Quick Take
Now that it’s been picked up as a featured item at the new museum store at the MAH, the art of the small local company Killer Acid is likely to spread as a new kind of visual signature of psychedelia and the Santa Cruz vibe.
As an aesthetic term, “psychedelia” is a rather slippery thing, at least in a Potter Stewart kind of way. Stewart, you might remember, was the Supreme Court justice who tried to get away with defining obscenity with “I know when I see it.”
In music, in art, in literature, we can all debate on whether something is psychedelic or not, without expressing specifically what that means. We know it when we see it, I suppose. But too often, it’s a throwaway term that translates, “Welp, this was too weird and formless for me to fully comprehend without pharmacological assistance.”
But when you see a grinning cartoon cat with four eyes and three noses under the name “Killer Acid,” there ain’t no gray area. If that isn’t psychedelia, nothing is.
The grinning cat is an increasingly common sight around Santa Cruz these days. It’s the trademark image from Killer Acid, a small graphic-arts company on the Westside that sells not only T-shirts and caps, but also stickers, puzzles, clocks, posters and more, all of it gloriously, unapologetically and mind-blowingly psychedelic.
Killer Acid has been producing and marketing its goods in Santa Cruz for five years, but recently it got a boost when the Museum of Art & History opened its new museum store with Killer Acid merchandise prominently featured.
“The art is amazing,” said MAH’s executive director, Ginger Shulick Porcella. “When I first saw it, I was like, ‘I want it all.’”
The artist behind the Killer Acid brand is Rob Corradetti, a native New Yorker who first arrived in Santa Cruz in 2018, and opened his business two years later. As a graphic artist with a strong grounding in underground comics and punk music, he said he was doing fine living on the East Coast.
“But here, it kinda supercharged everything for me,” he said at his shop just off Fair Avenue. “It was sorta like the universe was, like, ‘Yeah, this is where you’re meant to be.’”
The universe, apparently, is savvy to Santa Cruz’s soft spot for psychedelia. It would be too arrogant and Cruz-centric to declare Santa Cruz ground zero for psychedelic art. But, given that it’s the birthplace of the ubiquitous Screaming Blue Hand, and the home of the Hand’s creator, Jim Phillips, and Jim’s equally amazing son, Jimbo Phillips — not to mention its power to supply any number of Grateful Dead cover bands with loyal audiences — Santa Cruz has to be in that conversation.
In New York, working in the advertising industry, Corradetti had been a fan of Jim Phillips and Santa Cruz Skateboards for years. But if there’s a foundational influence in what kind of artist he became, he said, it might be the zany surrealism of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” the cult hit kids show starring Pee-Wee Herman in the 1980s. Corradetti watched the show avidly as a kid, but later, as an adult, he got to meet artist Gary Panter, set designer for “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”
“That was probably my biggest inspiration,” he said.
Corradetti’s early art leaned heavily toward a punk-ish New York aesthetic. A trippy California psychedelic vibe was to him a different planet: “Coming from the East Coast, California is a different lens. I’ve always felt a little bit like a fish out of water.”
Corradetti’s art certainly has a flair that old-timers might recognize as akin to ’60s-style counterculture. The vibe is playful, full of bent humor, bursting with color and celebratory of 420 culture. Not only does Killer Acid market a bucket hat emblazoned with “Mushrooms Are My Friends,” grinning, obviously baked mushrooms are a recurring motif. Some of his stickers and posters are as jam-packed with comically nightmarish imagery as a Hieronymus Bosch triptych. And while many Santa Cruz psychedelics enthusiasts approach the culture with an overly solemn sense of spiritual ritual, Killer Acid goes straight for the fun and irreverent. It’s less Ram Dass, more Timothy Leary.
Killer Acid in action. Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz
Corradetti himself, however, is not so flippant about the use of psychedelic substances: “People will say, ‘Oh, did you draw that on acid?’ Sometimes I do say yes, because it’s true. But I use psychedelics pretty reverently. I use it as a creative tool.”
The Westside headquarters of Killer Acid, right around the corner from Verve Coffee Roasters, feels a bit like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, festooned with art and packed with fun stuff. Corradetti works with six other people here. Adjacent to the office is a small retail shop with irregular hours. And the merchandising goes pretty much around the world and back, from doormats to underwear to Polaroid cameras. Killer Acid is almost as creative in its merchandising as it is in its artistic imagery. And it’s working. Corradetti said that Killer Acid processes “a couple of thousand” orders a month.
Killer Acid’s cat with four eyes, coming soon to a bad dream or good trip near you. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz
While Corradetti and his colleagues might take an anything-goes approach to merchandising, they are more deliberate with the art itself. “We think about it very intentionally,” he said. “[We’ll say to each other], so what is this joke? How is this joke best served?”
As an artist, he’s constantly taking in imagery and ideas in hopes that once pushed through his idiosyncratic artistic filter, something cool will come from it. “I use the David Lynch mindset of finding inspiration and ideas, of catching the big fish, and letting things marinate to come back to it later,” he said. “Sometimes I write something down, and three years later, I’ll just have this moment. ‘Oh yeah, that’s what that comic was all about.’ Or I’ll look at an old notebook and be like, ‘I know how to visualize that idea now,’ and like it’ll just pop into my head fully formed.”
He’s not shy in admitting that cannabis and psychedelics played a role in that creativity. Even with the dramatic relaxing of the taboo against some psychoactive drugs in recent years, it’s still tricky going out in the world as Killer Acid. But Corradetti isn’t interested in peddling any kind of message, pro or con, about the use of such drugs — cannabis is, of course, legal in California, while some psychedelics like psilocybin have been decriminalized in Santa Cruz.
The message behind Killer Acid, if it indeed even has one, might be, said Corradetti, “Explore your mind if you want, or don’t. Maybe just enjoy these visuals because I’ve done it for you.”
Corradetti has been drawing and doodling since he was 7 or 8, he said. He found early on that he was developing a style of his own even at a young age, though he was deeply influenced by “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” and “The Simpsons.” (He met “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening once, who bought some Killer Acid merch. “I was like, ‘Dude, this is making my whole life right now. Can I hug you?’”)
Another influence was his grandfather, an engineer at DuPont who also indulged a playful side, always bringing gag gifts and novelty toys to his grandchildren. “You bring these weird novelty toys to a party,” Corradetti said, “and after 10 times, you’re like, ‘OK, Grandpa, we get it.’ But it’s still kinda fun. And for me, some of that novelty has been lost.”
As for what next for Killer Acid, Corradetti, who lives near his shop with his wife and young daughter, said he’s pondering and planning on everything from animated shorts to graphic novels. On a deeper level, as an artist, he’s also excited about where living in California generally and Santa Cruz in particular might lead him creatively.
“California has been good to us. And reflecting that back [in my art] is important. I feel like my vibe is here. And I’m always thinking, let me try to show people how I’m feeling about being here,” he said. “California, especially in this political climate the past couple years, has gotten a lot of grief. ‘Everyone’s moving out of California. Blah, blah blah.’ But I’m like, California is kind of amazing. I will defend this place vigorously.”
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