D.C. gallery showcases Grateful Dead and Stanley Mouse art

It's all the way on the east coast, but I thought it was interesting. 

The Govinda Gallery in Washington D.C. is featuring works of artist Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly, who made the iconic in-house posters for the Avalon Ballroom.

But instead of traveling all that way, see the online gallery here.

Stanley Mouse talks about the work after the jump.

From the Washington Post: 

"My history with the Grateful Dead goes far back. They were playing at the Avalon Ballroom, and nobody really knew about them. But they had a great name. I'd always loved painting skulls and stuff, because I came out of the hot-rod art world. I liked their name, which propagated a lot of imagery in my head.

"Kelley and I had a job doing posters for the Avalon, and the promoter said: “Do a poster for the Grateful Dead.” So we went to the library in San Francisco, just searching through old books. We came across the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” and in it was an old illustration that had that skull-and-roses character on it. We went: “Whoa, look at that! That has Grateful Dead written all over it.” So we used it on that poster, which became the famous icon.

"I'm most famous for something I didn't even do! All I did to it was color it in. The popular thing to do in those days was to take a powerful image from the past and build a poster around it. We didn't usually steal anything from a living artist; they were all ancient pictures.

"At that time, we knew history was being made with that whole Haight-Ashbury scene, and we were the visual part of that. I was doing a poster every week. There was so much going on. There was no time to think about: “Is this going to be in museums someday?”

Posted by: David Frese, The Star

Comments

[NEW]

I'm quite familiar with the Govinda Gallery, Stanley Mouse, et al. The Govinda is a small two room gallery in Georgetown about the size of Mike Kelly's Westsider, maybe even smaller. They had an exhibit of Jerry Garcia's artwork some years ago.

Sounds like a fine exhibit. Not sure how this made it on to Tim's blog although I'm glad it did.

[fuck your heroes]

Stanley Mouse is an asshole.

[chaussures puma ferrari]

The Govinda Gallery in Washington D.C. is featuring works of artist Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly, who made the iconic in-house posters for the Avalon Ballroom.