The art of stanley mouse

THE ART OFSTANLEY MOUSE

Progetto gra0co: La RosaAlessandro

Accademy editore - Piazza della Rovere, 10700165 Roma06 686 4008www.accademidellearti.it

The Artist’s Journey of

Stanley Mouse

The Artist’s Journey of

Stanley Mouse

Thepath of artS t a n l e yM o u s eweaves and

curves as enigmatically as the languo-rous lettering that characterizes hisposter art. Like his art nouveau styling,Mouse emerges from an artistic point,blossoms wildly, then turns back to theIne art forms that underlie his matureoeuvre. Stanley Miller was born to aDisney animator who took his familyto live in Detroit in the 1950s.YoungStanley was enchanted by both majorcultural inJuences arising in that tough,racist milieu:Motown music andAme-rican muscle cars. Like many brilliantbut unenthusiastic students, Stanleysketched madly in hundreds of note-books. By seventh grade, he wasknown for his monster hotrod pictu-res and his iconic mouse signature.Hethus acquired the nickname thatwould become the nom de crayon forhis entire career.

Mouse found his niche in the Detroithotrod culture not by turning wren-ches, but by Inely detailing the ama-zing paint jobs that were a point ofpride on Detroit automobiles andmotorcycles. Soon every weekendand after school, the teenage Mousehad bikes and cars lined up for his ex-quisite pinstriping.Already well known for his sketches ofpop-eyed, tongue-lolling monsters dri-ving extreme hotrods, almost by acci-dent Mouse’s restless brush, now anairbrush, found a new medium whenhe began painting on his friends’ t-shirts. Soon people lined up to haveMouse airbrush spontaneous illustra-tions on their shirts and sweats, whichbrought him another great skill: he be-came very fast at painting his untamed,imaginative creatures onto unusual

surfaces. One night he expanded hiscanvas to the newly painted walls of alocal teen hangout and found himselfexpelled from his high school. At hisparent’s behest, he enrolled at De-troit’s School for the Society of Artsand Crafts, which he found uninspiring– except for a girl in his painting class,who was painting monsters of themodels – in oils.Mouse says:“I was amazed and a littledisappointed, maybe a little grossedout that she was making the beautifulmodel into a monster. That was so-mething that I did on weekends at ho-trod shows. I was in art school tryingto learn how to paint the model likeRembrandt, not Picasso.

Timeless - Stanley Mouse, poster,1968, San Francisco

4

6

STANLEY MOUSEThe right places at the right times

I was doing the right art movement atthe right time. But there seemed to bea higher calling: to paint like the ma-sters.” Mouse’s hotrod art became afamily project – his dad managed himon the road while his mom ran themail order business from home. Hisairbrushing took him on tour on thehotrod and state fair circuit, where hehad two life-shaping experiences.At the Michigan State Fair in 1958,Mouse’s airbrushing booth was situa-ted across from the music stagewhere the stars of Motown were per-forming night and day for a week.Mouse was immersed in the music heloved, music he had been listening toon the black music radio stations inDetroit since he was a child, latersneaking off to hear these performersat R&B clubs. Stevie Wonder, the Su-premes, Marvin Gaye, the Tempta-tions, Martha and the Vandellas allIlled his head ran out through his air-brush. His hand danced with a rhythmof its own and Mouse tranced out fordays, airbrushing scores of shirts andposters with his signature, ever-evol-

ving, bizarre monsters in their unlikelyhotrods. During that period, BigDaddy Ed Roth, hero and self-promo-ting genius of the monster rod car-tooning movement, dropped byMouse’s airbrush booth at a major ho-trod show.He admired Mouse’s work,then threw down the gauntlet by of-fering to show him how to make$300 in a few hours. Stanley invitedhim into his booth. Roth sat on a low,small stool, a big man with a big gut,and they airbrushed shirts side by side

all afternoon.Mouse learned some va-luable things that day. He learned thathe was signiIcantly faster than Roth,even though Roth was sketching onlyin black whereas Mouse was using richand lavish color. He also noticed thatas Big Daddy did indeed make $300,but Mouse had a cool grand in hispocket. He also realized that his ownart was too good to sell so cheap.Na-turally, Stanley Mouse was drawingmouse monsters with their wheels, soBig Daddy dubbed Mouse “Rat Fink.”Then he took Mouse’s cataloguesback to his own studio in California,where he had his artists copy many ofMouse’s original themes and Igures.Thus, the Rat Fink was born.Today Mouse shrugs it off.This all hap-pened the early 1960s, when thedeath of the Fifties was in full swingand the Fifties were not going gentlyinto that goodnight. Then came thegreat moment that changed so manylives in the storied Sixties: Mouse gotpsychedelisized. He suddenly transi-tioned his personal art to psychedelicimagery and unconventional uses of

7

1.Easy Rider - Stanley Mouse,poster,1967, San Francisco. (a sin.)

