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Bonnie MacLean was a devoted employee of the Fillmore West concert venue in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. She was integral to the day-to-day operations, including collecting tickets, passing out handbills, and counting money. Additionally, she drew on the chalkboards inside the Fillmore that presented that evening’s band lineup. MacLean developed the psychedelic style right alongside Wes Wilson, who designed the posters; however, because her work was ephemeral–being erased at the end of each gig–she wasn’t as widely acknowledged for her contributions to this artistic movement. Her work became more recognized when Wes Wilson parted ways with Fillmore West, and MacLean was offered the opportunity to create the posters. What sets MacLean’s style apart from the other artists is her emphasis on human faces and intricately detailed patterns.Label Type
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MacLean was inspired by diverse cultural imagery in her work. This design depicts a brightly-colored Indigenous-American totem. The majority of people in the counterculture movement were White, middle-class, young people. They joined this movement as a way to escape the status quo of society, but as a result they often romanticized Indigenous and Eastern cultures, which played a role in the appropriation of and discrimination against those cultures, even to this day.