RIP Alton Kelley

It sometimes seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far away, but San Francisco in the late 1960s was hugely significant in my own life, especially after I arrived at Palo Alto to go to school in August 1969, but also in the cultural life and imagery of the USA.

One of the things I tried to do was get up to as many concerts as I could. I saw lots of groups. But my favorite by far were the Grateful Dead, who I probably saw in concert 20 times in the four years in lived in the Bay Area.

Part of the appeal of the Dead and of the whole San Francisco concert scene was the poster art. I wish I had kept all the posters, handbills and illustrated tickets that went by in that four years. My favorite artists were Mouse and Alton Kelley, who designed the poster shown here that the Dead adopted as their official graphic image as well as an album cover.

One thing that was fun about them, which continues to enrich my life to this day, is that they did quite a bit of research on other graphics and design traditions and borrowed heavily from them, which often gives me a smile when I learn now about an artist who informed their work then.

You can see a picture of Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse here. Kelley just died at age 67. There were good stories about him in both the New York Times and NPR today. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91208912
and http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/arts/design/04kelley.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries&oref=slogin

Here are a couple more of my favorite posters that Kelley and Mouse did. The first one is a good example of how they borrowed from famous designers, like Alphonse Mucha, of art nouveau fame.