In the 1960s there were parallels to past revolutions. The Boston Massacre was replaced by Kent State, Sit-ins for Civil Rights replaced horrific Battles of a Civil War, and the Common Man of Payne became known as a hippie.
San Francisco, like Boston, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other battle grounds had never seen a war. Lush forests, rolling vineyards, and Golden Gates over the ocean sprang a voice in the wind. To a generation once again braking free of previous beliefs a townhall was needed to gather. The townhalls in California were known as the Fillmore West and Avalon Ballroom. People met in these halls to discuss, ingest, and dance their night away. The music and ideas that spoke to the audience revolutionized and galvanized an artistic movement. One man who helped create this forum was named Bill Graham the owner of The Fillmore West. He needed a way to tell people what was happening and announce the next great band to speak to everyone. He turned to some of the local artists of California for his symbols and billboards.
When the piano was invented no one could have known that many years later from Beethoven to Billy Joel it would sing songs of revolution and love. The same holds true of the printing press. From Martin Luther to Lee Conklin it would advertise revolution and love. Mixing colors, ideas, advertisement, and interchanging features led to the greatest art of the 20th century. Lee Conklin’s contribution in the late 1960s is among the most vivid and complex of all popular art of the era.
Interchanging images with a freedom that outpaced Dahli Lee’s work will be realized over centuries to come. So who is Lee Conklin, and what experiences have affected his art? And what can he share with us today?
Lee Conklin was born July 24, 1941 in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and grew up mostly in Monsey, New York. His dad was a house builder, and his mom was a nurse He was the sixth of seven children. Lee graduated from Spring Valley High School in 1959. Influenced primarily by the pen-and-ink mastery of Heinrich Kley and Saul Steinberg he found art as a way of expression. I asked Lee about growing up in New York and attending college in Michigan if he ever misses the Northern climate? He quipped, "New York ,yep, Michigan yep , you must mean me. I miss the summer thunder storms, that’s all. No plans to pass that way again, but no plans not to either. I spent some time in Michigan but did not leave my heart or any other organs there. In fact that’s where I got my better half. The truth is that gravity still sucks, only Love can save us. Find it , hurry." (LC)
Lee did not initially pursue a career in art. Instead he began studying philosophy and history while attending Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. While there he met his wife Joy, left Calvin in 1965, and married her in 1966. They lived in Florida for a while, before Lee was drafted into the army and served for a year as a cook in Korea.
He was released from active duty in may of 1967, at which point he found himself in Los Angeles. While there some of his pen and ink illustrations were published by the Los Angeles Free Press. When he was looking for work as a cartoonist he read in Time Magazine an article about the poster artists and music scene in San Francisco. He and his wife decided to relocate there.
The first poster Lee did for a concert occurred in what I had assumed was the Barn at U.C.Berkley. Lee quickly corrected me, "Thanks for the hoopla. Confusion ," Berkley Barn"? You got the right artist ? No wonder you think I'm so hot. "The Barn in Rio Nido ", perhaps". (LC) You can see in the image (Below) that he was honing his craft and creating a totally new experience.
In 1968 Lee and his wife found themselves in San Francisco during the 'Summer of Love' and Lee did a series of posters for Bill Graham and the Fillmore West.
In the book The Art of the Fillmore Lee tells about his first meeting with Bill Graham. "It was a Friday night in February. I went into the Fillmore with my drawings, and Bill (Graham) just liked what he saw." (LC) Bill Graham was the keeper of the "San Francisco Sound". He would hire local artists to hand paint or draw posters to advertise upcoming events. "He (Bill) needed a poster done that weekend for the following week’s show, so I went to work adding lettering to a drawing I had previously done - one that he especially liked". (LC)
BG101 is that first poster Lee did. Drawn and printed true to it’s original ink and pen it showed two people embracing in a closeness that extends to clasped hands instead of lips. The evening’s moon watches down on the scene and flowers are borne from marching birds in the bottom. Up until then Fillmore images had gained fame using colors and words in all sorts of styles and shapes. Lee used the images to express new ideas and took the mind where it hadn’t been previously. He went on to draw and paint 33 more posters for the Fillmore series alone. Wes Wilson, Bonnie MacLean, and David Singer are the only artists who have contributed more to the Fillmore and Bill Graham.
A great artist sees things around them and interprets it to others. Lee took the love, psychedelia, drugs, and mindbending conscience to create advertisements for an experience. Among the many bands he painted posters for include: Cream, The Grateful Dead, Santana, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone, The Animals, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, Steve Miller Band, Jefferson Airplane, Jeff Beck, Yardbirds, Country Joe and the Fish, Iron Butterfly, Fleetwood Mac, and many more. Today many are sold for thousands of dollars and are collected all over the world.
His poster for Santana and The Grateful Dead (Below to the right) utilizing pen and ink of a lion became one of Santana's greatest album covers. The people concealed in the image are part of what makes this work so outstanding. The deeper one looks, the more that can be seen.
