Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project For Craft and Decorative Arts in America

Interview with Gary Griffin
Conducted by Glenn Adamson
At the Artist's studio in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
August 4, 2004

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Gary Griffin on August 4, 2005. The interview took place in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and was conducted by Glenn Adamson for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.

Gary Griffin and Glenn Adamson have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

GLENN ADAMSON: Okay, this is Glenn Adamson interviewing Mr. Gary Griffin here at Cranbrook [Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan]. We are in the new studios building, and we are in the metalsmith shop – you might be able to hear the faint sound of drilling in the background for local color. And it is August 4th, 2004, and we are going to be talking about Gary’s career and life here today. Gary, you want to say hi?

GARY GRIFFIN: Hi.

MR. ADAMSON: So I guess maybe the first thing I should ask is this building that we are sitting in – it’s only a couple of years old, correct?

MR. GRIFFIN: We have been in the building for two years, and we planned for it for about two and a half or three years prior that.

MR. ADAMSON: And it’s actually the first building that has been constructed as a new building on Cranbrook’s campus for years and years, right?

MR. GRIFFIN: Well, not on the entire campus, but within the Art Academy. There have been a series of buildings that have been built on the grounds prior to this one. The Brookside School had an addition, the Institute of Science had an addition, and we built the school’s Natatorium. So this is actually the fourth one.

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: But in the Art Academy, this is an addition that is the earliest – well, the building that preceded it was the foundry in the sculpture studio, which was probably in the early ‘60s, I think. So it has been a good long time.

MR. ADAMSON: And your studio is here or you have a studio elsewhere?

MR. GRIFFIN: This is my studio.

MR. ADAMSON: We are sitting in it.

MR. GRIFFIN: Right, and I – part of our charge, or part of our contract, is that we teach and we maintain an artistic practice. So we are – our title is artist-in-residence. We are not called faculty or we don’t have professorial rank. We are simply artists in residence and then head of a particular department, and in this case, metalsmithing. So I maintain a – actually, I maintain a business. I have my own business, which is Griffin Metal Works. It’s a legal licensed corporation, and I do commission work regularly, and that is what you hear going on down the hall. So every summer I have students that work with me on commission-type projects, and then during the school year I spend at least two days a week in my own studio producing work and then three or so days with the students in a teaching capacity. So it’s fused together, and it works well because it’s a graduate-level education.

MR. ADAMSON: So you are able to get really good people, as a result, to work with you during the summers?

MR. GRIFFIN: Sure. I have really good help, and also, they benefit. It’s really – I think of it as mentoring the way mentoring should be. In other words, those that work with me during the summer get to work on really good work, high-end projects, they get to see how I make things, they learn all the little subtleties about making things. I’m really open with them about discussing relationships with contractors or clients, ordering supplies – all of those kinds of things. So they get an on-the-job type of experience. And then during the school year of course it shifts to where the focus is their work, and then I’m working with them on that, but it’s very different. It’s a very different activity.

And then also during the school year I usually have one student – sometimes two – that are helping me with the projects. So probably next year – I have three people helping me now – next year I will have at least one, and a second one that will work periodically. There is a particular job that I’m working on now and he knows how to do a particular operation so he is going to do that, actually on his own time. So it will be totally flexible.

MR. ADAMSON: Great, great. Well, we probably don’t want to get into too much detail there because we should start at the beginning.

MR. GRIFFIN: Okay.

MR. ADAMSON: Now, you were born in 1945 –

MR. GRIFFIN: Right.

MR. ADAMSON: – with the close of the war, but maybe we should even start before that, talk about your family a little bit, where they came from, that kind of thing.

MR. GRIFFIN: Sure. My – I think it would be – well, my mother is a native Californian. Her parents, however, are from Coldwater, Michigan, which is about two hours from here, which is really – it amazes me. It’s one of those things where you reconnect with place and history and family unexpectedly. My mother is – or was – she is still alive, but she is 95, and she was an interior designer and owned an antique store. And she was very accomplished. She is a fellow of ASID [American Society of Interior Designers], she was on the National Board and she was an accomplished person in her field, and that played a great role in my life, which we will probably discuss a little bit later.

Her parents grew up in Coldwater, Michigan, and my grandfather went to the University of Michigan, graduated with a law degree and moved to California very early on – early 20th century. And then they lived the remainder of their lives there. My father’s side of the family – my father is a Texan, and after my mother and father were married they moved to Wichita Falls, Texas where I was born. And my father was a rancher and he died young, when I was young – he was young. He was 40 years old, and I was a very young child when he passed away.

My Grandmother Griffin lived in Wichita Falls all of her life. She is a real – a very important figure in my life, and she was, you know, basically a high school graduate that was self-educated. So she – I can remember that she would have probably four papers that would come to the post office box each day. The New York Times would come about three days late, four days late, and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch or Chicago Tribune. She would get various newspapers and they would just be piled up all over the place, and she would be reading them. She just read constantly.

Anyway, she is an important figure. After my father died my mother decided – and my Grandmother Griffin as well – that we should move to California where her parents were. So we moved to California when I was about five years old. So I started schooling there, and then during my summers I would go back to Texas to be with my grandmother, and she also had a summer home in Taos, New Mexico. So from the time I was one year old until I was 17, I spent every summer of my life in Taos, New Mexico. So this would have been, you know, in the ‘40s – mid-40’s up through the early ‘60s. And so I’m very familiar with that country, and my wife and I have a home in Northern New Mexico today and we spend a lot of time there.

MR. ADAMSON: And were you aware of Taos as an art center when you were there?

MR. GRIFFIN: Oh, sure. My grandmother – absolutely. My grandmother was not only a reader and someone that was very aware, but she was very aware of art. She collected – she was an eclectic type of collector. So what is really curious is their daughter-in-law – my mother – was an antique dealer. So – [laughs] – needless to say, when those two got together it was shopping time. And they drove all over Texas and the Southwest and Colorado and, you know, going to stores and looking at things and pulling things out of old houses.

I remember the house – my grandmother’s house in Taos – they moved there early enough where there were still a lot of abandoned buildings around. In fact, the home that she had was abandoned when she bought it. And so it was very easy to talk to someone and pull architectural components out of another adobe, and so all of the ceilings were remarkable, all of the beams and – you know, the trasteros were built in the wall. I mean, it was a great place, and that was easy to do at that period of time. There wasn’t much interest – you know, it was pretty eccentric people that moved out to Northern New Mexico at that point in time.

So anyway, she had an interest in art, and in the broader sense decorative arts were a very important part of that. And so I grew up between the antique store and my grandmother’s home where there were Santos and there were some Chinese pieces and some Japanese things and some Victorian stuff. And I mean, it was just all over the place, but really interesting things and remarkable things. So anyway, I guess I just marinated in that stuff.

We knew a lot of artists and she maintained her kind of ranch orientation – I supposed you could call it – where she was up at five every morning. She used to buy – [laughs] – she would buy an aluminum coffee pot – just the cheapest one you could get – and she would bring it home, throw all the percolation system out when she got home, she would dump coffee in the bottom and just boil it, and that was it. [They laugh.] And then, you know, read the newspaper, but then the big meal – her big dinner was always at one or two o’clock in the afternoon, and we always had a very light supper. It was something like a bowl of soup or something like that. So she would invite people over, and there were two activities – it was either the dinner where people would come, and there would usually always be, oh, maybe three guests. And then we might – in the morning she might visit. So basically we would just get in the car and then we would go to someone’s house. And I supposed it was just common at that period of time where you could do that. You just drove up and people were glad to see you and everybody stopped doing what they were doing. And most of them were artists so we knew – I mean, as a young child I was in painters’ studios probably three out of five days of the week.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: One painter or another. So we knew – Andrew Dasburg was a good friend, Nick [Nicolai] Fechin was a good friend. Fechin’s home in Taos is a historic site. [Leon] Gaspard, Frieda Lawrence – D.H. Lawrence’s wife – Angelo [Ravagli] her husband – or, I don’t know if he was actually her husband, but they were together – Dorothy Brett – you know, the whole Taos contingency. And so at one time or another they would be either for dinner or we would go visiting.

