EastTotemWest

Posters were the medium of choice, and poster stores enjoyed a heyday that has never been approximated.
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In 1967 Joe and Irene McHugh founded a small group of immensely talented people in the San Francisco Bay Area who came together to form a short-lived but highly inventive poster and notecard company, East Totem West. In 1967 – 1968, a small group of immensely talented people in the San Francisco Bay Area came together to form a short-lived but highly inventive poster and notecard company, East T

otem West. It’s founder, Joseph McHugh, took the poster — heretofore used primarily as a travel enticement or concert announcement to a new, revolutionary place: the poster as art. He began creating images — through the process of printing — that harkened to acid-trip visions and spiritual mandalas ... posters and notecards that sold by the thousands to the growing generation of hippies, freethinkers, bohemians, and individualists who were thriving in the San Francisco and had begun to find themselves all over America. It was as much a function of the place and times as it was the combination of people that made East Totem West happen: the Bay Area was host to several underground newspapers (The Berkeley Barb, the Black Panther Party paper, the Oracle, among others), influential personalities, (Alan Watts, Bill Graham, Ken Kesey, to name just a few) a music revolution (including such icons as the Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin), and no fewer than five college campuses. It was the perfect time for East Totem West to create, produce and distribute its vital artwork. But as Alan Bisbort explains, “the story of East Totem West is not the story of the 1960s, or even that sliver of it fondly recalled as the summer of love. It is the story of one group of pilgrims who found themselves in one another’s ‘ hippie company’ for a brief burst of time in a very fertile place and then moved on, dispersed like spores from a magical pod, to other callings. The end products of their collaboration are what you hold in your hands.”

08/07/2023

8.8 HAPPY BIRTHDAY forever Joe McHugh your eternal art grooves on! ❤️💜🩵💖🧡💙🩷🩵💜❤️💚🩵🌻🌻🌻✨🐰✨

04/19/2023

New auction of old things starts at # 225

269 lots featured in SEALED ALBUMS, LIVE RANDOM PULLS, POSTERS! on Apr 30, 2023 by PASHCO in FL, featuring Alice In Chains - Alice In Chains - SEALED, RARE THE RAMONES SIGNED ALBUM, SHIRT and TICKET STUBS and more.

11/30/2022

If you are searching for any of our East Totem West posters check out this online auction by PASHCO on December 4 ☮️

09/23/2022

It has come full circle, and Joe McHugh has left our earth to frolic with The White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat high in the sky above us.
We will miss him so🌈🐇♥️♥️♥️🌈🐇

06/07/2022

The magnificent artist and warrior Joe McHugh has left us💔💔💔

05/18/2022

The Magic Mandala through a fishhole lens by Joe McHugh circa 1969.

05/17/2022

Joe McHugh 1939 - 2022 ❤️

05/17/2022

Goodbye my beloved husband, you will be missed by us all ♥️ Joe McHugh will be missed, loved and mourned💔💔💔

05/17/2022

It is great grief I would like to announce the leaving of us from Joe McHugh.

Address

Santa Rosa, CA

Website

http://www.easttotemwest.com/

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