Alton Kelley dead at 67

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 04 June 2008 08:21PM CST

Section: Media

Alton KelleyAlton Kelley, one of the original members of the Family Dog, and best known as the psychedelic illustrator who—along with his design partner, Stanley Mouse—defined the visual style of the US counterculture, died on 1 June from complications of osteoporosis.

“Kelley had the unique ability to translate the music being played into these amazing images that captured the spirit of who we were and what the music was all about,” Mickey Hart, Grateful Dead drummer, told the New York Times. “He was a visual alchemist—skulls and roses, skeletons in full flight, cryptic alphabets, nothing was too strange for his imagination to conjure.”

At their peak, Kelley and Mouse were producing a new poster each week. The pair’s working style was unique: Mouse would work on the left side of the drawing board and Kelley on the right.

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