So it was a pretty – it was a really unusual experience and I did like doing it, but at the time I was thinking, well, everybody else is doing different things – [laughs] – than I’m doing.

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: You know what I mean? I’m thinking, man, these other – I used to go fishing on the weekends with Frank Chase, who was Gisela Loeffler’s husband. Gisela was well-known for illustrating children’s books and she was more of a folk artist – she was Hungarian – but she is well-known in Northern New Mexico. And so we would go over to Gisela’s all the time. And Gisela lived in one of Mabel Dodge Luhan’s homes. When Mabel moved to New Mexico she bought a large house, which was – she restored it and it was called – originally she called it the Tony House – that was the big house. Then she built a number of guest houses over a large section of property – I mean, I would say maybe 25, 30 acres. So as she got older, she sold off those guest houses so Frank and Gisela lived in one of them. And Mabel actually moved out of the Tony House at a certain point because it was large and then lived in one of the guest houses herself. And we would visit her occasionally also.

MR. ADAMSON: Wow. Interesting.

MR. GRIFFIN: But the Tony House at that point was pretty much not functional. She wasn’t using it. I don’t think it really became occupied again until Dennis Hopper bought it and, you know, all the easy-riders moved in. But anyway, I was keenly aware of art and decorative arts, but it was more of a – I think it was comparable to learning a language where you are just around it, and so I knew Louis XV or Louis XIV and these kinds of things, but I didn’t necessarily think of it as being extraordinary, and I also – it wasn’t a study type of experience. It was there and you are marinating in it.

MR. ADAMSON: Stuff that had names attached to it.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, yeah, or that it was coming in out of the shops. [Laughs.] You know, you get something and then you would sell it. So there were a number of pieces that were kind of prime that weren’t going anywhere, but they were in the shop anyway. And then of course the things in my grandmother’s home didn’t really move. They were there.

MR. ADAMSON: Right. Now, when you say shop you are talking about the one in New Mexico.

MR. GRIFFIN: No, I’m talking about the one in Southern California.

MR. ADAMSON: In California.

MR. GRIFFIN: My mother had a decorating business in Wichita Falls before we moved, but then when she moved to California, then she set up her antique business, and that was the store – the shop – from which she also ran her decorating business.

MR. ADAMSON: I see.

MR. GRIFFIN: So we had the antiques and then the decorating business. So she worked out of that. And we moved – let’s see, that was probably about 1951 or so, and so it was a good time to build a business in Southern California, and she rented a space that was right on Pacific Coast Highway, which has great traffic, and then later on bought it. I think it was a lease-to-buy type of contract, and then she bought it eventually. So she was there – my gosh, from ’51 to – I think we – well, she actually moved the business to another location, but we might have closed it in the mid-‘90s. So she kept working –

MR. ADAMSON: Long time.

MR. GRIFFIN: – a very long time. So it was probably close to 45 years. So she was well-known, and then she participated in her profession in terms of organizational structures and was president of the Los Angeles chapter of – at that time it was AID – now it’s ASID.

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: And then sat on the National Board for years and made trips to Chicago, and then she is a fellow – she was awarded a fellowship.

MR. ADAMSON: What kind of houses was she decorating?

MR. GRIFFIN: All residential, that it basically was – you know, the growth of that part of Southern California, which was pretty much all ranch-style homes – I mean, it was a big deal that it was split-level –

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: – you know, the drop down three stairs or something. For the most part they were all – well, they all were single story except for some of the older homes that were more of a Spanish style – a kind of, what I would call, a 1915 Spanish Colonial typical of the Hollywood crowd at that period of time. There was a lot of remarkable work done in Southern California, both in Long Beach, Hollywood, up in the hills areas, Palos Verdes – in the old section of Palos Verdes that were that Spanish Colonial stucco, Romanesque arches, red tile roofs – really fantastic beautiful homes. And the interiors took on that same characteristic, and they were eclectic where there would be some good ironwork on the sconces and interesting paneled doors, and just everything. It was nicely done.

And then there was the ranch style, and she did a little bit of contemporary, but not that much. So interesting enough – I mean, part of it – I was aware of Charles and Ray Eames and I knew who Jack Larsen was because my mother sold a lot of Jack Larsen’s velvets when he came out with the printed velvets. I mean, I didn’t know anything – I didn’t really know anything about Cranbrook at that point in time – I did a little bit later – but I just knew these people’s names because they were important designers for the goods that she sold. She didn’t sell a lot of contemporary work, but she certainly was aware of Saarinen, and those people and occasionally would sell that kind of thing.

MR. ADAMSON: Depending on the house she was working with or depending on –

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah. Depending on the clientele, depending on the clients. And she had some clients that would purchase contemporary things, but for the most part it wasn’t. But she also did things like Baker, which is totally traditional work. So she ran the gamut, but she didn’t do any commercial work, no contract work. She always used to say, though, “That is where the money is.” [They laugh.] But she didn’t like it, and it just took a different kind of mindset to work at that scale, which she wasn’t prepared to do and she didn’t have a staff. Occasionally, she would have an intern, that type of thing.

MR. ADAMSON: But some of the houses she was working on sound like they were fairly grand.

MR. GRIFFIN: Some of them were. Oh, yeah, there were some very nice ones. I would say that she worked for, as an average in her business, upper middle class. In other words, they were people that were – you know, the ‘50s and ‘60s were pretty optimistic times, and especially compared to today, but we won’t get into that – [laughs] – and because the design was much more progressive in general, I think, and I call that optimistic. So these were people that were young engineers that were working for McDonald Douglas and L.A. was blowing up – you know, just with freeways being built, you know, one after another. So there was a lot going on there and there was money flowing. So people put money into their homes and they bought a lot of stuff.

MR. ADAMSON: Now, one thing I’m curious about – when she is running an antique business and she is in California – you know, there aren’t necessarily a lot of antiques in California, or at least I wouldn’t expect there to be.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah.

MR. ADAMSON: Was she doing her own picking?

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, she picked a little bit, but she also had – there were pickers, you know? And in fact, one of the favorite memories was – there was this one guy, a picker – his name was Jim Anthony – and the pickers would always drive up, and of course they would either have a station wagon or a car with a very big trunk. And the only place in the car for an individual was the driver’s place.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: You know, there was no room for any passengers because it was just packed with stuff. And so Jim Anthony was one of those just charming, warm individuals, and I liked him immensely and he was always really nice to my mother. And so we would always go out to the car and then look at stuff. So I remember her saying, “Well, why don’t you go do this and take this in,” or whatever, and then they would go around to the trunk. And years later I asked her – I said, you know, “I remember Jim well and I remember you purchasing things from him, but I remember you always used to send me to the shop when you would go back to the trunk.” And she said, “Oh, well, there were always more things back there, but underneath all that stuff he was a major dealer in erotic art.” [Laughs.] So she didn’t want me – you know, in other words, he would have, like, candlesticks and everything and then underneath that in the trunk was all this erotic art, which could be objects, it could be drawings, whatever. And so she said, you know, “It’s just as well.”

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: So I thought that was so great because, you know, as a child or a young person you are seeing all these things coming through and of course I thought, well, of course there had to be somebody that was dealing with erotic art. So anyway, it turned out to be Jim Anthony.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: It was just great.

MR. ADAMSON: Now, back in Texas – you are going back there all the time. You had no – she had no business going there.

MR. GRIFFIN: No, no, she didn’t. My father was dead. My grandmother was really the only one left. My Grandfather Griffin had died years, years, earlier. He was young. He was 30 years old when he died.

So my grandmother basically spent September to June in Wichita Falls and then moved – would go to Taos during the summers. Let me think of how old she was – I think she probably died when she was about 70 – something like that. But anyway, that is the way she split her life, and she wouldn’t get on an airplane. I think she came to California maybe once and she hopped on a train. But very often when I would go to Texas, if we were going to meet her in – if I were going to come from L.A. to New Mexico and not go to Texas, then I would get on the train – and I did that as a young guy.

