T1B

Alton Kelley, psychedelic poster creator, dies
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Alton Kelley, one of the founding members of the '60s San Francisco rock scene, died Sunday at his home in Petaluma after a long illness. He was 67.

Mr. Kelley will be remembered as the creator (with his artistic partner, Stanley Mouse) of hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters, such as the famed "skull and roses" poster for a Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. Mr. Kelley and Mouse created 26 posters for just the first year of the Avalon's operation.

But Mr. Kelley was also one of four people who called themselves the Family Dog and decided to throw the world's first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman's Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene. The quartet had just returned to the Bay Area after spending an LSD-drenched summer restoring a silver rush dancehall in Virginia City, Nev., called the Red Dog Saloon.

Mr. Kelley, a motorcycle enthusiast since his New England youth who painted pinstripes on bike gas tanks, designed the flyers advertising the original Family Dog shows, but lacked drafting ability. When he met Stanley Mouse, who had recently relocated from Detroit where he made a name for himself doing hot rod art, Mr. Kelley found the draftsman he needed. The two formed Mouse Studios and cranked out art together, Mr. Kelley's drawing skills eventually improving to the point where left-handed Mr. Kelley would be working on one side of the easel, right-handed Mouse on the other.

"He had the most impeccable taste of anybody I knew," said Mouse, "He would do the layouts, and I would do the drawing."

They worked together steadily for 15 years and on and off thereafter. Their Mouse Studios was located in a converted Lower Haight firehouse where Janis Joplin first rehearsed with Big Brother and the Holding Company. They also opened a store called Pacific Ocean Trading Company (POT Co.), one of the first head shops in Haight-Ashbury. Recently, the two collaborated on the cover to the program for this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner.

Mouse said they could work for hours in silence. "We knew what to do," he said. "We didn't have to talk."

During the heyday of the Avalon Ballroom, the pair would frequent the public library looking for images they could employ in their poster-making; Edward Curtis photographs of American Indians, illustrations from 19th century novels (the skull and roses was adapted from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"), often laughing so loud at what they found the librarians would ask them to leave.

"They thought it was the funniest stuff in town," said Paul Grushkin, author of "The Art Of Rock.

"The twinkle in Kelley's eye - he knew it was all a giggle."

"Stanley and I had no idea what we were doing," Mr. Kelley told The Chronicle last year. "But we went ahead and looked at American Indian stuff, Chinese stuff, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern, Bauhaus, whatever. We were stunned by what we found and what we were able to do. We had free rein to just go graphically crazy. Where before that, all advertising was pretty much just typeset with a photograph of something."

The work of Mr. Kelley and Mouse has come to be recognized as a 20th century American counterpart to the French poster art of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec during the Belle Epoque, although the two psychedelic artists never imagined at the time they were creating anything of enduring value, anything more than another crazy poster for this week's Avalon show.

"We were just having fun making posters," said Mouse. "There was no time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I think most great art is created in a furious moment."

Mr. Kelley continued to make posters all his life, although his artwork in the recent past concentrated on his air-brushed paintings of hot rods and custom cars that was both sold as fine art and reproduced on T-shirts.

He is survived by his wife, Marguerite Trousdale Kelley, and their children: Patty of San Diego, Yosarian of Seattle and China of Sacramento; two grandchildren; and his mother and sister.

Memorial plans are pending.

Contributions can be made to the Washington Mutual Western Street branch in Petaluma for a memorial bench in Sonoma County Park.

RumpleForeskin wrote:Rack the art work.

Still, my favorite album art work has to be this...

PSUFAN wrote:So you think. There is the feeding bill, and the costs of trailing in a high pressure hose - not to mention 236,865 cans of paint and the phalanx of artisans and scaffolding.

RumpleForeskin wrote:I feel accepted.

Roger_the_Shrubber wrote:Fantastic artist. He will be missed.


Interesting that one , if not my top 2 posters are in the thread.

Heya Tom and Mikey?

How have y'all been?

Goober McTuber wrote:

RumpleForeskin wrote:Rack the art work.

Still, my favorite album art work has to be this...

Just think. They could have used Rumplewife and cut their modeling fees by 83%.

The two formed Mouse Studios and cranked out art together, Mr. Kelley's drawing skills eventually improving to the point where left-handed Mr. Kelley would be working on one side of the easel, right-handed Mouse on the other.

Cuda wrote:All Kelley did was imitate Dali & Maxfield Parrish.

Mikey wrote:

Cuda wrote:All Kelley did was imitate Dali & Maxfield Parrish.

No, he didn't.

Roger_the_Shrubber wrote:Fantastic artist. He will be missed.


Interesting that one , if not my top 2 posters are in the thread.

Heya Tom and Mikey?

How have y'all been?

Mikey wrote:The guy was doing poster and handbills, and later on album covers. Part of his thing was to find pictures in the library and embellish them.

You're trying to compare his work to Dali and Parrish, I'm pretty sure you're the one with his head stuck in the wrong place.

Mister Bushice wrote:Every artist is influenced by someone. Part of an artists formal training is studying past masters in different genres, and any artist who wasn't schooled didn't wake up one day when they were 12, pick up a brush or pen and just start in creating something no one had ever done before.

Leonardo was born in Vinci, Italy on April 15th, 1452, the illegitimate son of a young notary. Leonardo grew up in an environment rich with scholarly texts and art, provided by his father, who himself taught Leonardo how to paint, and by his father's family. When he was in his late teens, Leonardo was sent to Florence to be an apprentice in the studio of famous renaissance sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio....

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain, to artist and teacher Jose Ruiz Blasco, and his wife Maria Picasso. At the age of 10 young Pablo Picasso learned how to paint from his father, who had been appointed teacher at the Da Guarda art school in La Coruna.....

René François-Ghislain Magritte was born on November 21st, 1898, in Lessines, Belgium, the eldest of three boys. Even at an early age, he liked to draw, and was encouraged to do so by his father Léopold. He later started painting at the age of 12.....

Gustav Klimt was born on July 14, 1862, in Baumgarten, Austria, the second seven children, the son of a poor jewelry engraver, It is only at the age of fourteen, after he enters the University of Plastic Arts in Vienna, that he begins developing his talent as an artist.....

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow, on December 4th, 1866. His parents both played piano, so he was encouraged to learn how to read and play music at an early age. Young Kandinsky played cello and piano, and even though we know him best as a painter, music has always been the main inspiration behind his work. When he was only 5 years old,, his parents divorced, so he moved in with his aunt in Odessa, continuing to play music, and learning to paint......

But it was at the age of fifteen that Frida Kahlo, while recovering from her extensive injuries in the hospital, began to paint.....

Bushice wrote:Any artist who wasn't schooled didn't wake up one day when they were 12,

Cuda wrote:Alton Kelley was certainly every bit as talented as a 12 year old.