STANLEY MOUSE He's Can't Escape the Dead
	MARCH 2004

by Bill Weber
Photos by Brad shifflett

Stanley Mouse has reinvented himself in at least three remarkable ways during a period of productive activity that so far has spanned four decades. We were honored last month by having an opportunity to view examples of art from all periods of Stanley's career when his one man show came in February to the Art Commission's gallery in the Brentwood's Business and Technology Incubator building. The show continues through April. Even more wonderful was the opportunity some of us East County residents had to actually meet the man himself.

THE ARTIST AT HOME
A couple months ago I had the occasion of interviewing Stanley at his pleasant rural Sebastopol studio. He lives and works in a place so beautiful that the location itself would provide a fit subject for the most particular landscape painter.

Stanley was part of the original 60s Haight-Ashbury flower children revolution and still maintains the appearance of a somewhat avuncular Jerry Garcia. His manner during our interview, however, was one of gentle and thoughtful reflection. He was striking out at nothing and showed no attitude of disdain towards anything whatsoever.

The traditional explanation for the apparent change of attitude — that "old" hippies finally grow up and mellow out — is too easy, perhaps. People of Stanley's generation are famously countercultural. I suspect that some of them carry the trait into their later years. Perhaps they choose to reject anybody's label, right down to the point of refusing the identification of being some kind of a rebel.

Whatever the explanation, visiting Stanley Mouse in his rural artist's retreat is more like a visit with Norman Rockwell than with a young Bob Dylan. Stanley's sprawling studio is located in a separate building behind his house. Both buildings sit in the middle of an apple orchard on the top of a small hill. Tantalizing glimpses of a distant valley below are visible from the veranda on the back of Stanley's studio.

EARLY SUCCESS WITH A HOT AND HORRIBLE THEME
Stanley moved from Fresno to Detroit when he was two years old. Hot cars were the big youth thing going on in Motor City in the 50s, and Stanley developed a pastime of drawing hot rods and monsters into a passionate hobby.

It probably seemed an obvious step to him to begin putting his monsters into his hot rods. He began airbrushing hot rod driving monsters using fluorescent colors to create a new genre that young men and boys found compelling. The fact that their sisters and girlfriends often considered the graphics to be vulgar and repellent only added even further to their allure, of course.

Stanley's hot rods were really hot and his monsters were totally monstrous so the young man's hobby grew into a small industry. He offered for sale a line of T-shirts emblazoned with his strange visions through ads in the back of hot rodding magazines. Stanley said that before long his mom, dad, and the rest of the family were working for him.

Stanley said that those were happy times when he would go to the mailbox and most days would pick up an amazing amount of money sent in by people ordering his shirts. He said he would also go to car conventions and hot rod show and sometimes make an unbelievable amount of money hawking his shirts to attendees.

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