MR. ADAMSON: Oh, on your own.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, on my own. Maybe – oh, maybe nine years old.

MR. ADAMSON: Wow.

MR. GRIFFIN: And so I would get on the train at Union Station about – I think about four o’clock in the afternoon, and then by two o’clock the next day – afternoon – we would be in Lamy Station, which was the train station for Santa Fe – it’s about 25 miles south of Santa Fe. And so I would ride the Santa Fe rails across and, you know, all the stops and Winslow and Seligman and all of that type of thing. I remember well when the dome car first came on. That was a very big deal. [Laughs.] You could get up in the dome and look around. Other than that, it was like riding a train in the east or trains that we ride in Chicago.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: So that trip was a memorable one. Then she would drive down from Taos and then pick me up in Lamy and then we used to stay in Santa Fe – spend the night in Santa Fe and then go up. She had a lot of friends in Santa Fe, too, and artistic – some artists – you know, the same kind of mixing of individuals.

MR. ADAMSON: So it sounds like you were pretty strongly marked by Taos and obviously we will talk about how strongly marked you were by California. Do you feel like you also have a lot of Texan in you in some way?

MR. GRIFFIN: I think – I wouldn’t say – what I feel is that a strong part of that is – it’s more the people and the particular domestic environment I was in. I mean, I remember going out to the ranch and I remember some experiences going fishing and things like that, and I certainly remember the landscape. The landscape really was kind of branded in my brain. But Taos was far more powerful as New Mexico is a far more powerful experience. But the thing I would say about that is that I can remember the floor plan of the house in Wichita Falls and the one in New Mexico, and I can remember objects and where they were, and I still have some of those objects. So I think it was probably the actual domestic environment and the individuals that was really the most powerful memory.

One of the things that I think is interesting, which – I mean, this is – my grandmother – it was very typical to have a house that had some kind of courtyard. So in other words, we think of having multiple roofs or multiple buildings as post-modern, but it’s not unusual at all. And in fact, my grandmother’s house in Taos was kind of a long-running house. They just kept building for years, and you couldn’t get to one part from the other except by going outside through the courtyard. That is just how people lived. And even in the bedrooms, there was no hallway – you went through the bedroom, from one bedroom to another. And then if you wanted to go outside, there was also an outside entrance to the bedroom so you would go down the portico, which was outside, then you could go into the bedroom.

And in Wichita Falls it was very similar to that, you know, where it was just one thing after another, and there was a courtyard, which – you know, you have dinner parties or that type of thing out of there. And then the other thing that I will never forget – my grandmother basically was a ranch woman – and I don’t mean by that that she was some kind of cowboy or something because she wasn’t at all, but she grew up in those kinds of environments as a young girl in Kansas – and every house she had had interior plumbing and exterior. There was an outhouse in every house. So Taos had a male and female outhouse, and so did Wichita Falls. [Laughs.] We never used them, but they were always there, and in Taos there was a – I will never forget – both the Taos and Wichita Falls places had Chambers stoves, and then in Taos there was a wood fire stove next to it. Hey, some things can happen. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: You never know, right?

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, and it’s really interesting because it – you know, it changes your awareness. I will never forget that, and I still think about that a lot.

MR. ADAMSON: Well, it’s another way to being connected to the past, too.

MR. GRIFFIN: Exactly. Yeah, and it’s also a way to support life with options. You know, so you have always got – you know, you are never going to get stuck because you have always got options.

MR. ADAMSON: Right. Now, what was your house in California like? Was it a ranch?

MR. GRIFFIN: It was a ranch-style – well, actually, the first house my mother bought was this tiny, little, two-bedroom house, and that is actually kind of interesting. It was in an area in Palos Verdes and there were three homes, and ours is the one in the middle. The one that was adjacent to us in one direction was designed and built by an architect, and he designed our house. So these were homes that were low, they were [Frank Lloyd] Wrightian in their feel. They had shake roofs and they had very long eaves – maybe 24 inches, maybe 30-inch eaves that came out, and they were also – they were stuccoed so they had a little bit of a Spanish feel. So they were really nicely designed homes, and the one that we were in, she bought it because it was small. You know, it was just my mother and I, so it was it was a very, very small house.

And then the one on the other side was another architect who we remained friends with for years, and he had more of an Italian flair. I mean, this house was great – a lot of stone, a lot of rockwork, he had a little gazebo – I mean, all this cool, really neat stuff that he would build over years. So he would get a project and then he would build something. And so here again, just another reinforcement of a certain quality of life, you know what I mean? It seems that all those places, those early formative stages, were reinforced through this kind of marination. You know, it’s just like, you are in it, and it’s only when you go out of it you go, “Whoa – [laughs] – what is happening out here?”

MR. ADAMSON: And it’s not like that for everybody.

MR. GRIFFIN: No, no, no. So I felt – I mean, I really feel fortunate and privileged that my mother and my Grandmother Griffin were so interested in these kinds of things and that they were involved – or my mother was involved – professionally in that type of thing. I mean, she would do any kind of work, but in terms of our own environment, there were just interesting things around.

MR. ADAMSON: Now, it sounds like she never remarried, your mother?

MR. GRIFFIN: She did remarry later, and she married a guy that she had gone to college with, and they were married for quite a long time and then he basically developed Alzheimer’s and then he died. So my mom has – and my mother was married before she married my father. So she had a first husband, and I have a half brother.

MR. ADAMSON: I see.

MR. GRIFFIN: He is much older than I am. He is 15 years older than I am.

MR. ADAMSON: And was he an important figure for you growing up?

MR. GRIFFIN: No, we never lived in the same home. We had contact periodically, and of course we still do because we share our mother, but we are not – I wouldn’t say we are close. I mean, we are friendly and we share our mother. In other words, we both care about her and are maintaining her life at this point in time, but we never hung out or anything. I was in a crib and he was driving a car, you know? [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: So it sounds like you were raised by a single mom.

MR. GRIFFIN: Basically three women – my mother, her mother, Grace Swaffield and then my Grandmother Griffin. And my mother’s mother, after my Grandfather Swaffield died, she moved about four doors down from our house. So my mother was very attentive to her parents. My Grandfather Swaffield had a stroke in, I think, the late ‘50s, so he was really incapacitated for the last six or so years of his life. He died about – I think he died in ’61 and then my Grandmother Griffin died in ’62.

So the grandparents were pretty much out of the picture other than my Grandmother Swaffield, who lived to be 93, and she was just a really smart, intelligent, well-read woman. She didn’t have the same interest in objects and that type of thing. I mean, she had a nice home, but it wasn’t a place where I was just completely overwhelmed when I would go in there, whereas both my mom and my Grandmother Griffin – they were totally eclectic, in a way kind of over the top – a lot like my place, just stuff everywhere, and interesting – “Oh, what’s that?” And, you know, the stuff would be moving through.

MR. ADAMSON: You know, it is interesting to me that you didn’t have a kind of father figure –

MR. GRIFFIN: No, there was none.

MR. ADAMSON: – because, you know, you think of the ‘50s of the classic time of the nuclear family unit and you had this very different kind of upbringing.

MR. GRIFFIN: Exactly. Yeah, I feel really fortunate. I remember as a child that – I mean, I never went to a ballgame. I played some tennis, but I mean, none of that stuff – one thing I did a lot, though, is I used to ride horses. And my Grandfather Swaffield would – he had a couple of horses, and when he was alive and before his stroke we would go for rides. He thought that that would be a good thing for me on a Sunday to go with him because the rest of the time I was with all the women.

And so I did that, but for the rest of the time it was all activities, either of my own invention – and my mother always gave me a work area, too, in the garage. So I had a workbench, and I could do pretty much whatever I wanted down there so, you know, I built models and really pretty much activities that were focused in terms of my own interests, which usually had to do with building something. Or I would build – we had a ravine in back of our house and I would build little forts, or whatever you want to call them, down there. I would get a bunch of two by fours and hammer and that type of thing.

