art and contemporary ideas. The nine issues of this, now out-of-print, publication are eagerly sought after by poster enthusiasts. Wilson was also the executive producer of three Rock Art Expos — large poster conventions on the West Coast. Over the years, Wilson has also been featured in a number of gallery exhibits, both his classic and his contemporary works. Today, Wes Wilson creates paintings, but still occasionally does new posters or new art of interest. He is in good health and has six children and ten grandchildren — so far. He and his wife of over 40 years, Eva, who is now a doctor of psychology, are still living on their farm in southwest Missouri. Rick Griffin Bio Richard Alden Griffin was born near Palos Verdes, California on the 18th of June 1944. His father, James, was an engineer (who had briefly worked as an animator for Disney) and an amateur archaeologist in his spare time. As a boy, Rick accompanied his father on digs in the Southwest, where Rick was exposed to the Native American and ghost town artifacts that were to influence his later work. Rick was taught to surf by Randy Nauert at the age of 14 at Torrance Beach. The pair had met at Alexander Flemming Jr. High and were to become lifelong friends, Rick producing much of the artwork for Randy's future band, the Challengers. At Nathaniel Narbonne High School in the 50's Rick began copying images from Mad Magazine and then developed his own style of surf doodles. Rick's friends would pay him 50¢ for an original piece penned on their shirts. Rick was also interested in Hot Rod cars and motorcycles, their decoration being amongst his earliest professional work. As a contributor to the underground comix movement, his work appeared regularly in Zap Comix. Griffin was closely identified with the Grateful Dead, designing some of their best known posters and record jackets. Randy Nauert introduced Rick to John Severson at a screening of "Surf Fever" at Narbonne High telling John that he should hire Rick for his magazine. Rick had already done artwork for Greg Noll (decorating Noll's early price lists), the Illustrated Surfer's Dictionary, and Bing. Soon he was designing posters for surf movie screenings and advertising spot illustrations for Hermosa Beach’s Greg Noll Surf Shop. Soon after leaving Palos Verdes High School, Rick became staff artist at Surfer Magazine. After high school, Griffin became staff artist at Surfer Magazine, where the comic strip character, Murphy—the little gremlin he had created—became an iconic image integral to the California surf scene. Adopted by many as a mascot, the little Gremlin (thought by some to have been the personification of Rick), soon became integral to the Californian surf scene. Rick parted company with Surfer in 1964. Planning to immigrate to Australia, Rick hitched a lift toward San Francisco. After falling asleep, he awoke to find the car swerving from side to side with the driver laughing maniacally. The vehicle went out of control and Rick later recalled that the last thing he remembered was flying through the air watching his cheap suitcase hitting the ground and splintering into a thousand pieces. The first thing he heard when he finally regained consciousness was someone reading Psalm 23 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...” This proved to be a major factor in Rick's later conversion to Christianity. Rick's left eye was dislocated in the accident (perhaps the inspiration behind the disembodied eye in his subsequent work), and he sustained lasting facial scarring. Subsequently Rick changed not only his appearance, (he grew a beard and sported an eye-patch), his art also became more sophisticated and the characteristic fluid lettering style emerged. In 1964, while attending Chouinard Art Institute, Griffin met his future wife, Ida Pfefferle, and fell in with a bohemian art gang/jugband group that had recently arrived in Los Angeles from Minnesota, known as the Jook Savages. Griffin played the one-string zither, began to smoke weed, grow his hair, and dress differently. In mid 1965, he shelved the Murphy character indefinitely and began the “Griffin-Stoner Adventures,” in which a more accurate self-caricature—paired with a foil based on Surfer Magazine photographer Ron Stoner—wandered the globe supposedly sending coded dispatches to the magazine from the frontlines of a rapidly evolving surf culture. His time at Chouinard Art Institute, (now Cal Arts), was to shape Rick's future life. Not only did he meet fellow artist and future wife Ida Pfefferle, but in 1964 he became involved with the Jook Savages a group of artist-musicians. After taking time out for a Mexican surf trip, Rick and Ida met up with the group in San Francisco in late 1966, the two living initially in their van. While Griffin was in demand as the illustrator for surf-related commercial enterprises, he was also drawn to the emerging counterculture. He and his friends attended Ken Kesey’s Acid Test in riot-devastated Watts where they drank the Kool-Aid. Ida, who had moved to the Bay Area to give birth to Rick’s daughter, Flaven, started sending Griffin postcard versions of the new posters emerging from the growing Haight-Ashbury ballroom scene. Griffin had come across the year-old “Seed” (AOR-2.2) poster advertising The Charlatans at the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Its combination of Old West and circus poster motifs rendered with handmade variations on old typefaces caught Griffin’s attention and led him to the scene at the Red Dog Saloon. Frustrated with Chouinard and Surfer Magazine’s censorship of his Griffin-Stoner strips, Griffin folded up shop and split to spend the summer of 1966 in Mexico surfing. Griffin later reunited with Ida and relocated to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, where the Jook Savages had been offered a group show of their artwork at The Psychedelic Shop. Rick Griffin’s first San Francisco rock poster was for the Jook Savages Art Show at the “New Improved Psychedelic