Started in High School (2010)
It all started back in 2009-2010. When I was in Carmel High School, starting a Rock Band of Astronauts, and taking AP Studio Art class. One afternoon when I got home a Woodstock Documentary was on TV. They interviewed Carlos Santana about his Woodstock experience back in 1969.
While at Woodstock Carlos decided to try LSD for the first time, thinking he had 12 hours before he was suppose to go on stage to play. It turned out his band had to perform earlier than that and he had to go on stage while under the influence of LSD. Carlos described the experience like “The guitar neck it felt like an electric snake it wouldn’t stand still which is why I am making ugly faces trying to make the snake stand still so I can play.” During this he prayed to God I will never do this again ever if you can keep me in time and in tune. Carlos was able to perform successfully and had a very electric performance for Soul Sacrifice.
POP ART Electric Snakes
In my AP Studio Art Class taught by Jon Kane, he assigned the class a pop art project. So I decided to make a visual representation of Carlos Santana’s LSD experience at Woodstock. I started with finding a reference picture of Santana playing Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock, thankfully their was a good youtube video I was able to pull an image from. Next I sketched him playing guitar and added the snake to it.
At the time I really liked the Japan rising sun design so I used that for the background. Then I picked out the color palette: red, white, yellow, and blue. But I wanted the art to have a Woodstock feel to it. So I thought to myself 70’s V.W. Vans and Vinyl Records. Every record has an album label on it so I thought I should have the Woodstock artwork on it. To my surprise I was amazed to see the how similar the color pallet was to my Carlos Santana Electric Snakes artwork.
Show the Santana fans
Carlos Santana Electric Snakes came out great and my mom encouraged me to submit the piece to Santana’s official fan club which I did. A year later I was contacted by agency about using “Electric Snake” for Santana’s upcoming autobiography. So I agreed to let them use it. Fast forward I had just graduated University and was working in Lafayette. The book was released Nov 4th, 2014. Excitedly I rushed to the local book store and got my hands on a copy of The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light. Quickly flipping through the book to the Woodstock portion, I found Electric Snakes published in print.
I received a signed copy of the book and my story was also featured in the local Current in Carmel Newspaper.
Detroit & Berlin
In 2015 I got to attend his concert at DTE Energy Music Theatre.
In 2018 I got to see him perform again but in Berlin, Germany at the Spandua Citadel.
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Get your print today
Now I have decided to make my artwork available to purchase. So if you are interested check out my shop here if you would like to purchase a sticker, poster, or canvas print of Carlos Santana Electric Snakes.