MR. ADAMSON: So you were an only child, so playing a lot by yourself.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, basically. Yeah, I think of myself as an only child.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: One of the activities that I distinctly remember as a real treat was on a Saturday, as a kind of treat we would go to L.A. and we would go to lunch, and then she would show me some things around L.A. So there was – I remember the Bradbury Building. You walk into the Bradbury Building and it’s all iron going up so that – you know, late 19th-century building where access to all the offices were off a kind of mezzanine, but it was an iron railing so there was an atrium-like feeling. When you were in this building, it was wide open up to the top, but it was all cast-iron.

And then there was a great men’s store, and we used to go there, I think, basically for one reason because we would never buy anything. [Laughs.] It was called Oviatt [Alexander & Oviatt clothing store], and the doors at the entrance were iron with Lalique glass.

MR. ADAMSON: Oh.

MR. GRIFFIN: And then you would go inside, and the elevator doors were like that. I mean Art Deco, man. It was unbelievable. So then we would have lunch and we would do that kind of thing, and then we would go over, I think it was at 12:30 or 1:00 or 1:30, to where the musicals would be playing – I don’t remember the theater. But we figured out that if the performance was at 2, if we arrived at about 1:20 or 1:15, that that is when people would turn their tickets in, and very often we could buy, I mean, extraordinary seats, like front row center, fourth row, fifth row center for a matinee. And so we would go to – and I remember those musicals. You know, I remember seeing Gwen Verdon in “Damn Yankees” and all that, which was – that was a treat.

And then the other thing about L.A. that I remember was the Atlantic Richfield Building was Art Deco and it was black – either black granite – probably black granite, as opposed to marble – but I mean, black, which is cool.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: And at the top there were gold nymphs – you know, like, some kind of gold nymph figures – four of them. And it might have been in the ‘60s – there was this large debate about tearing it down or remodeling it. Of course the developers were not interested in having that thing up, and I mean, they blew it up. They blew it up and my mom said, “We have got to get down there and get those nymphs.”

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: We have got to get some of those parts. And we never did, but there was no interest in picking it out, pulling the hardware off. It was before that. They just blew it up. I mean, unbelievable.

MR. ADAMSON: That is unbelievable. It’s tragic.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, black granite, and if they would have saved that building it would have been a treasure. It would have been like the Chrysler Building in New York, but there was no foresight on that level. And anyway, it’s gone.

MR. ADAMSON: Well, L.A. is sort of about the future, right?

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely. And also, that was just before they started Century City and that area to the west. So L.A. wanted to be progressive and have new things because they could see that the place was dying and sooner or later someone was going to start a satellite city. But in the long run, it would have benefited them to at least keep that one.

MR. ADAMSON: So what were your schools like growing up in L.A.?

MR. GRIFFIN: Let’s see. This is actually interesting. I started public school in Palos Verdes where we live, and they – this is still hard for me to believe, but there were actually budget cuts at that period of time, and they went on to a half-day program, and we don’t think of that in the early ‘50s, but it happened. And my mother was working and she said, “Oh, this isn’t going to work to have you home every day,” and she could also see that I really wasn’t progressing. So my Grandmother Griffin, who was a converted Catholic – and I still believe to this day that it’s really all about the stuff.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: She liked all that stuff. She loved Santos and, you know, everything about it. So she had all that stuff and I – because she didn’t go to church. [Laughs.] She would go when she felt like it.

MR. ADAMSON: So she was there for the trappings.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, she liked the stuff. She liked the pews, and then of course the church – I mean, that is what I want to believe – and the church we went to in Taos of course was the Ranchos Church [San Francisco de Asis, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, built 1815] – you know, the great one. And I remember being in there and we – I would go with her and I – of course I wasn’t a Catholic – and it was a really local parish at that point in time. I mean, you are kneeling on a plywood board – or no, an old pine board at that point in time, but it had that – you know, the retablos were great and intense. You know, so cool, just so over the top in terms of the passion of it.

But anyway, my grandmother called her up and said, “You send him to Catholic school,” so that is what she did. And so I went to Catholic school and had nuns, and as I think back about it, I’m really glad that it happened because it was a great education. So when the time came for high school my mother actually asked me where I want to go, and of course a lot of the kids were going on to Catholic high school. And I said, “Well, I think I want to do that,” so I went to Loyola High School in L.A., and it was Jesuit, you know. So I have got to tell you, my high school education was amazing because it was pure classical academics.

And I worked within a group of people that were in the highest grouping and – so in other words, they had three different diplomas that they gave in high school – it wasn’t one, there were three. [Laughs.] You know, there was honorary classical and whatever, but I got an honorary classical, and what that included – besides all the science and math – was four years of Latin and two years of – [audio break, tape change] – Homeric Greek – ancient Greek. So anyway that is –

MR. ADAMSON: So strange.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, oh, yeah. It was another period of time. I mean, they – that is the way they wanted to educate people and that is –

MR. ADAMSON: In the middle of Los Angeles.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, yeah, Los Angeles.

MR. ADAMSON: So there was no vocational training then in the school.

MR. GRIFFIN: No, in fact – well, in high school we didn’t even have P.E. There was no physical – even though there were kids that were – I was not into sports, but there were kids that were – really had great athletic teams – you know, Catholic schools always do. And also, no art at all. I had no art in high school. It was all academics – trigonometry, calculus, Latin, Greek, English, various histories – that type of thing, all five or six academic subjects – physics, chemistry.

And so what I did do in high school, though, was whenever they would have sports – especially in football in the season – they would put these banners in the hall, so I used to paint all the banners, but not with any art training. I would draw them and do lettering and I would basically look in books or look at other examples and try to make stuff – make the posters.

MR. ADAMSON: How did you gravitate towards doing that?

MR. GRIFFIN: Well, I wasn’t really interested in the sports, you know? And they did have a rec room, though, and I liked to play pool and ping-pong and got pretty good at it, so that was fun. But, you know, basically that experience was – we would have recess and kids played volleyball and that type of thing, but it was an academic experience. And even if you got into trouble and you had to go to detention, which of course I did – I think every kid – you would write. You didn’t just sit there. You were in detention for an hour and there was a subject and you had to write something – [laughs] – you know? It was all focused.

Oh, and the other thing that we had to do if we were misbehaving was if we didn’t go to detention, one of the Jesuit priests might say, “Well, 50 lines.” What that meant was that you had to memorize 50 lines of something. So it could be The Merchant of Venice or whatever. And so portions of speech, and then you just hope that they would give you the same one again. [Laughs.] But that is what it was, and it was not – I mean, you were upset when you had to do it, but you did it, and there was never any animosity about it. It wasn’t mean-spirited or – you know, it wasn’t mean at all. I never felt that way about it. I figured I had done something wrong, and I would just memorize the lines.

MR. ADAMSON: You know, what strikes me as curious about all this is it sounds like you worked with your hands very little growing up.

MR. GRIFFIN: Well, no, there is another part of that which I left out. My mother had an extra space on the end of her shop, so she – there was a guy that repaired furniture.

MR. ADAMSON: Oh.

MR. GRIFFIN: And even when she moved her shop, he moved with her. So they had a business relationship for 50 years. And his name was Al Klempan, and he was really good at restoring furniture, and he would also make some furniture. But he did a great deal of the repair work for the moving companies when they damaged things – you know, like replacing veneers, et cetera. And I remember his shop was just full of all this old wood. It was a tinderbox, man – but, you know, all these old fleches of Birdseye maple or these kinds of these.