Shop,” and it led directly to an invitation to design a poster for the Human Be-In in 1967 in Golden Gate Park, advertised as the "Gathering Of Tribes", showing a guitar toting Indian on horseback announcing a jamboree integrating the clans of the Berkeley radical stronghold, the lingering North Beach Beat scene, and the blossoming hippie community.. It was this event that kicked off the Summer of Love. As the Haight-Ashbury scene developed, Rick's work was in high demand. More than 20,000 tribe members assembled on the polo field in Golden Gate Park to hear Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lenore Kandel, Timothy Leary, and Jerry Rubin, and dance to the music of the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Sir Douglas Quintet, Big Brother & The Holding Company, and Jefferson Airplane. The poster so perfectly captured the vibe of the event that it instantly became iconic. Griffin’s work was also featured in the January Human Be-In edition of the S.F Oracle—released to coincide with the event—with a spectacular centerfold illustration for Allen Ginsburg’s “Renaissance or Die.” Chet Helms and Bill Graham both recruited Griffin to work on their promotions. From March of 1967 through November of 1968, Rick Griffin produced more than two dozen posters for the Family Dog and Bill Graham, plus almost as many commissions and projects done for the Berkeley Bonaparte poster company (in which he was a partner) and for out-of-town clients. Griffin’s first official Family Dog poster hit the streets in March 1967. Drawing on influences as diverse as Native American culture, the Californian surf scene and the burgeoning hippie movement, he incorporated beetles, skulls, surfing eyeballs, vivid colors and wild lettering into his art. Rick produced a series of ground-breaking posters for Chet Helms, a producer of The Family Dog collective and Bill Graham who staged events at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium respectively. He made posters for legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Albert King and the Grateful Dead, the logo for Rolling Stones magazine, and many album sleeves; perhaps the most well-known being the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa. Along with Alton Kelley, Stanley "Mouse" Miller, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, Rick became known as one of the "Big Five" of psychedelia. In 1967 they founded the Berkeley-Bonaparte distribution agency to produce and sell psychedelic poster art. He oversaw the lithography, ensuring a flow of quality artwork by himself and other leading lights, destined to grace the walls of the enlightened to this day. The famous 'Flying Eyeball' poster ranks as one of the most important of the time and is sought after by fans and modern art museums alike. Although at the vanguard of the psychedelic art movement Rick still produced comic art true to his roots. His work can be found in Zap, Snatch and Tales From The Tube. Early in 1967, Griffin was commissioned to design the logo for a new magazine called Rolling Stone. By July 17, the Big Five (Wilson, Kelley, Mouse, Moscoso, and Griffin) were the subject of the solo “Joint Show” at the uptown Moore Gallery, which generated huge opening-night crowds and massive publicity, including a review in the San Francisco Chronicle. On September 1, Griffin (alongside the Big Five, except Mouse), was featured in a LIFE cover story called “The Great Poster Wave.” As if that were not enough, Griffin was Robert Crumb’s choice to contribute to the second issue of Zap Comix. Griffin and Moscoso had already been toying with the idea of producing a comic book, and Griffin’s famous mutant Morning Paper funny pages poster (FD-89) is said to have inspired Crumb’s Ultra Super Modernistic Comics in Zap #1. Griffin contributed heavily to Zap #2. When Rick moved back to Southern California in 1969 and settled eventually in San Clemente, John Severson asked him to design a poster for his latest film Pacific Vibrations, and to appear in it. Months later Severson was presented with a masterwork. Rick and Ida's daughter Adelia was born whilst Rick was working on the piece and both mother and unborn child are featured in the poster. Rick did more work for Surfer and also found time to create the Man From Utopia comics. In the 70's Rick became a Christian and his work took a radical change of direction. He produced the Illustrated Book of Saint John and later created work for the Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa. The Chapel was affiliated with Maranatha! Music and hired Rick as art director to produce album covers, posters and flyers for the growing Christian music scene. Rick travelled to Europe in 1976 with his friend and agent Gordon McClelland to exhibit his work in Amsterdam, London, and Sunderland in the north of England. On their return to California McClelland wrote Rick's biography, Rick producing the cover art. In the 1980's Rick's work included a logo and cover art for English rockers The Cult, notably "Soldier Blue", designed in 1987 for an aborted single release and not to see the light of day until it was used as a template for "Rare Cult" thirteen years later. As a perfectionist Rick put 110% into every piece he produced no matter how large or how small, but he was never a businessman and according to daughter Flaven never considered that people would try to rip him off. Murphy's last appearance was in 1987 pouring over druid runes, suggesting perhaps, that the artist was re-evaluating his life once more. At this time Rick was surfing in the cold water at Mystos, north of San Francisco. At noon on 15th August 1991 in Petaluma, California Rick phoned Robert Beerbohm's gallery from a grocery store payphone to hear that a painting had just sold for $1800. On his way back to his house on Stadler Lane he was thrown from his Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail motorcycle when he collided with a van that suddenly turned left as he attempted to pass it. He