In the early days blotter art could only be obtained with LSD already on it. McCloud bought these sheets, matted and framed them, and hung them like fine art. It was initially quite difficult for McCloud to collect the undipped (and hence legal) sheets of art, so he’d have to venture out into the underground and ask dealers if they could get him the same image on an undipped sheet, but over time he won people’s trust and managed to get hold of undipped sheets. Later on he also began to produce his own images and his collection has shifted to a completely legal blotter art archive.
That did not prevent him from experiencing troubles with law enforcements agencies and he was prosecuted in 1992 and again 2003, but acquitted both times, after long and costly legal battles. You can learn more about McCloud and his collection by visiting his house in San Francisco, which hosts a free museum dedicated to it, which he calls: “The Institute of Illegal Images”.
Another person that took blotter art to a new dimension was Thomas Lyttle, who after a meeting with Mark McCloud, started my his own collection of undipped blotter art. After collecting for a while, he started to approach people central to psychedelic culture, such as Albert Hofmann, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and many others, and asked them to sign limited edition, hand-numbered blotter art prints. These then were matted and framed per museum display specs, and sold. This was the beginning of what has been termed “vanity” blotter art. That is, blotter art which has been produced solely for art’s sake as a collectible, and which was never intended to be dipped with any drugs. Some autographed vanity blotter art has been advertised for sale for thousands of Dollars.
These days blotter art seems to be thriving, there are websites dedicated to it, and it sells world wide, a thriving collector’s market exists too, and pieces are sold for very high prices, with no LSD involved in the process. A long way from how it all started almost 50 years ago.
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