So anyway, when I was a kid I would work for him, and that would include really nasty stuff like stripping furniture, or it also included – there was a period of time where he was making early American-style coffee tables and end tables. And so I learned to do wood leg turning, and I would make all of the legs. And at that period of time, there wasn’t a template. You had to make the legs. In other words, it was all hand-eye stuff to get four legs that look the same. And then there was a kind of frame and panel mission-type style and, you know, I would do some work on those. So there was that work of building that, but I would say that other than my little workshop in the basement, which might be model airplanes that were the Balsa wood kind where you would build the whole thing. Yeah, there really wasn’t all that much comparatively. There was no shop class, but it was more like being in Al’s shop – that type of thing.

And then when I was in high school – I think I bought a car when I was 17. My mother said, “Well, if you ever get enough money to buy a car you can have one.” So I saved up $150 bucks and I came home one day and said, “I got a car.” [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: And of course, you know, got interested in that and always taking it apart and, you know, very mechanical and just interested in all that stuff.

MR. ADAMSON: Was that because you had friends that were also doing car –

MR. GRIFFIN: I developed some friendships with people that were doing cars, but I think the reality was it was something that was within my understanding and I liked doing it, and it was also something that I could pretty much do by myself. I mean, for the most part, all of those kinds of activities I did by myself. So it was a form of entertainment. I delivered furniture for my mom in her station wagon, then I would go fool around with my car, and I didn’t really socialize a lot at that point of my life. In other words, I wasn’t out at night. I was home generally in the garage messing around with the car or, you know, something like that.

MR. ADAMSON: Do you remember what your first car was?

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah. It was a 1950 Ford. And I also remember that – I mean, I did a lot of work on the motor, and there was this cranky old guy that had a lot of used parts and so it was really – it was a hot rod basically.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: You know, it was a hot rod, and that was a big deal in L.A. always – California car culture – but at that period of time when they were building the freeways – I mean, there was wide open stretches of road that nobody was on, and that is where we would go at night, and go up there and drive these cars. So that is the 17-year-old phase.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah, yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: All of that academic orientation, I think, resulted in one of those places where you kind of lose the faith. And by that I mean, all through high school I remember, well, you study because you are supposed to and you do these things because that is what it means to be accomplished in some way. And so when the time came to go to college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I mean, basically my program before that was prescribed. In other words, if you did well, these are the things you did. You did take two years of Greek. It doesn’t matter whether you wanted to or not. And I remember that the kids that were in whatever the next degree down was – they got to take Spanish, and I thought, that is a hell of a lot better deal than Homeric Greek.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.] “Where did I go wrong?”

MR. GRIFFIN: How come if you work hard you have got to take Homeric Greek?

So anyway, I started college.

MR. ADAMSON: This is Long Beach, right?

MR. GRIFFIN: No, actually I went to Loyola University [now Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles] for a year, and I didn’t do well. I thought, well, I think maybe I would like to do architecture, but at these kinds of schools, there is no architecture – there is civil engineering.

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: So the first year is the same routine as high school. I mean, it’s like you are taking philosophy, calculus – just jammed on academics, and I just rebelled. I basically quit. I mean, quit in terms of working, so my grades were horrible. I mean, they just went down the tube. So they said, “Well, you don’t really want to be doing this.” So they said, “You’re out of here. You can’t stay performing like this.”

So my mother, who I always appreciate as being supportive – she was always supportive even though she would say, “Well, this is not a good thing that is going on here.” So she said, “What do you want to do?” And I said, “I don’t know, I think I just want to go to junior college and I just want to try stuff.” And she said, “Fine, you do that.”

So what I did, which, if you were a parent – I think about this – if I were my mother, I would be thinking, what the heck is this kid thinking, you know? So when I first started junior college, I said, “I don’t want to take any academics – no academics.” “All right, what are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to take welding.” [Laughs.] So I went to junior college every day from eight to noon and took basically trade school welding. In other words, I was in there with a bunch of guys who were going to weld freighters together or something. And there was a technical lecture in the morning and then we welded for three hours, and, you know, they would test the welds – it was vocational in the true sense where you were going to be a welder. I thought, I want to learn this and I want to learn how to do it really well.

MR. ADAMSON: Why welding? How did you settle on that? Was it just the furthest thing from academics that you could imagine?

MR. GRIFFIN: No, I think I just always wanted to learn how to do it. I didn’t know how to do it, and I thought, I want to learn how to do that. That seems really challenging and interesting. So anyway, that is what I did. And I mean, basically, these guys were showing up with their lunch buckets. I mean it was that kind of environment.

So then as I was around there a little bit more, I realized that there were – that while I was in this kind of trade thing, I noticed that next door there was this other group of people and they were doing some woodworking and I thought well, maybe I would like to try that. So I did the welding thing for a year. I would go to work in the afternoon and then I would do welding in the morning.

MR. ADAMSON: What was work?

MR. GRIFFIN: Work was, I think, at the time probably McDonald’s or something like that.

MR. ADAMSON: Oh.

MR. GRIFFIN: Just, you know, flipping burgers.

MR. ADAMSON: Okay.

MR. GRIFFIN: But that was a really good cleanout period – really healthy, you know? A little welding, a little work.

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: But I would still go to New Mexico and – no, excuse me. No, I was not going to New Mexico because my grandmother had passed away when I was a senior in high school, so this was after that.

And so anyway, the next year I said, “Well, I think I would like to take – I think I will take an academic class.” So I took – I think it was a physics class, and I signed up for an art class that was more craft-orientated, and then I signed up for a woodworking class that was kind of a beginning woodworking. Even though I had done a lot I thought, well, I should know more about that. So anyway – this is really kind of remarkable – the teacher of the physics class was Mr. Wizard on television [Donald Herbert]. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: Cool.

MR. GRIFFIN: He was the guy with the – [makes whooshing sound] – you know? And he was the first Mr. Wizard. He was the early one – you know, early on – and this guy was dynamic. That is all I can say. He was one of those great orators that could bring you into a subject. So I got turned on, and I just thought, wow, this is cool.

MR. ADAMSON: He just happened to be teaching at this junior college?

MR. GRIFFIN: I want to tell you something. My whole educational experience, I think in part, is based upon who you bump into.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: And I’m sure that most people aren’t, but if you bump into a great teacher or you go someplace and they say, “Well, why don’t you take this,” and you do that it changes your life. It’s so serendipitous, it’s so fortunate, so lucky, it’s just good fortune. How else can you say it? But I think it also – I mean this is a different thing – but I think that also affects your beliefs or politics because if you don’t get the opportunity, it’s like – it’s because I simply had the opportunity to bump into somebody. So what happens to people that don’t get the opportunity to bump into anything like that? All they bump into is ugly stuff.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: You know. You can’t – it doesn’t work. So anyway, I started taking those classes, got turned on. Took the art class and loved it. And I’ll never forget this teacher. His name was Oliver, Mr. Oliver. And he taught at El Camino Junior College forever. And he taught courses called “Crafts.” And so we made a wood thing and we made this thing. And then the other class I took at that time was freehand drawing. So it was – I had never had a drawing class in my life and I loved it. And we started drawing on newsprint, but literally newspapers. You know, we just rack them up and he’d put a basketball in there and we’d start drawing – [laughs] – or a hat and finally moving up to drapes. And I remember going home and just drawing and going wow, this is really good. I like all of this stuff. And I liked the wood. I liked that. And the physics – I just – I liked it, but I knew that I liked the other stuff a lot more.

So then I thought, well, I guess I better get together because I’m going to do some of this academic stuff. And so then I took a chemistry class. And anyway, we’re up through El Camino and then transferred down to Long Beach State [California State University, Long Beach]. What I did was I transferred down thinking that I wanted to be in industrial arts, which is more – it really was of course a study that led you to be a high school or shop teacher. And so I went to Long Beach State and in enrolled in that course and was moving along through it and liked it. There was a course in that department that was only for art majors to come down and use the shop. And I think that they designed it primarily for industrial design people. So even though the course of study I was on – we built some furniture and even – I got to the point where I built a boat. I mean it’s – I built two boats. And they worked.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR.GRIFFIN: The sailboats. And so it had all of that but what I started noticing was all these people from the art department, they really knew how to design stuff. So comparatively even – and so I had never had any of the experience. And felt, okay, I’m going to have a minor – I’m going up the hill. I’m going up to the fine arts department. So I talked to my counselor.