was not wearing a helmet and sustained major head injuries. He died three days later on August 18 in nearby Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, at the age of 47. His loss cannot be over-estimated, a true visionary and outstanding talent, he enhanced our lives in so many ways. Rick Griffin's last published work was printed in the San Francisco magazine, The City, shortly before his death; a self-portrait of the man at Heaven's Gate, pen and ink in hand. About the seller I lived in San Francisco from 1973 to 1993; the last several years in an apartment building on the eighth floor where I could literally drop a rock out of my window down to the Fillmore Auditorium. While living in San Francisco, I befriended Ben Friedman owner/operator of the Postermat located at 901 Columbus Ave one block north of the hustling Broadway nightlife and tourist attractions; the largest purveyor of psychedelic rock posters in the world at the time. Following his purchase of all Avalon posters from Chet Helms in 1969, Ben negotiated with Bill Graham to purchase all posters in Bill’s possession for $.50 each. Bill Graham thought that he was crazy asking “What do you plan to do with them” as the concerts were now over? Ben replied "I buy them from you for 50 cents and sell them for a dollar." Ben and I spent hours over two decades talking about Fillmore posters and the artists, many of whom who drop into the store needing money and selling Ben some of their works. I was fortunate to meet many of them including Rick Griffin before his tragic motorcycle accident. Ben allowed me, and to the best of my knowledge only me, to actually sort through his stacks of Fillmore posters affording me the opportunity to purchase the most perfect. On rare occasion, after closing the store and feeding the resident rats (they actually learned Ben’s routine for closing the store and always feeding them before turning out the lights), Ben and I would go upstairs to his apartment; quite the experience. Ben had no lights upstairs with the only night light coming from the nearby nightclubs and restaurants. Ben had LOTS of cats that he fed with paper food plates that were scattered everywhere. Ben would allow me to forage through boxes of unorganized posters looking for oddities and rarities. For certain posters, I had to ‘work’ Ben for months. I remember the rare Avalon FD 20 poster that he had hanging on his store wall for years that I wanted, but he didn’t want to sell it to me. Eventually, with great patience taking well over a year, I was able to obtain it. One day I was at the store working on Ben to get another rare poster that he kept in his upstairs apartment as he also didn’t want to sell this one to anyone. Again, with great patience, on this day he agreed to have his companion Blandina Farley go up to get it. As she was bringing it into the store, the Great Earthquake of 1987 hit; the name of the poster that I was purchasing was the Avalon poster FD 21 EARTHQUAKE featuring Bo Diddley. My fiancé had just arrived from out of country three days prior; it was quite a night. I had made an offer to Ben to purchase about 15-20 posters at one time for $35 each but Blandina intervened and objected to this purchase saying that if he sold many of them at one time that he would quickly run out of these prestigious posters. "He would never let you buy what you wanted to buy," said Paul Grushkin, author of "The Art of Rock: Posters From Presley to Punk." "He would let you buy three or four max. You'd have to stand there for hours wheedling him to pull out what you were looking for. Hundreds of us used to be supplicants to this guy." I was one of those hundreds. I had the good fortune of personally meeting and obtaining signatures of artists Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, David Singer, Randy Tuten, Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso and Lee Conklin. Eric King assisted me in obtaining the very hard to get signatures of Bonnie MacLean, ex-wife of Bill Graham, who wanted at the time to separate herself from her ex-husband and the entire Fillmore subject. Eric also helped me to obtain several very rare posters including a mint copy of BG 74. Eric King is the renowned expert on Fillmore posters. I was able to befriend Stanley Mouse to the point where once a year we would have a dinner together. I visited his home and studio in Marin County where I purchased dozens of rare progression posters and other works of art; one of which now hangs over my bed. I was also able to visit Victor Moscoso’s studio where he was working on artwork celebrating the 25th anniversary of Woodstock that he was presenting to Time Magazine. The subject was the iconic bird sitting on the guitar neck; but now the bird was represented as a skeleton. For some reason Time did not select this piece for their cover? I was in the computer business and would trade computer graphic equipment with David Singer for rare posters (many of them non distributed double posters) and signatures. He was quite the soft-spoken gentleman who enjoyed telling me about the progression of his career which now included the exciting new graphic art opportunities with computers. I visited Randy Tuten in his beautiful Victorian home in San Francisco where I was also able to obtain many items and of course signatures. Wes Wilson came to my home and signed well over 60 posters; sharing many stories of how he was chosen by Bill Graham to do virtually all of the early posters as he was the only one that was able to design and print individual posters under the tremendously short time line of a poster a week. They eventually had money disagreements and separated for months. I have dealt with all of the major dealers including Jacaeber Kastor, Dennis King, Eric King, Ben Friedman, Philip Cushway, Paul Getchell, Ed Walker, Debi Jacobson, Larry Marion, Denis Mosgofian (son of Tea Lautrec Litho Printing owner Levon Mosgofian), Robert Beerbohm, unfortunately Bob Metzler, and many others. In what is