The history of acid is a rich and storied legacy that traces all the way back to a fateful bicycle ride in 1943, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that blotter paper, dosed with LSD and decorated with tiny designs, took shape as a prominent form of counter-culture iconography. Printed on perforated paper and easily transportable, blotter sheets took center stage for thirty years as the most recognizable and available way to take LSD. Since then, these cultural canvases have become collectors items, and the artform is still being practiced today.
Erik Davis, author of “Blotter: The Untold Story of an Acid Medium,” compiled the history of the art form in collaboration with Mark McCloud, whose legendary collection of blotter art spans over forty years and tens of thousands of examples. In a lecture at SPUI25, Amsterdam’s academic-cultural center, Davis recounted how amazing the existence of the art form is considering, as he points out, “You don’t need the images to sell the LSD.”
He went on to state that while blotter decoration is unnecessary from the point of view of profit, the images function in a number of different ways including as inside jokes, political commentaries, and as a badge of identity during a time when the cultural push for peace, love and psychedelics was beginning to pull back.
Today, the mainstream interest in psychedelics has never been greater, and you can find a number of artists printing designs on blotter paper for collectors and heads alike. Over at Detroit’s highly respected print house 1XRUN (one-time run), they host an annual show which honors Bicycle Day (LSD’s birthday) by selecting popular names like Tara McPherson, Ziero Muko and Good Trip Studios to imagine what they would create on a sheet of acid. More than just a group show centered on a medium, 1XRUN has taken extra steps to ensure they pay homage to the roots of the movement by teaming up with someone whose involvement in LSD counterculture is part of a family tradition.
Zane Kesey is the son of Ken Kesey who, together with Neal Cassady and the Merry Pranksters, helped pioneer the psychedelic experience across the country. He currently runs Key-Z Productions in Oregon where he prints and perforates blotter sheets using a custom-made machine he runs by hand. As 1XRUN put it, “Through Zane’s legacy, the Bicycle Day Collection is deeply connected to a history of creating art on blotter paper.”
Zane is among only a handful of people in the world still creating and releasing blotter sheets. He praised 1XRUN, saying, “They’ve opened up the world of blotter art to this whole new community. Plus, for artists, it’s given them another avenue to make art that they may not have known about before.” He says hundreds of artists contact him about printing their designs on blotter art every year.
He told Leaf how amazing it is to see these become collectibles and how that’s really contributed to the longevity of the medium, saying, “People buy and display them as art, but it also gives someone a chance to reconnect with their history.” For many collectors, that simple picture of an elephant reminds them of a night they saw stars dance and connects them to others who shared a similar experience.
Whether you bought a blotter sheet because you love the artist, collect the medium, or wanted a souvenir from your past, the whole medium is a living part of art history and a testament to how a picture can be worth a thousand words.
acidblotter.com | @1xrun | @zanekesey | @zieromuko | @goodtrip | @abrooksart | @art_by_spectra