MR. ADAMSON: Sorry, did you – so did you think of it that way as the – you know, the industrial arts was like a lower echelon or lower on the hierarchy.

MR.GRIFFIN: No, actually, it was physically up the hill – at Long Beach State. No, I didn’t. The industrial arts was on the lower campus and the fine arts were up the hill at Long Beach. No, I never did and I still don’t.

So I – what I did was I talked to my counselor and he said, “Sure you can do that.” And what I discovered was I could actually have a dual major. So that’s what I actually did and the industrial arts credits I kept earning secured enough to where I would have that. And then I went up to the fine arts department and began at the beginning and took two-dimensional design, three-dimensional design. And I remember taking a general craft class that was mainly wood and then taking some ceramics. And at that point I knew about Cranbrook because my mother had talked about this place. And then what I realized that almost all my teachers and the ones that I really respected, they were all Cranbrook graduates. Ward Youry, ceramics, Al Pine and metalsmithing. Mary Jane Leland in textiles. I didn’t take a textile class, but she taught two-dimensional design. And I mean, you talk about rigor. You know, a two-credit class and you’re just killing yourself.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR.GRIFFIN: You know, oh, she was so – but remarkable, really remarkable. Structured, experienced. So anyway, the more I got up there, the more interested I was. So in California, in order to have a teaching credential, you have to spend a fifth year in school. So what I did was I used that fifth year to get the dual major. And so I got the teaching credential and the dual major and I remember that I had not taken a jewelry or metalsmithing class. And I was walking down the hall and I saw all this just remarkable stuff in the hall and people kept talking about how difficult it was and everything. And I just thought, oh, man, I like metalwork so I’m going to try. And I loved it. So I went through all those courses. And what I did was I graduated, got the credential and then started teaching junior high school in Long Beach and would go and take a class at night with the metalsmithing and just stayed on with it.

And then at certain point decided that I didn’t want to teach junior high all my life. And so I thought, well, I’m going to go for an MFA and I was keenly aware Al Pine was kind of working nationally at the time. He knew a lot of people. And so he’d bring – he’d go to conferences and bring back photographs of the work, what’s going on. And so I knew the kind of work that was going on at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island], I knew what was – somewhat what was going on here, Tyler [Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], Wisconsin [University of Wisconsin, Madison]. You know, the places where his generation had gone out and starting to work.

And he was the type of teacher that had books on reserve. And he’d say, “I think this would be a good idea for you to read these books.” And, okay, I guess I better read those books. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR.GRIFFIN: You know, so I’d go up there and do it and just got really – kind of re-orientated in terms of academics but all in terms of decorative art.

MR. ADAMSON: And so was he having you read things about the history of metalwork.

MR.GRIFFIN: Yeah, it was mainly – for the most part it was technical books. It was all the classic technical text. Bernard Cuzner [A First Book of Metal-work, Leicester: The Dryad Press, 1931], Hebert Maryon [Metalwork and Enamelling, London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1912] – all of these English, for the most part, text on silvermithing or metalworking in general. And of course, once you start doing that then you say, “Well, what else is there out there?” And so you just keep looking around. I mean libraries are just – they’re just the greatest things in the world and the as it – as resources, they’re just phenomenal. So if you are the type of person that understands that, then you get up to the library and you hang out there and go to the files.

I remember when I got to graduate school, I thought, you know, it would be possible to look through every Craft Horizons. That’s doable. And so I said, “Okay, I’m going to do that.” And I’d go to the library at a certain time and I’d give myself an hour. And I’d just, oh, okay, here’s 1949 or whatever. Pull it out and I’d just start thumbing through. And it was an education. I’d say oh, there’s Phil Fike work or here’s Robert von Neumann or all these people that were in my field. And at that point, I knew I was interested in metalwork.

MR. ADAMSON: So you had already decided that.

MR.GRIFFIN: Yes. Before I left California, I realized that I think if you want to do something well, you have to focus. And so in other words, at that point it was wood or metal and I made that decision. I’m going to go with the metal. It seemed a better fit. I liked the material. And liked the challenge of it. And so I just – I never did any wood after that. I just totally focused.

MR. ADAMSON: Can we talk a little bit more about Al Pine?

MR.GRIFFIN: Yes.

MR. ADAMSON: Because I think he’s one of those people that I think everyone’s heard of, but you don’t necessarily have a sense of what his work was like. He seems like a figure in education.

MR.GRIFFIN: Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, I’ll talk about two people. I’ll talk about Al first, but the other teacher that came in was Dieter Muller-Stach. But Al was a very well established figure. And frankly, at that point in time, he was known as being very tough, very demanding. His curriculum was demanding. You had to make a lot of work – I mean a lot of work. And it was strenuous. So you had to be committed if you wanted to excel. And he was – he’s a quirky guy. He’s a very eccentric, very intelligent and very knowledgeable. You got to really kind of draw him out.

And so I remember that he was always interested in what are the options here. And he went to the first SNAG [Society of North American Goldsmiths] conference and brought back all this information and he would take photographs of work. So we saw a lot of work by people that were our peers. At that time there was a sterling silversmith competition. I can’t remember the name of the guild in America that put that competition on, but they would do photographs. And so we had those all over the walls in the shop of these remarkable silver pieces come out of Jack Prip’s program or out of RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology, New York] with Hans Christensen was there – just the highest levels of smithing. And of course, I remember looking at that and just thinking, wow. I mean this people can really make stuff. We’re just a bunch rookies out here. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: Did you feel like Pine himself was not capable of doing that level of work?

MR.GRIFFIN: I felt that Pine was more interested in making jewelry at that point in time. This was silversmithing by the great silversmiths. I mean people who specialized and we realized that this was a level up from what we were capable of even though we had raised cups in sterling and we made chalices. We forged flatware and Al was really good at forging. But his aesthetic was radically different than that. I mean we were looking at – I didn’t really think of it at the time – but we were looking at really advanced Danish modern design. We were looking at a distillation of Danish. And there really is no comparison in terms of the refined aesthetic and the technical expertise of the Danes at that – [audio break.]

MR. ADAMSON: Okay. This is tape three of Glenn Adamson interviewing Gary Griffin. And we lost a little bit of tape, so I’m going to have Gary back up and just talk a little bit about his experiences in California just before heading out to Tyler. And I guess the first thing to talk about, Gary, would be that issue of being a little anxious about going to Tyler.

MR.GRIFFIN: Oh. Well, you have to remember that I was in Southern California. Al Pine was exposing us to work across the country. There was a lot of visual information coming out of the northeast and the eastern seaboard. Schools like RISD, RIT, Tyler, et cetera. So we were very aware and the – the work that was coming out of those schools was really remarkable. And the thing I remember about the work coming out of Tyler was that it was I thought very advanced within the framework of Jewelry. In other words, there was just interesting things to look at, things that I hadn’t seen before.

And so my impression was that the students at Tyler were very consistent and very remarkable. In other words, this was – of course you were seeing pictures. So now I would say, “Well, it’s the lens of the camera and it’s a selected view.” But it was. It was a really remarkable program. And so of course I had thought that I would like to be a part of something like that. And at the same time, in terms of education, depending on where one is in their development. If you aspire to things, you’re always going to go look ahead and say, “This is what I’d like to achieve.”

And at that point, frankly, I think as a result of basically understanding that I had come from regional experiences in Texas, New Mexico, and California. And always kind of looking east in terms of it being almost a hub of American intellectualism and thought and that there’s a certain level of intimidation perhaps or being overwhelmed of saying, “Well, I want to go do that so I’m going to take on that challenge.”

So in going to Tyler, although I now think in retrospect that I was very, very well prepared to go, when I did leave, I certainly didn’t feel inadequate, but I felt that it would be really challenging and that I was going to have work really hard to achieve things there. And of course I did work very hard. But I think that I just probably felt that I wouldn’t be as well developed upon arrival as many of my colleagues. I underestimated things.