So what was this whole scene like in 1968? Lee tells of the experience, "I arrived in San Francisco in November of 1967 after being detained by the U.S. Army. So I missed the Summer of Love… I guess it was utopia, but unsustainable. It was in fact a far different world than I had known before my stint in olive drab purgatory (at least it wasn't Hell, just Korea). There were still more angelic smiles than I had ever experienced anywhere, more music, and artistic behavior generally. But War and my growing awareness of toxicity in the mainstream culture ( greed, injustice, environmental degradation, etc. ) were bricks that kept me from floating away. Now they are boulders." (LC)
So what was the wildest party Lee attended back in the swinging sixties? He answered, "A peace demonstration at SF Civic Center, plenty of nudes, not much sex, But lots of love. Oh lost and by the wind grieved ghost." (LC)
When reading about the era there is always the mention that LSD and other drugs changing the Fillmore artwork at a certain period. I asked if there was a particular part of Lee’s experience that drew him to faces and people in the artwork, or was it something he had always seen? "I think pot probably had more influence on my Art than LSD. Neither actually changed my artistic agenda. I think LSD should be a part of ones education, but not a major. But then I'm not really an expert on the subject. Recreational hallucination has been a hobby of mine from early childhood". (LC) He also states in another article, "I made it my mission to translate my psychedelic experience into paper. The afterglow was always the most creative time for me."(LC)
After a poster was drawn or painted it had to be brought to a printing press where colors were laid on top of each other to create the piece. The colors that were chosen became an art in itself, and depending on the mixture and concentration would directly lead to the outcome of the overall piece. Lee tells of his experience with overlaying, "I consider myself a primitive when it comes overlays. I had scant experience or training in graphic technique when I got my first poster gig (BGP101). Rick Griffin had such great control of color design by using blue line prints of his drawing to make complex displays of color. I wish I had learned his secret sooner , I would have copied him for sure. But now its archaic. I never quite knew what I was doing. I never knew what colors I would use till I picked them off the printers chart. No mock ups , or color comps. Is it just me or is history accelerating?" (LC)
In a computer world today these issues are non-existent. When I asked Lee to compare today’s digital world to the printing press of the past he gave this answer. "I think there may be a prejudice against digital media. It sounds so easy, "computer generated" and it is true that now anyone can produce professional looking graphics. My challenge has always been to subvert the poster form to whatever my muse insists. No matter what the medium. I always resented the tedium of cutting overlays for colors. Colorizing is a lot more fun nowadays. The hard part of digital is all the choices available. It takes at least as much time for me to design a poster on PC as on paper. I feel lucky to have had it both ways". (LC)
My personal favorite is BG139 (Left), usually referred to as the Canned Heat poster. It is Lee’s interpretation of a liquid light show. Even if you were to stare for hours at the image there are always new things that pop out. The overlays of color are at their greatest in this piece.
In the summer of 1968, after the first rush of the Flower Power had wilted, Lee and his wife Joy left San Francisco and traveled throughout Northern California. Soon they had crossed the country, settling in Middletown, NY, very close to the town where Lee was born. It was there that they started a family. During this time, Lee worked as a therapy aide in a psychiatric hospital. He continued his art whenever he had time and sometimes would show it at some of the art fairs in the area. In the late 1970s, Lee and his family moved back to Northern California, living for many years in the Petaluma area. In 1972, Lee and Joy had a son, Quinn, and in 1979 a daughter, Caitlin. They have lived in various parts of Northern California over the years. Always a conservationist, Lee worked for many years with trees and reforestation projects. He now lives in Columbia, California, a stones throw from Yosemite National Park, at the foot of the Sierra Mountains .
Over the last few years Lee Conklin has done rock posters for the BGP New Fillmore series for bands such as Zero and Abraxas. He has also done pieces for the "New Family Dog" series featuring performers like Etta James. With the popularity of his works Lee gave away all of the early Fillmore series posters allotted to him. He does have a few 60's posters from the Fillmore and other events for sale on his website. He also does original works and services such as wedding/birth announcements. Check out his website: http://www.leeconklin.com
During an artshow in a museum featuring his classic pieces Virginia McCullough was struck by the effect that Lee’s work had on her daughter. She explained the experience," Julie, our artist, who truly should have been born in the 1960's, stood awe struck in front of an offset lithograph on paper by artist Lee Conklin. Entitled "Steppenwolf - The Grateful Dead [at] Fillmore Auditorium, August 29th to September 1st, 1968." She made me stop and appreciate the intricacies of the design like a patient teacher she pointed out the many faces nearly hidden in the thousands of pen and ink lines. "Now that is really art", she told me who, as a former conservative, couldn't possibly understand what she had been born knowing." (VM)
Lee Conklin is not only a great artist, but a great man. He takes time to reflect and speak with people about who he is and what he has done. Art is usually a hobby that rarely receives the financial rewards it gives to the viewer. Lee joked that, "Only poor people like my art. I'm bragging , not whining. (The only good presidents are dead presidents). Make Art not money."(LC)
