PACT - Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust

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PACT - Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust Nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with a mission to preserve and promote the past, present and future of Psychedelic Arts and Culture.

A community engagement space hosting workshops, lectures and collaborative events.

60 years ago this month, Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators released “The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor E...
10/13/2026

60 years ago this month, Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators released “The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators” (1966), widely recognized as the first rock album to explicitly identify its sound as “psychedelic.”

Formed in Austin, Texas, the band’s electric collision of fuzzy garage rock, twangy blues, and mind-expanding sonic experimentation helped to define psychedelic rock before the genre had taken shape. In addition to the music, they were guided by a cosmic philosophy of expanded consciousness and spiritual enlightenment, believing psychedelics could help transform society itself.

But their radical vision put them in the crosshairs of Texas cops. Following years of police scrutiny, arrests, and harassment, the band began to unravel under the bloated weight of authority.

In 1969, following an arrest for cannabis possession, Erickson pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a maximum-security psychiatric institution, where he endured years of confinement and electroshock “therapy.” Guitarist Stacy Sutherland was imprisoned, drummer John Ike Walton was subjected to brutal psychiatric torture, and bassist Benny Thurman was drafted into the Vietnam War.

Erickson was released in 1972 and continued making music, eventually becoming a cult icon and experiencing a creative resurgence in the decades before his death in 2019 at the age of 71.

Stories like these are central to why Brian Chambers founded the Psychedelic Arts & Culture Trust (PACT) Psychedelic Arts & Culture Trust 🌀

The history of psychedelic culture is inseparable from its history of oppression. Artists, musicians and other creators who helped expand the boundaries of human expression were criminalized, institutionalized, and persecuted for challenging social constructs.

Through education, celebration, and cultural preservation, PACT works to dismantle the stigma surrounding psychedelics, challenge decades of misinformation, and preserve the legacies of the pioneers whose contributions helped shape our culture, often at tremendous personal cost.

Follow for more psychedelic art history Psychedelic Arts & Culture Trust 🔮

RIP to Peter Max, the man who transformed psychedelic art into something the entire world could understand.At the height...
09/17/2026

RIP to Peter Max, the man who transformed psychedelic art into something the entire world could understand.

At the height of the 1960s counterculture, Peter Max cosmic landscapes, floating faces, radiant suns, stars, flowers and impossible fields of color captured the era’s fascination with expanded consciousness, spirituality, ecology, and inner and outer space. 

His work was immediately recognizable, carrying psychedelia beyond the counterculture and into mainstream spaces where more esoteric forms of the genre rarely ventured.

Max was part of a generation of artists who radically expanded where art could live, transforming everyday ephemera into cultural objects, moving psychedelic imagery out of the underground and into the mainstream. 

His Cosmic ’60s posters became ubiquitous during the psychedelic era, while his 1967 “Be In” poster helped draw hundreds of thousands of people to Central Park. By 1970, The World of Peter Max opened at San Francisco’s de Young Museum, followed by dozens of museum exhibitions around the country.

In the decades that followed, the reach of that visual universe became almost impossible to measure. It still echoes everywhere, from psychedelic art and graphic design to illustration, fashion, advertising and popular culture.

Peter Max understood that art could exist everywhere, and that the cosmic could belong to everyone.

Rest in power to a true genius. Come by the gallery to see our original Peter Max neon pictured in the second to last slide in person 🙏

In 1960s San Francisco, five artists helped transform the concert poster into an art form of its own. Rick Griffin, Stan...
09/09/2026

In 1960s San Francisco, five artists helped transform the concert poster into an art form of its own. 

Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso each developed radically different artistic languages, while frequently collaborating and influencing one another as the psychedelic music scene exploded around them. 

The result was a creative feedback loop. The music shaped the art, the art gave the music a visual identity, and both evolved together within the same concentrated countercultural scene ➡️➡️➡️

RICK GRIFFIN

A former surf cartoonist, Rick Griffin brought an extraordinary level of illustration, symbolism and technical precision to psychedelic art.

His work pulled from surf culture, underground comics, religious imagery, Indigenous and Native American visual references, surrealism and elaborate hand lettering, combining them into mind-bending mastery. 

His posters and album artwork, particularly his work with the Grateful Dead, produced some of the most enduring imagery of the era, including the iconic flying eyeball that became synonymous with both Griffin and the Dead.

STANLEY MOUSE

Before San Francisco, Stanley Mouse was already making a name for himself in Detroit painting monsters, hot rods and custom car graphics.

After arriving in California, he joined forces with Alton Kelley, beginning one of the defining artistic partnerships of the psychedelic era. Mouse brought his airbrush technique, drawing ability and surreal sensibility to a body of posters and album covers that became inseparable from the music they illustrated.

