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Blotter Art

I first came across Blotter Art in 2002. I found Alex Grey's piece 'Deities and Demons drinking from the milky pool' printed onto Blotter. I started researching a learning more about Blotters. I was familiar with the LSD connections as I had experimented with LSD as a teenager, but I was unfamiliarwith the rising interest in Blotter 'ART' and it's history.

cherries.jpgLSD (Acid), came in liquid form, and was originally made into pills or sold on sugar cubes. The dealers would use certain colours of pills to define their ‘brand’ or strength. After LSD was made illegal, and mandatory minimum sentencing was put in place, the dealers set about finding another, lightweight way to supply their drug. This was due to dealers being prosecuted by weight of the LSD they were carrying. One trip on a 1 gram sugar cube, would get the same sentence as someone carrying 1 gram of LSD crystals (enough for 10,000 doses). It is believed that LSD pills became more and more troublesome and difficult to produce, so an alternative was found.

Mindstates_full.JPGThe blotter sheets were divided up into tiny squares called ‘tabs’, and perforated to make it easier to distribute. Doses could be placed onto each tab, either by painstakingly dropping each dose onto each tab, or by soaking the sheet in the liquid. As before, the dealers liked to ‘brand’ their acid, and so designs were put onto the blotter sheets, to give the consumer an idea of what they were getting, and who from. Images were selected to represent the kind of trip you could expect, or the dealers’ trademark. Needless to say, there were no limits to the type of artwork seen on a blotter. Some had tiny images repeated on each tab, some were larger images printed over the whole sheet. One thing is for sure, the underground, ‘folk’ art quality of Blotters is interesting and in some cases inspiring, with older designs becoming ‘Classic pieces of Drug History’.

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Today, in 2007, Blotter Art is seen very differently. It now refers to a very collectible form of Folk Art, with many new designs being seen on the market. Visually, the images are still psychedelic, ‘trippy’ or controversial, appealing to a wide range of art collectors.

Obviously, the Blotters you buy today are 100% drug free, It is ART! It is a celebration of a time when life was very different. Flower power, peace marches, love, hippies, and possibly the odd dabbling with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds!

 

 

 

I started creating Blotters back in 2004.

President Bush had just been re-elected, and was the target for many satire images.

I got inspired by the time, by Blotter art, and set out to design a Blotter for today.

The 'Love the Bomb' or 'Bush bomb' image, was created from a number of sources. The central image is a manipulation of a piece of Banksy's graffiti, the US map was inspired by a grade school students map of America, and the rest just came in a psychedelic swirl of lines and curves.

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The image was featured on the back of Eric D Williams' Book, The Puzzle of 9-11. A book about the conspiracies surrounding 9-11. It has also been featured in an Australian Blotter Art Exhibition and is currently still on sale in the USA.

I also produced a tribal mandala blotter of the Indian Goddess, Durga. A goddess I was in touch with at the time, and who has never left my side since.

A couple of tiled designs followed, and ideas are currently being stoked for my next piece of Blotter Art.

As far as I know, and please correct me if i'm wrong, I am the UK's first and only female Blotter Artist.

To purchase signed and numberedBlotters, please mail m