From the dawn of the Grateful Dead and the counterculture that spiraled around them, art has always been at the heart of the jam community, serving as an expression of the sounds and values that brought together a global community of fans. For the second Relix 50 Artist Spotlight, we’ve highlighted Gary Kroman, an artist whose work over the past five decades has helped to define not only the aesthetic of Relix, but also the visual language of the broader scene.
Kroman’s works continue to be coveted among fans, with old originals enshrined by serious collectors, iconic designs still being licensed by various companies and new poster releases selling out in moments. For Relix’s 50th anniversary, we connected with Kroman again for a limited edition poster and foil variant that exhibit the masterful style he’s honed in decades of illustration and design. To contextualize these stunning prints, Editor in Chief Dean Budnick sat with Kroman for a freewheeling and informative conversation on his life, influences and process.
Among the pearls Kroman turned up in conversation is an account of his origins with the budding Dead Relix magazine in the early ’70s. The artist was living in New York with a Grateful Dead cover band, and connected with founder and original publisher Les Kippel at a show in the park; that fated meeting led the two to become fast friends and collaborators, with Kroman producing illustrations for early issues of Kippel’s emergent tape-trading newsletter
“We started talking,” Kroman recalls, “and he saw my art and he asked me if I could draw a Northbound train through Colorado rain. [I said] ‘Yeah, of course I could do that, that’s not hard’… I’d seen the first couple of covers that Jerry Moore did, who was his partner at the time, and it was a black and white news newsletter, you know, simple thing. I gave him a black and white drawing and he loved it, and he said, ‘That’s great, we’ll go forward.’ It just jelled from there.”
Kroman also recalled his earliest encounters with the Grateful Dead: “My first show was 1973, or ‘72; it was Jerry when he played with Hooteroll–Howard Wales I think was his name. Then I saw the Dead in Washington at RFK stadium with the Allman Brothers. Hot show. Great show, and that’s it. I mean ‘I’m hooked.’ That’s all I gotta say… I must’ve been 15, maybe 16 at most.”
Watch the full interview with Kroman below. Read more about the Relix 50 celebration here.