AOR 2.359 Mescalito (Huichol Indian) 67 Griffin

[morst]

I found a thing on ebay that said that a standard baseball card is 20-point card stock, so that can't be 1/72 inch per point.

[wandering-gypsy]

Also what's this about stock measured in points? Is that points like 72nds of an inch, the way font sizes are expressed?

I think it's a unit of thikness, but I can't recall if it's an actual measurement or or a value on a scale used for comparison. If someone can clear that up I'd love to know as well.

There are several ways to characterize a poster and distinguish between different printings. One of the useful characterizations, for older BG, FD, etc., is by thickness of the stock - on a points scale.

A micrometer is used to measure the stock. They're expensive when they're accurate. Sometimes horribly expensive. Getting a used one in great shape is your best bet.

Each point (pt) is equal to 1 thousandths of an inch (.001). The points scale usually goes from around 5 pt to 36 pt or light cardstock to heavy boxboard.

For comparative purposes: 12 pt is commonly used for business cards. Thus, 12 pt stock, when read with a micrometer, should measure 12 thousandths of an inch (.012).

Reality sets in .... for older rock posters on cheap paper, thickness varies so several readings should be taken. You can then average the readings or stick with the highest percentage of one reading. There doesn't seem to be a standard, between these two methods, for rock posters.

Measuring stock thickness doesn't matter much for newer posters as many of the printing shop methods and habits have disappeared or changed over the years. It is a useful method for several older posters that had numerous reprints and bootlegs over a lengthy time. I've been told (by "experts") that there are even a few rock poster where the printings can only be differentiated by the stock thickness.

[wandering-gypsy]

I added an image of the black ink on white stock 2nd printing.

[wandering-gypsy]

A Griffin story about the Huichols from Steve Barilotti (surfer/journalist) .....

Flaven Heather Highland Griffin was born in July 1966 at UCSF Hospital, making her one of the original Haight Ashbury love children.
Flaven’s reluctant father, meanwhile, had sold his LA studio and slipped across the border on extended surfari to San Blas, Mexico.
He’d been up to San Francisco briefly in June to look in on Ida, but had eagerly checked out the extraordinary new free-form concert posters being drawn by Wes Wilson and Ida’s neighbors, Stanley “Mouse” Miller and Alton Kelly. Since leaving LA, Ida had been sending Rick handbills from recent shows to clue him in on the blossoming psychedelic music scene.

Shortly after his arrival in Mazatlan, Rick wrote Ida, blustering about his tortuous journey south braving desperados, alligators and man-eating potholes to catch a decent wave. To Rick’s naive sense of adventure, Mexico seemed an exotic third-world frontier teaming with cinematic danger and intrigue.
Ida had a chuckle and got out her suitcase.“I laughed because I had traveled a lot as a kid and I knew it wasn’t a big deal to go down to Mexico,” says Ida. “So I just got on a bus in Tijuana with Flaven, who’s six weeks old, and my friends Gus and Mary, and we all went down to Mazatlan to see Rick.
Rick didn’t know we were coming. He tried not to act surprised when we all showed up on the beach out of nowhere.

”The new family set up under a beach palapa at San Blas and quietly worked it out. For the next two months they lived an idyllic existence: surfing, sleeping in hammocks under the stars, eating fish tacos and sipping fresh coconut juice from the husk.
Rick’s surfing had tapered off to almost nothing while he was at Chouinard and he was fast rediscovering the stoke.

While making no promises, he also made his first tentative steps toward fatherhood.

One day on a foray up into the nearby Sierra Madre mountains Rick and Ida encountered the reclusive Huichol Indians, a shamanistic tribe renowned for their vibrant yarn paintings and bead design inspired by peyote-induced visions. The Huichol and their sacred art fascinated Rick and one can see wizened mescaleros begin to pop up as recurring motifs in the Griffin-Stoner adventures soon afterwards.

[electrachrome]

thanks for all the 411.....great info!

[morst]

That's awesome! I love fish tacos!



Oh yeah, and thanks for the info.

[surfadelic]

The black light / color version of the Huichol Indian poster was never authorized. Gordon McClelland told me he and Rick visited Colorico Graphics in Hollywood and inquired about this edition of his image, because Rick had not authorized its publication. The owner said they had recently bought the business and knew nothing about the production of the black light poster. The "San Mescalito" title, colors and the text on the black light edition was not the work of or authorized by Rick Griffin. Recent posts on ebay indicate there may have been more than one unauthorized printings / editions of the black light / colored version of this poster.

Gordon confirmed that Rick told him the first poster was printed on brown butcher paper in a small print run, and it may have "Oracle" printed on it. And there may have been several small runs of the second (BB) black ink on white paper edition that was sold in head shops. The third edition, brown ink on brown stock, was printed by Gordon for California Graphic Exchange in 1976, although it never appeared in their catalog. Rick thought it would be neat to print it on brown stock like the first edition. It was laid up and printed ganged with the 1977 Jesus surfing calendar that Rick gave away to fans on the European tour. Gordon told me the print run was 1000 posters, but about half of those were destroyed by a flood when Jose Kent had them.

In addition to The Oracle, the image appeared on the cover of the SF Examiner & Chronicle's Sunday supplement This World (7/16/67) as well as on the back book cover of Great Poster Trip: Art Eureka Coyne & Blanchard (1968).

While the squatting male subject is clearly in a Mexican Huichol Indian costume, Ida Griffin told me that Ivan Strauss, the Griffin's neighbor in San Francisco, posed for Rick's Huichol Indian drawing. Rick had sketchbooks of his trips to Mexico, and he had drawn cartoon style Huichol Indian characters in his Griffin Stoner adventures in The Surfer Bi-monthly magazine (1967), but the elaborate and dense drawing seen in this poster matches, in my opinion, Can-A-Blis and A Puff of Kief more than the magazine work. For the record, it is clear then that the drawing for this poster was done in San Francisco in 1967, not in Mexico.

Ivan Strauss also collaborated with Rick on their poster Fly Jefferson Airplane at the Matrix , and is co-credited with Rick on that work. Gordon told me Rick greatly appreciated Mouse and Kelley's partnership and was very willing to share credit and collaborate with others on projects.

[automator]

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