Stanley Mouse b. 1940

Works
Biography
Stanley Mouse

Stanley George Miller, better known as Stanley Mouse, is an American artist known for his 1960s psychedelic rock concert poster designs and album covers for the Grateful Dead, Journey, and other bands. Mouse has produced some of the most lasting visual images in rock history.

 

He grew up in Detroit where he was expelled from high school because he decided to paint some unsolicited images on the wall of a freshly white-painted restaurant and hang out across the street from his school. His downfall came because he signed his work. From the start, Mouse understood art should be subversive. Instead of going back to high school, he enrolled in the Detroit School for the Society of Arts and Crafts, but soon tired of the life drawing and abstract painting classes and concentrated on his own Monster art.

 

 He pin-striped and painted flames on hot rods and air-brushed cartoon characters — crazed monsters with gear shifts in their hands atop fantasy vehicles — on sweatshirts he sold every weekend at county fairs, drag races and car shows. He provided the Grateful Dead with album covers like “Workingman’s Dead,” “Europe ‘72” or “Terrapin Station.” He drew the Pegasus logo for the Steve Miller Band that adorned the seventeen-million-selling greatest hits album. He devised the scarabs that decorated all the Journey albums and stage designs.

 

All along, with his mix of irreverent humor, outlandish images, fearless freehand, bold lettering and inflammatory script, Mouse has drawn on the very same resources that also feed the heart of rock music. His art drinks at the same trough as the music.  His art is music on paper. High above them, Stanley Mouse and the musicians are tapping the same inspiration and telling the same stories, but the musicians only play rock and roll. Mouse draws it.