2. Grateful Dead at Avalon Bal-lroom - Stanley Mouse & Alton Kelley,poster, 1966, San Francisco. (a des)


8

media. Mouse says: “I was paintinghundreds of airbrushed shirts andgoing to art school. I was searching forsomething new, the next evolvementin my life. “I had a hunger to learn topaint, but my teacher, the great SarkisSarkesian, would only come to myeasel once in a while and say, “Scrapeit off.” So, I followed him around toother students’ easels and listened towhat he had to say. He got mad at meand Inally came to me to look in mesketch book to see if i was any good.He said if it wasn’t for my sketchbook,he didn’t know what I was even doingthere. “I left art school disillusioned.”And, like so many others of the time,Mouse precipitously announced to hisfamily he was moving to San Franci-sco. In the summer of 1965, he leftwith several art school friends in hisPorsche C and the Mouse Studio van.The Laughing Academy hit the road.In San Francisco,Mouse found a posseof people who had also abandonedDetroit for the Left Coast. They ga-thered together in houses on Pine St.and some of them, by a process of fre-

quent and rapidly expanding houseparties with live bands, eventually be-cameThe Family Dog – the legendarycollective that produced dozens ofdances and be-ins at the Avalon bal-lroom. Here Mouse met Alton Kelly,who was to become his partner inpsychedelic poster art for many yearsto come – but not yet. Throwingdown his wrenches, Kelly joined withMouse in what was to become thegerminal psychedelic art collaborationof its time. Alton Kelly was a majormover and shaker in the Bay Area’scounter-culture. Unlike Mouse, as ayouth he had applied his creativity to

3-dimensional hotrods: models, paintjobs, mechanics, and of course motorcycles. He had gone to art school andhad a brilliant head for composition,conceptualization, and promotion, butin those days not much by way ofdraftsmanship or mastery of ink andpaint.


Uncle Sam - Stanley Mouse, poster,1969, San Francisco.

9

2. Jim Kweskin Jug Band atAva-lon Ballroom - Stanley Mouse &Alton Kelley, poster, 1966, San Francisco.

1. Miller Blues Band at AvalonBallroom - Stanley Mouse & Alton Kel-ley, poster, 1967, San Francisco.


10

Of these things, Mouse had plenty.Mouse rented an old Ire station forhis studio and he and Kelly startedcreating the posters that were, andstill are, emblematic of the time. Kellywas left-handed and Mouse is right-handed, so they would often work ona poster simultaneously, sitting side byside.The posters would be printed ata shop around the corner, where theprinter also happened to collect anti-que organs.While his latest art wasbeing printed in blazing, glowing co-lors, Stanley would sit high at a pumporgan and play with great abandonthe music of the presses and themagic in his head.The Avalon Bal-lroom was a major cultural nexus, thereal “scene,” andThe Family Dog Illedit with music and light every weekend.Every event was announced by won-derful posters and handbills by Kellyand Mouse and others. These bits ofpsychedelic art would appear sud-denly on lampposts and in windows,then reappear on walls in pads.Today they are in museums all overthe world. People came in their thou-

sands to San Francisco to be part ofthe scene.The parties were big, loudand colorful, excellent enhancementsof consciousness were widely availa-ble, the second-hand stores were Il-led with Ine old Edwardian clothing,and the San Francisco scene was at itsfabulous, innocent, Jowing, dancing,laughing, anything can happen, love-ad-dled best.They were freaks, heads, lon-ghairs, and they were changing theworlds within and the world without.1966-1968 was a time of great inno-vation. People who could free them-selves did, and there werebreathtaking, sometimes wrenchingevolutionary leaps in social forms, per-sonal freedom, expression, and re-sponsibility. There was music andthrilling visual experiences, beauty forthe sake of itself, and intrepid, someti-mes terrifying, always illuminating vo-yages deep inside.The Jower peoplewererangers of inner space. Meanwhile, backhome, Stanley’s mom opened the Irsthead shop in Detroit, the Mouse House.


1.Bo Diddley,Big Brother & theHolding Company at AvalonBallroom - Stanley Mouse & Alton Kel-ley, poster, 1966, San Francisco.

11


2. Bo Diddley, at Avalon Bal-lroom - Stanley Mouse & Alton Kelley,poster, 1967, San Francisco.

12


Stanley sent his posters to her and forthirty years she offered those and allthe other accoutrements of the coun-ter-culture to the turned-on denizensof Detroit. But alas, things were chan-ging in the Haight Ashbury scene,thanks largely to unwelcome attentionfrom the press, whose sensationalizedaccounts of the lives of the “hippies”brought thousands of hapless, helplesskids from everywhere to the streetsof San Francisco. Evil white powdersand tainted psychedelics spoiled thegood vibes and people got burned,hurt, and angry. In 1968 the denizensof Haight Ashbury celebrated theDeath of Hippie, and the scene beganto unravel quickly.Mouse saw the wri-ting on the wall and it wasn’t psyche-delic airbrush. On an invitation fromEric Clapton, he split for London topaint James on Clapton’s Rolls Royce.Due to the excesses of that time andplace, the Rolls was wrecked beforeMouse ever laid a brush on it. He sta-yed on and did some work for a fewof the English groups, like Blind Faithand the Beatles, and took opportuni-

ties to study his art from a new per-spective. Mouse found the Londonunderground art scene unhappilycompetitive and uptight. The kind ofcreative collaboration he had enjoyedin San Francisco was unheard of there.

2. Grateful Dead at Avalon Bal-lroom - Stanley Mouse & Alton Kelley,poster, 1969, San Francisco. (a des)

1. Daily Flash, Quicksilver Mes-senger Service at Avalon Bal-lroom - Stanley Mouse & Alton Kelley,poster, 1968, San Francisco.

15

Sitography: www.mousestudios.comwww.google.comwww.wikipedia.it

16

ee 99,99

"Mouseart makes my heart say, 'Cheese'"

-- Howard Hessman

"Stanley Mouse drew and painted from inside the music. The spirit that drove the music ofthe '60s was the same spirit that drove his art."

-- Joel Selvin

"They are works of love."

-- Mick Jagger

S

The art of stanley mouse

Documents

Transcript of The art of stanley mouse