ALTON KELLEY

Working closely with Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley had an incredible eye for finding and recontextualizing seemingly disparate imagery.

He pulled from Victorian engravings, Art Nouveau, historical illustration and found ephemera, resurrecting forgotten images and giving them new meanings within the counterculture.

Their legendary 1966 Grateful Dead poster repurposed Edmund Joseph Sullivan’s 19th-century skeleton-and-roses illustration, helping establish one of the most recognizable images associated with the band.

WES WILSON

Wes Wilson fundamentally changed the way words coul

For the Wixárika people of western Mexico, art, land, medicine, and spirituality are intertwined. Their intricate yarn p...
08/27/2026

For the Wixárika people of western Mexico, art, land, medicine, and spirituality are intertwined. 

Their intricate yarn paintings and beadwork are among Mexico’s most recognizable Indigenous art forms: explosions of electric color filled with deer, maize, serpents, eagles, fire, sun, water, and pe**te. Many of these images emerge from ceremonial knowledge and visions experienced through “hikuri,” the pe**te cactus considered a sacred ancestor and teacher.

Yarn paintings evolved from “nierika,” sacred objects traditionally made as offerings and portals to the spiritual world. Artists press strands of brightly colored yarn into beeswax and resin, building elaborate images strand by strand. The compositions depict visions, stories, deities, sacred places, and relationships connecting people to plants, animals, ancestors, and land.

Their beadwork carries many of these symbols into three dimensions, with thousands of tiny glass beads applied to jewelry, masks, bowls, and sculptures. Pe**te frequently appears as a radiating geometric form alongside imagery connected to the pilgrimage to Wirikuta, the sacred desert where “hikuri” grows.

Today, the culture and human life behind this art is under serious threat.

Pe**te habitat also faces poaching, mining, crime, industrial agriculture, water depletion, development, tourism, and growing international demand.

Behind every radiant pe**te, blue deer, ear of maize, serpent, and field of impossible color is a living culture rooted in a specific landscape.

While the world has spent decades admiring Wixárika visions, the people responsible for them are fighting to protect the land, medicine, and spiritual knowledge that allow those visions to continue.

We were honored to host a benefit show for these artists in 2024.

If you’re interested in supporting the art and way of life of these incredible artists, we still have some pieces left from the show.

Part two of our contemporary psychedelic artists series 🌀While the psychedelic art movement is often associated with the...
08/21/2026

Part two of our contemporary psychedelic artists series 🌀

While the psychedelic art movement is often associated with the posters and paintings of the 1960s, the artists of today expand the genre in wildly different directions. From surreal landscapes and cosmic abstraction to political satire and infinite dream worlds, check out some of the artists pushing the boundaries of consciousness and imagination. 

1. Colin Prahl: Colin Prahl
2. Nome Edonna: NoMē Edonna
3. Crystal Wagner: Crystal Wagner
4. Jen Stark: Jen Stark
5. David Choong Lee: David Choong Lee
6. Freyja Dean: Freyja Dean
7. Dan O’Neill
8. Aaron Horkey: aaronhorkey
9. Vibrata Chromodoris: Vibrata Chromodoris

Who should be included in our next installment?

Psychedelic art didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Like every major artistic movement, it was built upon centuries of innovation...
08/04/2026

Psychedelic art didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Like every major artistic movement, it was built upon centuries of innovation, borrowingborrowing from earlier traditions, transforming them into something entirely new.

These movements helped shape psychedelic art into one of the most visually ambitious genres of the modern era, fusing beauty, perception, spirituality, rebellion, and imagination into a radical visual language ➡️➡️➡️

Art Nouveau inspired psychedelic artists through its flowing line work, organic forms, intricate patterns, and integrated typography. Artists like Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, and Harry Clarke demonstrated that posters and literary illustrations could be as immersive and sophisticated as paintings, a philosophy that would become central to the psychedelic poster movement.

Surrealism explored dreams, the subconscious, and realities beyond ordinary perception. By embracing symbolism, impossible landscapes, and irrational compositions, artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró laid important groundwork for psychedelic artists seeking to visualize altered states of consciousness.

Indigenous artistic traditions from around the world contributed rich systems of symbolic storytelling, sacred geometry, ceremonial imagery, and cosmological thought. Many of these traditions were deeply intertwined with the ceremonial use of psychoactive plants and fungi. The yarn paintings of the Wixárika (Huichol) people of western Mexico, for example, serve as intricate spiritual maps expressing humanity’s relationship with nature and the divine.