now 40 plus years of collecting, I have assembled what I believe to be one of the finest collections of Fillmore and Avalon posters and handbills. While Jacaebor Kastor, Eric King and Paul Getchell have a more impressive overall collection of early rock and roll posters, I believe that for completeness, condition, and signatures, my Fillmore collection will compare to any. These posters have been maintained in archival books holding approximately 40 posters per binder. These binders are stored in a custom made solid oak cabinet with cocoa bola trim making them to also be what I believe is the most accessible and viewable collection of these historic pieces anywhere. These posters were all collected by me between 1968 when I graduated from high school until 1993 when I moved from San Francisco. I have not purchased any since that time. This was a hobby of passion, for both rock and roll and the extremely unique and beautiful city of San Francisco where I was privileged to live for 20 years. Therefore, I have very mixed feelings about separating from this collection, but now that I am retired, it seems like a good time to evaluate. For now, I am starting by selling some of the duplicate Fillmore posters which I will add on to monthly. At the same time, I am in the process of photographing each poster from my “complete set” of Fillmore posters documenting all authentic printed versions and re-verifying versions, condition, and signatures. This will take time so I will list below what I have completed now on this set and update this list in the future. I have no real idea what this complete collection is worth so I will have to figure out how to list it when the time comes. I have no intention to break up this complete set. As described, I have taken great pride and effort in caring for and storing this pieces of history and can assure you that I am offering some of the best condition posters available anywhere. Bill Graham and San Francisco’s Fillmore West made significant contributions to the history of Rock and Roll in support of many performing artists including on regular basis; Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Bill Grahams ‘house band’ of Carlos Santana. And of course these historical posters giving us the Art of Rock!!!. I thank you for your interest in looking at them and hope that should you purchase one that you will appreciate the uniqueness of the subject of the San Francisco Fillmore Rock and Roll experience. Complete Fillmore Poster Set - Book 1 Bill Graham Memorial (Signed by R. Tuten), BG 1 (1st printing, handling marks on edges, no pinholes or creases), BG 1 (2nd printing, single pinhole in each corner, minor color fading), BG 1 (3rd printing in mint condition), BG 2 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 2 (2nd printing, has four very tiny pinholes – three of which are so small that they don’t show up on pictures), BG 2 (3rd copy signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 3 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 3 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 0 (1st printing signed by B. MacLean in pen in mint condition), BG 0 (Variant first printing signed by B. MacLean in pen in mint condition), BG 4 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in blue ink in excellent condition; very slight aging of white and one small pinhole in top corners only), BG 4 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 5 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen in mint condition), BG 5 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 6 (1st printing – strong purple color - signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 6 (2nd printing – more reddish color - signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 7 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in excellent condition having slight wave on right border and pinholes in each corner), BG 7 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 8 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen (pencil?) in excellent condition having very slight toning of white border and pinholes in top corners), BG 8 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen in mint condition), BG 9 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen in outstanding condition with one very small pinhole in each corner; very hard to see), BG 9 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in ink in mint condition), BG 10 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 10 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 11 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 11 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen in mint condition), BG 12 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition with two very small brown spots in lower right corner), BG 12 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 13 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 13 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition with several very small brown spots in lower left corner and left border), BG 13 (3rd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen in mint condition), BG 13 (4th printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 14 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 15 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 15 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition) BG 16 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 16 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 17 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 17 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 18 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition), BG 18 (2nd printing signed by Wes Wilson in pen in mint condition), BG 19 (1st printing signed by Wes Wilson in pencil in mint condition).
Price: 750 USD
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
End Time: 2024-02-11T19:53:12.000Z
Shipping Cost: 75 USD
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