'taos think'
Welcome to Taos Ink’s Summer of Love 2009 Psychedelic Poster Contest!
Taos Ink is inviting area artists to create and submit inspired thematic poster designs to commemorate what will be an incredible flashback to the Summer of Love and a salute to Easy Rider (1969) which was written by Peter Fonda and directed by Taos’ own Dennis Hopper, both of whom starred in this counterculture film which captured the imagination of a generation.
The winning poster will be evocative of this era in its graphic style and content. If your poster is chosen, it will be screenprinted in a limited edition and will be shown and sold at galleries and shops throughout Taos throughout the Summer of Love season. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the poster prints will be donated to the Harwood Museum Children’s Art Program, and TAO (Taos’ Artist Organization). An event will be held to view and honor the 10 finalists submissions, At a separate event, the unveiling of the Winning Submission and a signing party for the edition will take place. Location, date and times for these events to be announced.
To participate in this fun and artistic event, please read the Contest Guidelines. Thanks for being part of the Summer of Love and making it groovy! Please send any inquiries you may have to dave@taosink.com
Poster Contest Guidelines
Your entry in the Taos Ink Psychedelic Poster Contest is an agreement to adhere to these guidelines. Thanks and good luck!
Design guidelines:
1. Your design can be inspired by Easy Rider (1969), the era of the late 1960’s, Taos in the 1960’s or an iconic story or personal experience.
2. Your design should include the words 2009 Taos Summer of Love, but is not limited to these words.
3. The poster should be evocative of the era, in the style of a 60’s thematic poster. Please consider appropriate content that may appeal to those also unfamiliar with this era. Here is a link to some excerpts of the book “The Art of Modern Rock” By Paul Grushkin, Dennis King, Wayne Coyne, for examples of the various styles of concert poster art.
4. The poster is to be printed in 3 spot colors (day glo included) which will be screenprinted on 100lb. white stock paper. No halftones please.
5. The finished poster will be an actual 18”x24” and must fit into this format. Actual art should be approx. 17”x23”.
6. The art should preferably be submitted in an editable .eps or .ai, art and text converted to outlines, or a layered .psd file. Please include a .jpg for viewing. Original art and hand separated art is also submittable. For information on the screenprinting process, and creating art for screenprinting, please search the internet regarding the screenprinting process and how to create art for screenprinting.
7. Winning poster art becomes the property of Taos Ink for limited reproduction purposes.
8. The winning artist will sign and number 200 pieces printed to be sold with a portion of these proceeds to benefit the Harwood Children’s Art Program and the Taos Artist Organization.
9. The winning artist will receive the first poster of the edition, and will benefit from the exposure of the events, and publicity relating to this contest, as well as the unlimited opportunities to network with the Taos art community.
10. Deadline for submissions is set for June 20. The finished poster and viewing and signing event will be near mid-July. Stay tuned for more info. Or please inquire within…
Psychedelic poster history: Peter Max and the Poster
Excerpted from “A History of Graphic Design”, Second Edition, by Philip B. Meggs, 1992, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY.
Some aspects of the psychedelic poster movement were used in the wildly popular poster art of New York designer Peter Max (b. 1937). In his series of posters during the late 1960s, the Art Nouveau qualities of psychedelic poster art were combined with more accessible images and less strident colors. His most famous image, the 1970 Love graphic, combined the fluid organic line of Art Noveau with the hard, black contour of the comic book and Pop Art. In his finest work, Max experimented with images and printing techniques. The 1970 Toulouse-Lautrec poster, adapted from a book jacket designed by Max for a biography of the tragic post-Impressionist, used turn-of-the-century lettering superimposed over the hat. A photograph of a bacchanal scene is printed in the lettering using two split-fountain impressions. Cool colors are printed as halftone; the reverse of this image is then printed in warm colors for a strange graphic effect created on the printing press.
Call for Entries! Announcing the Taos Ink 2009 Psychedelic Poster Contest!
Time to put your flashbacks to work for you!
Inviting all you local visual magicians to conjure psychedelic imagery for this far-out event while contributing to your brothers and sisters in the Taos art community.
Commemorate the 2009 Taos Summer of Love Event by creating a poster in a style reminiscent of the late 1960s psychedelic era.
The winning entry will be screen printed in a limited edition and sold with a portion of the proceeds to benefit local artist organization TAO and the Harwood Children’s Art Program.
Get on the bus and be part of the grooviest thing going down in Taos this summer. Get noticed by your peers and collectors who appreciate this unique art form,
Can you dig it? If so, check out the contest guidelines at www.taosink.com and make love and art this summer.
Psychedelic poster history: Artistic Influences on the Psychedelic Poster Movement Style
Excerpted from “A History of Graphic Design”, Second Edition, by Philip B. Meggs, 1992, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY
The graphics movement that expressed this cultural climate drew from a number of resources: the flowing sinuous curves of Art Nouveau, the intense optical color vibration associated with the brief Op Art movement popularized by a Museum of Modern Art exhibition, and the recycling of images from popular culture or by manipulation (such as reducing continuous-tone images to high-contrast black and white) that was prevalent in Pop Art.
Many of the initial artists in this movement were largely self-taught, and their primary clients were rock-and-roll concert and dance promoters. These dances were intense perceptual experiences of loud music and light shows that dissolved the environment with throbbing fields of projected color and bursting strobes. This experience was paralleled graphically in posters using swirling forms and lettering warped and bent to the edge of illegibility, frequently printed in close-valued complementary colors. ..Robert Wesley “Wes” Wilson (b. 1937), evidences the Art Nouveau style of swirling lines and letterforms, which are variants of Alfred Roller’s Art Nouveau alphabet…Wilson was the innovator of this style and created many of the stronger images. According to newspaper reports, respectable and intelligent businessmen were unable to decipher the lettering on these posters, yet they communicated well enough to fill auditoriums with a younger generation. Other prominent members of this brief movement included Kelly/Mouse Studios and Victor Moscoso (b.1936), the only major artist of the style with formal art training.
How to Change the Way You Think in 13 Hours, Part 1
Grab toothbrush, wallet, pillow, bag of apples and chips. Stuff 3 pairs of jeans, 3 t-shirts, socks, hoodie and mud boots into duffel bag, don’t bother to comb hair or forward phone. Take stack of jam band cd’s, sharpie, highlighter, map. Fill water bottle, leave the lights on at the house, lock front door.
Toss gear in back of the car, get, start engine. Check compass. Head west.
Take a break in Amarillo. Get out map and highlighter. Choose one of 3 beautiful and perilous canyons through which to pass en route to Taos. Avoid the tempting challenge of free 72 oz. steak at Big Texan Steak Ranch. Or not.
After Amarillo, break out cd’s to avoid mind-numbing radio programming. Pass through blur of flat stretch of northwest Texas. At the border, use sharpie to leave your tag with everyone else’s.
Ascend mountain in 3rd gear. Avoid deer, elk, bears and falling rocks. At mid-canyon, get out and inhale deeply. Take it all in. Kiss the ground. Feel the love. Take some time.
Return to the car. Reset clock to Mountain Time.
Tune radio to KTAO and coast down hill into Taos. Stop at Eske’s and have a green chile draft beer. Forget about everything else and be here now.