But I also think that that – I don’t think that’s unusual for me to do that. In other words, I find that I have that experience often when I get into an unfamiliar environment and new space. I’m really interested in all the things that are going on and I want to know about it. And so if you’re in an atmosphere where there is expertise and people doing remarkable things, you’ve got a lot to learn. And I’m always up for that. I like to put myself in situations where I have to climb up, rung up.

MR. ADAMSON: You know, just thinking about the preparation that you got at Long Beach, I think we should go over Al Pine.

MR.GRIFFIN: Okay.

MR. ADAMSON: One thing actually we didn’t talk about before was where Al Pine came from himself.

MR.GRIFFIN: Okay. Al is a New Yorker. I think he’s from Brooklyn and so he grew up in New York and then went to I think City College of New York and two of his classmates were Bernie Bernstein and Fred Fenster. Eventually – and Al actually also started in industrial arts. And then at some point, he decided to go to Cranbrook. And I don’t remember – I think he may have come to Cranbrook before Fred. I’m not sure. But anyway, he came to Cranbrook and then he subsequently went on a Fulbright to Germany and so on and so forth.

So he was – he’s traveled the world. He knows about metalworking all over the world. And I remember when I was a student I think he went to Japan for a year and he’s traveled all over India and Pakistan. So he’s very knowledgeable about metal work.

MR. ADAMSON: Well, so the Fulbright is where he brought in Dieter, right?

MR.GRIFFIN: Well, no. He went back I think from – I think he may have met Dieter on that trip but I think he went again to Germany for a period of time and then Dieter – he went on a sabbatical and was there. And so that’s when he decided that if the department expanded that someone like Dieter would be really valuable. And Dieter was unusual in that he had European training both as a silversmith and a blacksmith and he was interested in jewelry and gold work as well. And prior to coming to Long Beach, he lived in Ghana, I think, for six months or so and worked with Ashanti goldsmiths and blacksmiths in some kind of a program. It may have been areas where Germany was colonizing – still in the colonial period in terms of Africa.

So he was really an important asset to the department at Long Beach because he expanded the view of metalwork. And for me that was important because I think I’m a pluralist. So in other words, I understand industrial metalworking. Presently I’m as interested in computer type of work with CNC machines as I am in hand forging. So Dieter was able to help us with iron working. We developed a forge in probably about 1970, ’71 at Long Beach. And he also would be able to help us with silversmithing assignments.

So between Al and Dieter, there was a really broad cross-section of information both technical and otherwise and for the most part, the undergraduate education was a series of technical exercises that moved up through a level of experience. And of course we had to design these things too. And we did talk about design. But I always felt that the thing I didn’t – I felt inadequate in terms of my design experiences. And that was on of the primary motivators for going to graduate school. And I would also say that’s a period time where we didn’t use the word “concept.” We weren’t talking about concept and we were talking about – we may have called them ideas at that point in time.

MR. ADAMSON: Right. They were more like projects. That kind of idea rather than –

MR.GRIFFIN: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, as it turned out between the industrial process experience I had in metalwork and then the art metalwork, I had quite a remarkable and unusual set of skills and experiences compared to my classmates and Tyler. And so I was much better prepared than I thought I was.

MR. ADAMSON: You had mentioned Al Ching.

MR.GRIFFIN: Yeah. Al Ching taught at Fullerton [California State University, Fullerton] and I was aware of his work although I wasn’t as interested in hollowware, but I certainly was aware of his work. And I did a lot of hollowware at Long Beach, but let’s just put it this way, the progress in the field was taking place primarily in terms of jewelry and then we have the development in the ’70s of the object. In other words, metalsmiths making things that are not really hollowware – they’re fabricated for the most part and they are things like rattles, and maybe a hand mirror or things like that. But they were not practical things. The hollowware work before that would be something like a teapot, a creamer, a serving spoon, that the flatware work could be serving spoons, and cutlery possibly.

So they were more practical. And in the ’70s in terms of people that might have been making hollowware, they moved into these other things and of course at another point it becomes, quote, “the vessel.” And that I think is something that might take place maybe in the early ’80s or late ’70s – the vessel. But I had already taken place in ceramics because I – we basically inherited that term from the ceramics movement.

MR. ADAMSON: Do you think that there – you had talked about some intimidation on the part of American metalsmiths looking at the Danish guys that were doing Hollowware.

MR.GRIFFIN: Oh, I think that for the most part that as an undergraduate, when I first saw the work from RISD of the school for American craftsmen, RIT –

MR. ADAMSON: John Prip, for instance.

MR.GRIFFIN: And we’re talking about – or even work from Cranbrook that was done in the ’50s, people – the teachers would have been Richard Thomas and Hans Christensen, and Jack Prip that, as a student, you would see that work and it was just so evolved and developed – really remarkable work in terms of hollowware and silversmithing. And I would say that our designs were not as evolved and our technique wasn’t either although we could make stuff, but there stuff was much more evolved. And I attributed that to the kind level of the teaching and the experience of their teachers.

I mean Al was really not a silversmith. He knew how to raise things. He was more an inventor and I remember him at one point saying, “Well, I’m a maker of things.” So he didn’t even call himself a jeweler. And Dieter, in terms of his commission life, was doing architectural work. He was making things for churches and making them out of bronze or possibly out of iron – various materials, but it was mainly architectural type of application, which was something that none of us had even really thought about.

MR. ADAMSON: So in terms of pushing hollowware forward in the ’70s, did you think there was – was it a lack of courage, lack of imagination that you see there?

MR.GRIFFIN: I would say – as a general thought I would say that it was – I think that there really wasn’t a lot to be inspired by. In other words, the object seemed to hold more. It seemed to be more relevant and I mean, there was nothing really relevant in a teapot at that point in time. And so the only model were these other things and people were making those things. I wasn’t; I was making jewelry. I don’t remember precisely when Heikki Seppä developed his naming process for forms, but even he said, “You know, hollowware is dead. So we have to make these sculptures, these silver sculptures.” And I think that that was an attempt to, number one, to add a vocabulary to the field, which was remarkable and indispensable, but the other thing was to find a new format to deal with it. My personal opinion is it was still Danish modern. You know, like, you look at all of that work and you go, well, man, it’s still based in the same kind of – I would call it a kind of streamline organic. You know, it’s where streamline design hits naturalism. It’s a streamline naturalism. And so when you look at Heikki’s sculptures, they still have that same quality.

And the person that I remember as being just so remarkable and unique would be John Marshall. I remember seeing his work. Al came home from a conference – this would probably be in maybe ’70, ’71, somewhere around there – and he had a brochure. I had never heard of John Marshall and he was in Cleveland and those huge punch bowls. And I had never seen silverwork like that. And I don’t think anybody else had either. So it was so progressive and so remarkable. But that wasn’t enough to inspire me to be interested in making it. I just was more interested in jewelry work.

MR. ADAMSON: You know, one word that you used a minute ago really caught my attention, which was “objects.” People were making objects instead of making hollowware.

MR.GRIFFIN: Yes.

MR. ADAMSON: And I think a lot about the show “Objects USA” as being a watershed event at that time. I think it was ’68, ’69.

MR.GRIFFIN: Yeah, it was.

MR. ADAMSON: And so it’s right around the period in which you were at Long Beach. I wonder first of all, if you were – the level of your awareness of that show and whether you thought it was a watershed at the time.

MR.GRIFFIN: I remember it. I remember the catalogue. I never saw the exhibition but I saw the catalogue. And I remember looking through in it and being impressed. The Millers [Fred Miller and John Paul Miller] were in there. All the major people were in that show. And I never really – I think at that point in time, though, I was not intellectually motivated about these things. In other words, I was interested in the object. I was interested in what it was, who made it, what it was made out of – especially the metalwork – but I didn’t think about what does it means when someone calls all this stuff objects as opposed to something else.

