When death rears it's ugly head, rarely does the demise of any select person bring despair to the masses such as the untimely loss of noted poster artist and sixrties icon Alton Kelley. During the apex of hippiedom & The Golden Age of rock n' roll, i.e., 1967-1977, Alton was one half of the famed tandem Mouse/Kelley poster art and admired and revered as any band during those halcyon days of The Counter Culture & psychedelia. Their work during this era and as a faction of The Big Five artists (along with Moscoso, Griffin and Wilson) would forever etch their names in the pantheons of musical immortals. Long before the inception of FM radio, posters were the method of conveying events of given magnitude and the work of Mouse/Kelley would soon adorn album covers for The Grateful Dead and others of the noted musical revolution. Alton was like so many of American youth during the day and his exodus to the bay would evolve into a partnership with Stanley "Mouse" Miller, the eponymous poster company known as Pacific Ocean Trade( P.O.T.) company and the first studio on Henry Street in San Francisco and then at 715 Ashbury, the juxtaposing abode across the street from the Grateful Dead mansion at 710. During the embryonic days as renouned artists amidst their peers, both would venture to local libraries and persue for hours to garner ideas that would evolve into the art that adorned the posters now worth as much as thirty thousand dollars. The silence from this tragic loss is as deafening as the music that was once synonymous with their acquired skills as the perveyors of classic events during the Age of Aquarius and the circle may remain unbroken but is now somewhat smaller. The works of Alton Kelley now live on as he does, vicariously through Mouse and those of us who knew him as a gentle soul, a humanitarian as much as an artist, charismatic as much as dynamic and a pillar of faith during a much maligned and violent decade. May he be remembered for his contributions to art, to the ideology of his generation, for his efforts with The Family Dog and may he now, "Rock In Peace".

Cheers - Don Aters - 2008