Op Art made perception itself the subject of art. Through vibrating color relationships, optical illusions, and geometric precision, artists like Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Julian Stanczak demonstrated that static images could appear to change and move, an effect psychedelic artists enthusiastically embraced to evoke altered states of perception.

The Dada movement challenged the very definition of art. Rejecting logic, convention, and authority in the aftermath of World War I, artists including Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Man Ray, and Hugo

Psychedelic art didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Like every major artistic movement, it was built upon centuries of innovation...
08/04/2026

Psychedelic art didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Like every major artistic movement, it was built upon centuries of innovation, borrowing from earlier traditions, transforming them into something entirely new 🌀

These movements helped shape psychedelic art into one of the most visually ambitious genres of the modern era, fusing beauty, perception, spirituality, rebellion, and imagination into a radical visual language ➡️➡️➡️

Art Nouveau inspired psychedelic artists through its flowing line work, organic forms, intricate patterns, and integrated typography. Artists like Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, and Harry Clarke demonstrated that posters and literary illustrations could be as immersive and sophisticated as paintings, a philosophy that would become central to the psychedelic poster movement.

Surrealism explored dreams, the subconscious, and realities beyond ordinary perception. By embracing symbolism, impossible landscapes, and irrational compositions, artists such as Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró laid important groundwork for psychedelic artists seeking to visualize altered states of consciousness.

Indigenous artistic traditions from around the world contributed rich systems of symbolic storytelling, sacred geometry, ceremonial imagery, and cosmological thought. Many of these traditions were deeply intertwined with the ceremonial use of psychoactive plants and fungi. The yarn paintings of the Wixárika (Huichol) people of western Mexico, for example, serve as intricate spiritual maps expressing humanity’s relationship with nature and the divine.

Op Art made perception itself the subject of art. Through vibrating color relationships, optical illusions, and geometric precision, artists like Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Julian Stanczak demonstrated that static images could appear to change and move, an effect psychedelic artists enthusiastically embraced to evoke altered states of perception.

The Dada movement challenged the very definition of art. Rejecting logic, convention, and authority in the aftermath of World War I, artists including Marcel Duchamp, Hannah Höch, Man Ray, and Hugo Ball

While the psychedelic art movement is often associated with the posters and paintings of the 1960s, the artists of today...
07/14/2026

While the psychedelic art movement is often associated with the posters and paintings of the 1960s, the artists of today expand the genre in wildly different directions.

From surreal landscapes and cosmic abstraction to political satire and infinite dream worlds, check out some of the artists pushing the boundaries of consciousness and imagination:

1. Mars- 1 mars_1_
2. Justin Lovato
3. Leans Sam Wilkinson
4. Damon Soule Damon Soule
5. Ralph Steadman Ralph Steadman
6.  Oliver Vernon
7. Leighton Kelly Leighton kelly
8. Roger Dean
9. Sebastian Wahl
10.  Alex Grey Alex Grey

Part two coming soon 🌀

06/18/2026

AJ Masthay on the art of imperfection ✨

Known for his unique print style of creating some of the most iconic gig posters in the world, Masthay intentionally pushes the screenprinting process into unpredictable territory, layering dozens of colors and techniques in ways that make fatal mistakes a real possibility. Every print carries subtle variations and tactile evidence of the artist’s winding journey.

In an era where mediocre, flawless images can be generated endlessly, he believes inconsistency has become an invaluable currency of authenticity.

June 17th holds two very different anniversaries in the history of *rugs in America.
June 17, 1925 marks the birth of Al...
06/17/2026

June 17th holds two very different anniversaries in the history of *rugs in America.

June 17, 1925 marks the birth of Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, the chemist whose work would help shape modern psychedelic science, creating an extraordinary body of knowledge about consciousness, healing, and the human mind.

June 17, 1971 marks the day President Richard Nixon officially declared *rug use “public enemy number one,” launching what would become the War on *rugs.

One legacy is rooted in curiosity, research, and a belief that altered states of consciousness are important and worthy of study. The other ushered in decades of prohibition, mass incarceration, racial disparities in policing, and the near-total shutdown of psych research. Countless scientists lost access to their work. Patients lost access to potential treatments. Entire fields of inquiry were pushed underground.

While the War on Drugs sought to criminalize and suppress, Shulgin spent his life documenting, preserving, and expanding our understanding of psychoactive compounds with remarkable rigor and openness.

June 17 serves as a reminder that history is often shaped by competing visions, with fear on one side, and the future on the other 🌀✨

Address

627 E MAIN Street
Grass Valley, CA
95945

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 4pm
Tuesday 10am - 4pm
Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm

Telephone

+15307770330

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