#cable griffith

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“Sightings” by Artist Cable Griffith

Cable Griffith                     Cable Griffith’s Website Cable Griffith on Instagramhttps://www.booooooom.com/2024/04/04/sightings-by-artist-cable-griffith/

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"Observing Observing (a white cup): Cable Griffith"

“Observing Observing (a white cup): Cable Griffith”

With each exhibition, we will post interviews with the participating artists along with a photo of said artists in their studios and images of their work. In the future, we will post videos of artist interviews. “Observing Observing (a white cup)” opens September 12th and continues through October 31, 2015 Curated by Eric Elliott, Michael Howard & Norman Lundin. More than twenty artists (both…

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Cable Griffith @ Two Shelves Domestic Landscape, 2014 Acrylic paint, canvas, panel, cotton, stretched gessoed canvas, Dura-Lar, paper, color pencil, silkscreen print, clay, rocks, playing cards. Dimensions variable.

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Between the Shelves : Melissa E. Feldman w/ Cable Griffith

Independent curator and writer Melissa E. Feldman, talks with Cable Griffith about developing his project at Two Shelves. Melissa Feldman is a frequent contributor to Frieze, Art in America, Third Text, and Aperture, among other publications.

Mountain Stream, 2014. Acrylic on canvas. 48 x 36 inches

Melissa E. Feldman: To prepare work for this show you put up two 2x4s on your studio wall, one above the other, as a mock up of the Two Shelves situation. How did these elements affect your approach, and are you actually using the shelves functionally or just as a compositional or symbolic starting point?  Cable Griffith: When I was first approached about doing a project at Two Shelves, I was interested in responding to the domestic qualities of the space... and especially the shelves.  Based on a photograph of the space, I constructed two similar shelves in my studio in order to play around with how they could be used as a kind of structural framework.  As a stacked set of two shallow shelves, they allow the same horizontal and vertical movement that painting permits.  But the shelves offer the entire wall, floor to ceiling, as a frame.  I began responding to the “mock” shelves in a very ordinary way - by arranging objects.  To me, the horizontal linearity of the shelves immediately demanded a vertical response.  So I started to hang canvas from them.  Once, the x/y axis was established, the whole wall opened up as a territory to explore. 

MEF: You’ve talked about your work’s dual relationship to the natural world and to the similarly limitless and unpredictable virtual space of the videogame. The Two Shelves project seems to have awakened a domestic side though.  Some of the elements remind me of textiles like dish towels and cloth napkins, for example. Is this a new development?

CG: I’ve been increasingly interested in the domestic qualities of painting lately. About a year ago, my wife and I bought a house and have been working on it ever since. That, plus my studio being in the basement means I’m there quite a lot.  So, its definitely fair to say that a domestic side has been activated.  But I’m also intrigued with a painting’s relationship to living space. Structurally, a stretched canvas painting is not that different to an upholstered couch.  I mean, they’re both textiles, stretched over a wooden armature.  The decorative aspects of painting (or art in general) are very real, yet often avoided in “serious” conversations about art. Generally, describing a work of art as ‘decorative’ is considered dismissive.  And yet, we buy and sell works of art, put them in homes, and spend time deciding on how they should be arranged.  I wanted to see what might happen if the division dissolved a little, and this show seemed to offer an appropriate platform to explore that. 

Side-scroll World 1 (Kittredge Gallery installation view), 2013. Acrylic on canvas (25). Dimensions variable.

MEF: You sent me jpegs tracking some of the stages in your experimentation with the installation. Can you tell me about your process?  Are you working with a set number of elements and rearranging them?  Were these all existing pieces or did you make new ones, or a combination of both?

CG: I’ve been playing around with wall installation ideas for a while, but didn’t know what to make of it until the invitation from Joe and Kelly.  I have done installations of connected paintings before, but there was a very clear visual connection between the pieces. Basically, a scattered polyptych with 20 or so parts.  But in that case, each piece of the overall installation was considered as a complete painting, in addition to its relationship to the whole.  With this installation, I am more interested in how I can create more tension or pull between the parts by leaving each element much more sparse and seemingly incomplete on its own. This ends up creating more of a longing between the separate elements to relate to one another.  And the landscape framework additionally helps to hold everything together. In a way, I’m hoping to set up a relationship that balances intentional placement with a domestic entropy, while creating an altogether new place. 

Domestic Landscapes (studio mock-up), 2014. 

MEF: “Domestic entropy” . .  . do you mean the wear and tear in the course of daily domestic routines, and how those objects always being moved around, in flux?

CG: Yes, exactly. It’s kind of a humorous term, but I think it accurately describes the tendency of objects to move from fixed locations in our home.  Generally, it is the objects we use the most that end up having to be put back, while artwork and decorative objects tend to gather the most dust.  I don’t know about you, but I am constantly at war with this kind of domestic entropy, keeping things organized and “in their place”.  It’s both a practical and aesthetically based desire to maintain some kind of order in our living spaces. I tend to feel quite differently when I’m in an organized space, compared to a messy one.  With this installation, there will be an eventual placement and arrangement of things, but it could be one of countless variations.  I like that the relationship of parts could have a very transitory sense of location.

Desert, 2014. Acrylic on canvas. 24 x 24 inches. 

MEF: How has this process shaped what form the installation will ultimately take at Two Shelves?  What kinds of decisions has it lead to? Will you have a set composition to recreate at Two Shelves or will you improvise?

CG: The installation will be an improvised arrangement of pre-made parts including painted raw canvas, stretched canvas, gessoed panel, transparencies, paper, found and made objects, and a custom deck of “playing cards” with various prompts.  In the studio, I’m trying to develop a diverse collection of pieces that are independent, but not enough on their own.  The process is not all that different from how I might construct a landscape by accumulating rudimentary forms into complex relationships.  It’s just that here, the forms are separated physically and the edge of the frame becomes the floor and ceiling.  I’m planning to go into the exhibition room with much more than I anticipate needing and respond directly to the space with the pieces that I bring.  To me, it’s a way of building a landscape in a way that is similar to moving into a new home.  You bring your boxes of things from your old residence and attempt to claim the new space by newly arranging objects accumulated from your life.

MEF: That’s a great analogy. And in this case you could also say it’s like being a house guest!

CG: Absolutely!

Cable Griffith: Domestic Landscapes Thursday, November 13th 7 - 10 pm  

Cable Griffith is represented by G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle, WA. 

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Cable Griffith: Domestic Landscapes Thursday, November 13th 7 - 10 pm

Two Shelves presents Domestic Landscapes, a site-specific installation by Cable Griffith that combines paintings, playing cards, textiles, and objects into a connected landscape.  cablegriffith.com

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Visiting Artist Cable Griffith

This friday, the KSC Art Collective will be hosting Seattle based artist and curator Cable Griffith. The video above is a stop animation of his paintings. There will be a workshop at 9:30am in the photography classroom (3rd floor Redfern) and a lecture at noon in room 321 (3rd floor Redfern). I can't wait to see each and every one of you there in attendance!!!!!