A State of Mind
Don Griffin
November 14 - January 7, 2006

Creativity typically requires that you get comfortable with "Not knowing what you're doing." That can be a very difficult thing coming to grips with! When you are faced with the emptiness of your potential creation staring at you, and you are staring at it...that struggle to get started, but also to start with something that's unpredictable in the manifestation. It's a reoccurring event...each episode.
-- Don Griffin

Paper Boats, the title of the painting used to announce this exhibition of new work by artist Don Griffin, might suggest to some an unconventional journey. Indeed, as the first recipient of its studio residency scholarship, Don, and the program's sponsor, The Friends of Art in Baltimore, Inc. (FAB) have both, during the past year, chartered new waters.

In the fall of 2004, FAB, in contrast to many other arts organizations, elected to expand its commitment to visual arts and artists in the Baltimore region by establishing a new program, offering a studio to a deserving artist for a period of a year, free of charge. A studio was located and leased, a call for entry was announced, a selection panel convened and an artist selected. This exhibition is the culmination of that first year's journey.

Don Griffin's abstract A State of Mind paintings, or more precisely, collage paintings, are compositions which integrate numerous materials: oil and acrylic paint, oil stick, pastel, wood glue, India, printers' and stenciling inks and graphite. Most important to the creation of each work's surface elegance, however, is the underlying paper layer provided by printed book text and hand written journals that cover a traditional canvas support. Not only does this layer provide a unique surface for the application of the other media, but establishes the familiar, rich and emotional connection that draws us into, and sustains, the state of contemplation that these complex compositions deserve.

While essential to these works, there may exists the temptation to over analyze them with respect to their historical antecedents (Don quickly acknowledges his indebtedness to Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly and John Coltrane) and intended meaning -- What to make of the ladders, or are they train tracks, that appear in varying degree throughout the work? --. Best sometimes, when on a voyage, to just stand back, see, feel, taste and hear the surrounding beauty.

-- Ken Warwick, Guest Curator
November 2005

Don Griffin

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2005

• State of Mind Villa Julie College, Stevenson, MD

1989

• Unicorn Gallery, Baltimore, MD

1979

• Baltimore County Court House, Towson, MD
• Essex Community College, Baltimore, MD
• Newberry Farms Art Gallery, Newberry, PA
• Gallery 409, Baltimore, MD

Selected Group Exhibitions

2004

• The Masters' Mystery Show Florida International University, Miami
• Handmade Book Show Flux Factory, Long Island City, NY
• Matrix Sub-Basement Artists Studios, Baltimore
• Fusion, Artscape Creative Alliance at the Patterson, Baltimore
• Images 2004 Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts
• The Robeson Gallery, Penn State University, University Park, PA
• Out of Order, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore

2003

• Doors and Window Project, Public Art Installation, Baltimore
• Artscape, Decker Gallery, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
• Art for Art's Sake, Baltimore Darsie Alexander, BMA curator

2002

• Lotta Art, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore

2001

• Pathways Artscape Baltimore
• All Hung Montpelier Cultural Arts Center , Laurel, MD
• Ideas, Elements and Expressions, Montpelier Cultural Arts Center, Laurel, MD
• 100% American, Sassafras Gallery, Baltimore, MD
• Play-National Exhibition Kauffman Gallery, Huber Arts Center
• Shippensburg University, PA Ivan C. Karp, O.K. Harris Gallery curator
• Images, 2001 Penn State University, State College, PA
• Frederick C. Brandt, Virginia Museum curator
• Wish You Were Here-4th Annual Post Card Exhibition, Stocker Center Gallery, Elria, Ohio
• Hexagon Sassafras Gallery, Baltimore

2000

• Wish You Were Here 3rd Annual Postcard Exhibition, Cuyahoga Valley Art Center, Cuyahoga Falls, OH
• Works By Contemporary Maryland Artists, Government House, Annapolis, MD

1999

• Bold Poetry Cade Gallery Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, MD

1979

• Sense of Place Government House, Annapolis, MD
• 16th Annual Exhibition Ivan Karp Selects, Pleiades Gallery, NY
• 14th Annual Exhibition National Collage Society, Wickenden Gallery, Cleveland, OH
• ArtMD'98, Howard County Arts Center, Ellicott City
• Doreen Bolger, Director, BMA curator
• Abstraction '98 The Stage Gallery, Merrick NY
• International Art Expo Carnegie Hall, The Floating Gallery, NY
• Images '97 HUB Art Galleries, Penn State University, State College, PA
• Out of Order II, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore
• Group Show Montpelier Art Center, Laurel, 1997, 1996
• Group Show, Henri Gallery Washington, DC '96, '95, '94, '92, '91
• Intranatura, School 33 Art Center, Baltimore
• Olga Viso, Assistant Director, Hirshorn Museum, Washington, DC
• State of the Art '93, The New England Art Institute's National Invitational of American Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
• New Abstraction Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, MD
• CDS Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
• Eppler Guerin and Turner, Inc. Albuquerque, NM
• Center Forum Gallery, Baltimore
• Langsdale Gallery, University of Maryland, Baltimore
• Large Canvas Exhibition, Gallery on the Circle Annapolis, MD, Grace Hartigan curator
• Johns Hopkins Turner Auditorium, Baltimore, MD
• Art Gallery of Fells Point
• Gallery II West, St. George, UT
• Eubie Blake Cultural Center Baltimore, MD
• Slayton House Gallery Columbia, MD

Education

• Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD