As an artist and designer of one of the official Fare Thee Well posters, Little Hippie’s Chief Executive Artist Taylor Swope is among the lucky few who will be attending all of the final Grateful Dead performances – last weekend in Santa Clara, California, and this weekend in Chicago.
Taylor’s official Fare Thee Well posters, previewed above, will be for sale at the merchandise stores inside Soldier Field as they were at Levi’s Stadium, along with a children’s t and a women’s tank top she designed. You can also find her work in the showbills for each performance.
Taylor was the only female artist whose work was included in the entire line of official merchandise for the Fare Thee Well shows.
5000 lithographic prints of Taylor’s Fare Thee Well poster were printed by Global Merchandising. Taylor will later receive a small drop of artist proofs, but most of those prints have already been claimed.
One copy of the poster signed by all the members of the band has been included in the silent auction hosted by Headcount with the proceeds going to Rex Foundation and 16 other charities, including Seva Foundation and Conscious Alliance. The current high bid is $15,000 and is held by San Francisco Giants pitcher Jake Peavy. Bidding will continue through night three of the shows in Chicago.
The concept for Taylor’s Fare Thee Well poster was born in 2004, when Taylor was invited to attend the premier of the re-mastered Grateful Dead Movie at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The opening animation features the well-loved character of Uncle Sam on a chopper motorcycle, who has come to be known as Psycle Sam, and whose original animation was done by Gary Gutierrez.
When Taylor saw Sam riding through the hilly road of tapping feet in that dark theater, she knew she needed to draw him, and Grateful Dead Productions was kind enough to track down some of the original film cells for her to work from. That design led to her thinking, ‘how cool would it be to put Bertha on the back of his bike, and show them from behind going down the road together?!’ It took Taylor a lot of hard work and practice to develop the skills needed to draw her idea, and now, eleven years later, Taylor is excited to unveil the image. Now that’s turning it up to eleven!
If you are going to be attending any of the performances, Taylor will be posting signing times on her Facebook page, She will be findable throughout the week in the parking lot, and at nearby hotels and various parties. Check in with her page for real time updates.
In addition, about 30 of Taylor’s signed posters from Furthur’s 2010 New Year’s Eve shows are also available. You can message her through her Facebook page for more information on collecting or to inquire about future projects.
You can also read Taylor’s letter about the future of Little Hippie over here for some background on where Little Hippie started and what is currently going on in the Little Hippie universe.
TaylorSwope.com
FB/TaylorSwopeArt
taylor@taylorswope.com
IG: @taylorswopeart
Twitter: @THS212