Jim Blashfield

Melissa Delzio
Jun 4
5 min read

Updated: Jun 9

For 60 years Jim Blashfield has been carefully deconstructing elements of the real world and putting them back together to create bizarre and wonderful juxtapositions in film and on the printed page. Primarily known for his work as a film director and animator of some of the top music videos of the 80s, Jim helped usher in Portland’s place as a leader in stop-motion animation. Beyond the moving image, Jim is known for his published comics, psychedelic posters for the Filmore Theater during San Francisco’s summer of love, the award-winning publication design of Clinton St. Quarterly, and more.

Jim Blashfield, photographed by Craig Hickman.

Please enjoy a sample of Jim's design work here, and view full videos at blashfieldstudio.com or on the Blashfield Studio YouTube channel.

Blashfield's films will be shown at the Tomorrow Theater in Portland on June 12th, 2025 at 7 pm for the event, "Beyond Psychedelic Posters: The Moving Image Works of Influential Artist + Filmmaker Jim Blashfield". Get Tickets.

Blashfield's Psychedelic Posters from San Francisco in 1967

Jim Blashfield happened to move from Portland to San Francisco during the now notorious "summer of love" in 1967. He picked up the art of psychedelic posters after admiring the flyers brightening up telephone poles all over the city. He saw the neon colors and the swirling lettering and thought, "My God, I've got to make these!". His design career kicked into gear when he won a poster competition that had psychedelic poster movement leader, Wes Wilson, as the judge. Later, when Wilson stopped working for Filmore Theater owner Bill Graham, Blashfield found his opening. He created eight posters altogether for the Filmore in 1967 for bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and Cream. Jim recalls how he learned the lettering, "I drew [the letterforms], and worked on them as only a twenty-one-year-old can... basically copying someone else’s style as best you could without really realizing that you were copying because you’re not very old and you’re just doing something cool."

Slide 1: Blashfield's only psychedelic San Francisco poster not designed for Bill Graham. This poster was for a fundraising event in 1967 benefiting"Citizens for Yes on Proposition P", a ballot initiative urging a ceasefire and American withdrawal from Vietnam. The benefit concert featured Jefferson Airplane as headliner. Slide 2: Bill Graham Filmore Theater poster designed by Jim Blashfield for Cream, The Electric Flag, and Gary Burton. Slide 3: Bill Graham poster designed by Jim Blashfield for a showcase in Los Angeles of the "San Francisco Scene" featuring Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company.

Psychedelic and Other Concert Posters from 1969-1970 in Portland

Word had spread about Jim Blashfield's prolific psychedelic posters, and when he moved home to Portland in 1969, he was hired as a freelancer to design posters for venues like Springer's and the Masonic Temple. These works echo the psychedelic style but integrate collage and surrealist elements which would later become hallmarks of his publication design.

Springer's Inn (sometimes billed as "Springer's Hall", "Springers Ballroom" or just "Springers") was a short-lived venue that hosted lots of musical groups, like the Grateful Dead, The Byrds, Bill Withers, and more. It was located south of Gresham off SE 190th and Powell. The Masonic Temple is the building now known as the Mark Building of the Portland Art Museum.

Publication Design Work (1980-1982)

Jim Blashfield's graphic design career reached its peak with his work in the early 1980s in publication design. The 1980 and 1981 Fresh Weekly covers were Blashfield's illustrations, some of many contributions he made to Willamette Week's arts and entertainment guide.

In 1979 the radically creative literary arts magazine, Clinton St Quarterly, struck gold when they hired Jim Blashfield to design some covers (and later take over as art director). Jim brought his absurdist humor, collage skills, and a strict grid to the publication. Shown above are the Summer 1980, Winter 1980, and Fall 1982 issues. Read a full deep dive into the history of the publication and view many more spreads!

Comics (1981-1983)

Jim Blashfield's comic characters emerged organically from his fantastical imagination, but he was spurred on through his immersion in Portland's world of independent media. His comics were featured in publications like Clinton St. Quarterly, Mississippi Mud, Willamette Week, Fresh Weekly, Multnomah Monthly, Northwest Magazine, and more.

Slides 1-2: Published in 1983, Brainstorm was a Blashfield collaboration with Portland physician and writer, Gideon Bosker. According to Bosker, the book answered the question "If you gave the brain a free hand to do what it wanted to do, what kind of picture would it draw itself?" Show here is the finished cover and the drawn artboard by Blashfield.

Slide 3: Jim drew comic storyboards feverishly over a few-week period when he quit smoking. He tried to pitch this storyboard to a local radio station (with content promoting their station filled into the speech bubbles) but they thought it a bit too far out. Slide 4-5: This 1981 comics issue of Mississippi Mud features a cover designed by Jim Blashfield and interior spread with his comic on the right.

Film/Theater Design Work (1970s-1990s)

Slide 1: Jim Blashfield's freelance design work overlapped with his other creative endeavors, like writing and directing his own play, Bird of Paradise, which was performed at PSU in 1996. This poster was the artboard for the final piece. The red is Rubylith, a masking film used in production. Slide 2: Jim's design comp for a poster for the Northwest Film and Video Festival in 1984. Slide 3: Poster Blashfield designed for a documentary short by Blashfield and Jack Sanders about the Willamette River's Steamboat era completed after Jim's time at the Center for the Moving Image at PSU in the early 1970s. Slide 4: Design comp of a poster for Blashfield's film, "Suspicious Circumstances" in 1984 shown at Cinema 21.

Behind the Scenes of Blashfield Studio

Jim Blashfield hit it big when his producer (and partner), Melissa Marsland mailed his film"Suspicious Circumstances", an animated cut-out film, to one of Jim's favorite bands, The Talking Heads. The response came back right away; David Byrne wanted to work with them on their next music video. Jim recalls being nervous to meet the demand, "We said that in 28 days we would be able to deliver to MTV a music video for Talking Heads!". Blashfield kept production in Portland in part due to a suspicious attitude about the overly commercialized LA market, but more importantly, to maintain the creative relationships he had built here over the decades. The video for the song "And She Was" premiered in 1985 and was a smash hit. Blashfield recalls having creative freedom: "MTV was very adventurous at that time, really wanting things that were different...wild and woolly." Next thing you know, Warner Brothers was calling, and Jim and Melissa found themselves at a lunch meeting with Joni Mitchell in Malibu. Blashfield directed a music video for her and then came Nu Shooz, Paul Simon, Michael Jackson, and more.

Slides 1-2: A 1989 Sunday Oregonian article about how two Portland studios (Blashfield Studios and Will Vinton Studios) both contributed to Michael Jackson's film repertoire.

Slide 3: Behind the scenes photograph from the Blashfield Studio crew working on Michael Jackson's "Leave Me Alone" in 1989. The video won a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video and was ranked one of the Top 10 Music Videos in a 2008 Rolling Stone critics’ poll. Slides 4-5: Collage artboards for Talking Head's, "And She Was" and Michael Jackson's "Leave Me Alone".

All the above items have been scanned or photographed from Jim Blashfield's personal archive! Thank you Jim!

Jim Blashfield: And He Was

By Brian Libby, 2012

Michael Jackson as a Gulliver figure tied down by tabloid-writing Lilliputians. An elephant shooting lasers out of its trunk as an accordion floats by played by invisible hands. A potato as the getaway car for a morose husband. As two upcoming Northwest Film Center screenings (part of the Reel Music festival) remind us, the mind of Portland filmmaker and installation artist Jim Blashfield is a seemingly endless junk shop of quirky enlightenment...