Clark College launched its 2009-2010 Faculty Speaker Series with a vibrant look at psychedelic rock posters from the 1960s and 1970s, presented by art professor Dr. Sally Tomlinson.

Psychedelic posters were the signature art form of the 1960s. They decorated everything from dorm rooms to offices, both in the United States and around the world. Dr. Tomlinson’s illustrated lecture placed the posters within a larger cultural context that described the birth of the hippie community in San Francisco, its rise and decline and the contagion it inspired that swept across the nation, as well as political and social events of the day that affected the posters’ imagery. She also explained how the posters became an important source of visual communication for the youth culture of America – and helped inspire a cultural revolution of peaceful action that affects us to this day.

Clark College art professor Dr. Sally Tomlinson (left), pictured with student Hailee Hunter, was the first presenter in the 2009-2010 Faculty Speaker Series.

“The Faculty Speaker Series provides a rich opportunity for faculty to glean insights that help us to cross-pollinate our disciplines with others. As an art history instructor, I find nuggets of information in the most surprising places – mathematics and science, certainly,” said Dr. Tomlinson. “The series reinforces an interdisciplinary approach that helps us to communicate to students that every area of study has relevance and that learning comprises a complex, multidimensional – even limitless – approach to understanding ourselves, our world, our past, and opportunities for the future.”

About Dr. Sally Tomlinson

Dr. Sally Tomlinson spent most of her life in California, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She moved to Canada to study with a Van Gogh scholar but changed course to write a master’s thesis on the San Francisco rock posters for the University of Victoria. 

After working as a journalist in Northern California for a few years, she completed her doctoral studies in medieval Irish art history, earning her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2007.   In fall 2007, she joined Clark College, where she is a full-time professor of art.

Dr. Tomlinson, who resides in Vancouver, has written essays on the rock posters for the San Diego Museum of Art, Penguin Books’ Portable Sixties Reader (ed. Anne Charters, 2003) and the Tate-Liverpool’s “Summer of Love” exhibition of 2007, in addition to her master of arts thesis which was completed in the early 1990s.  In September 2009, she was invited to speak about the posters for an exhibition opening at the Flint Art Institute in Michigan.

Dr. Tomlinson teaches courses in Western and non-Western art history at Clark College.