And I suppose it was a term to be able to group all these different things together, et cetera. And I certainly never thought about it as being influential in terms of the way we would look at that world, but I supposed it would be because I mean all of us were aware of that exhibition, at least in my class, in my group of friends and students, we knew about the exhibition “Objects USA.” And it was well publicized, and the catalogue. It was great.

MR. ADAMSON: How did you regard the issue of functionality at that point in your life?

MR.GRIFFIN: It wasn’t paramount to my thinking. And I would say that even in the jewelry that – well, no. In the jewelry that I was making, a ring was the size of a ring. A necklace was the size of a necklace. We were concerned with things about how much it weighed, et cetera. So when we began to see some of the jewelry coming out of Tyler – that it was large. I mean, large comparatively. I mean, wow, what’s that stuff? And I was just curious that it was one of things where you think, wow, there’s people that think that way. That’s pretty interesting. I mean maybe I should know more about that.

MR. ADAMSON: Right. Like Arline Fisch for example.

MR.GRIFFIN: Yeah, but Tyler had something – I remember seeing Arline’s large pieces and I remember thinking, that is unusual. I've never thought about things that way. But for some reason, I wasn't as interested in it. And I think in part that may have been because the making didn't interest me as much as the making later on and that the – which I think is – you know, this brings out – would give you a good idea of how I – let's say how I list my priorities or the things that are really important.

One of the things that I really admire about someone like Myra [Mimlitsch-Gray] is she can think it at the highest levels and she can make it at the highest level. I have such respect for that. That's – that is the high water mark for me. That's what should be achieved. And it doesn't mean that I don't admire extraordinary thinkers or that I don't admire a virtuoso.

So there's a great – Jim Harrison is one of my favorite writers. Harrison said, "These are the authors that I admire because of the way they write, and these are the authors that I admire because of what they have to say, and it's a rare thing when these two things combine. And here's a list of the people that I admire because they do those two things." So it's – it's not only what you have to say, but it's the way you say it. And that's what – that's what I would like to achieve. I mean, that's the mark, you know?

MR. ADAMSON: Yes, absolutely.

MR. GRIFFIN: So I mean, I've seen what I would call funky work – and I don't mean in terms of funk art, but just work – it might be a little crude, but it's got a soul to it and I can really admire that. But I would also point that out, you know, that in terms of the – in other words, today there is a school of thought that says as long as the making meets the conceptual framework, then everything's okay. I don't agree with that; in other words, I'm not willing to prejudice some kind of intellectual concept over this – what I would call the physical properties of the work.

The physical properties are the things that will endure. The intellectual part will remain as an idea forever, and even historically someone will say, “Well, this is what they were thinking at the time,” and later on people may not even – they will only be interested in that intellectually. They won't even come anywhere near believing that. Like if we look at Art Deco, we can take all the beliefs – so what about the femme fatale? You know, we can look at Lalique and say, “Okay, this is what's going down in terms of thought, in terms of the culture, and this is how we can look at this jewelry as a cultural construct, how these women are positioned, the flowing hair, the murky pools, all of these kinds of things.” And today when we admire it, okay, we're looking at material, the physicality of that object. But we may not believe in the femme fatale or we may not even be inclined to. But if we've studied the work intellectually, we're also saying, “Hey, man, there's a whole part of it that's real dark, you know, and I'm not going there.”

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah. But in other words, to go forward, in a sense it needs to have both.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah.

MR. ADAMSON: If those things are going to endure.

MR. GRIFFIN: Absolutely.

MR. ADAMSON: You may care about one, you may care about the other, and we don't know today what people are going to care about.

MR. GRIFFIN: Right. Well, I think you have to have both to be a part of the time that you're making things. And you know, it's back to that Harrison idea which I think is so important. But I mean, it's like, lousy writing, who wants to read lousy writing?

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.] Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: You know, like if you went into a writing seminar and said, “Well, all that matters is what you have to say, it doesn't matter how you say it,” they'd throw you out.

So what are we supposed to do in metalworking? You can do whatever you want because it matches up to something you say? I don't – I’m not there man.

MR. ADAMSON: Oh, one other thing I wanted to make sure we have is the story you told about doing the stone-setting exercises.

MR. GRIFFIN: Oh. As an undergraduate – in any situation I'm in, I'm always interested in hearing multiple points of view and getting input. So I’d get input from Al. I’d get input from Dieter. And it has nothing to do with – it has to do with gathering information because everybody has a slightly different way of doing things. I might ask Al how to solder something and I can go ask Dieter the same question. And it's just gathering information, and then from that you can form your own conclusions.

So we had very beginning stone setting experiences at Long Beach, and they were fairly limited. There was a woman who was teaching at L.A. State [California State University, Los Angeles] whose name was Caroline Rosser. And Caroline had gone to Tyler as a student, and I knew from her work that she had done a lot of stone setting, and they were doing a lot of stone setting at Tyler at that time. This would have been maybe late '60s. So I didn't know her but I knew of her, and I thought well, maybe I could talk her into coming down to Long Beach and doing – giving me a workshop. And so I called her, and she said sure.

So I think over two Saturday mornings or something, she went through all the stone setting exercises that they do at Tyler. And so I made all those things as an undergraduate, and I guess she was kind of a surrogate in that way. You know, they helped me learn those things so that I had that information when I ended up – I didn't know at that time I was going to Tyler – but I wanted that experience. And so that idea of soliciting information from other people, I think I've always done that. I did it in graduate school, and I continue doing it today – you know, call somebody, ask them how do you do this.

Actually, I've got to tell you this, because this is on the same lines. There was a point in time where I wanted to tin some cookware, which basically is a process of taking a copper pot and then you wipe tin on the inside. And I have a lot of friends that have done it. I had never done it. So I called up Phil Fike, who was in Detroit, Wayne State [University], and I said, "Phil, I want to tin a pot, and you know how to do this."

So he said, "Sure, I'll tell you how to do it."

And he went through this elaborate process and talked about getting – at Wayne State in the chemical department they have some very thin foil, and you get this and then you perforate it, and – I mean, all this stuff. And I thought, man, that seems like a lot of labor. And I said, "Well, I just talked to Dave Pimentel, and Dave said, you know, that I could do this," which was a very different method. And Phil's reply was, "Well, that will work if you do it right." [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: I thought, “Phil, anything will work if you do it right. Come on.” You know? [Laughs.] And he said, "Well, now you have two methods, so go try them."

And of course I did. I went down to Wayne State, got the foil, went through all of that stuff that he did, and I decided that that was not the method that I wanted to use, and I used Dave's method and it worked great –

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: – and fast, and it was exactly what I wanted. But I loved that idea of well, that will work if you do it right. [Laughs.] You know? Which is the real trick. In the end, that's the real answer to craft. It will all work if you do it right, but it's in the doing it right that matters.

MR. ADAMSON: Okay.

[Audio break.]

Okay, go ahead. This is disc two of Glenn Adamson interviewing Gary Griffin.

You were saying.

MR. GRIFFIN: So I didn't – I don't – Tyler was everything I could have wanted, but I think we have to put that into historical place. Stanley was a great teacher for me and he was a remarkable mentor, and I realize now that I was really well prepared, but I didn't think of it at the time. And I felt in leaving undergraduate education that I was well prepared technically, but I didn't feel I was well prepared in terms of design. And by that I mean, when I look at the things we made versus the things that were coming out of graduate school, I thought, wow, they're just more inventive than we are. They're more inventive. But now I know that's what you're supposed to do in graduate school.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: It's like that's why you have graduate school! But at the time I'm just thinking, oh, man, you know, we've got a ways to go here. [Laughs.] I mean it was – it's a developmental process.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: You know, I know that now. I guess I knew that then, but it's just you're a little intimidated or overwhelmed or something – which, by the way, I think is a product of regionalism. I think when you're – maybe not in California today, but you know, when you're born in Texas and you grow up in Southern California and New Mexico and you think of New York, you're thinking, very sophisticated, evolved, et cetera. Well, now I know, hey, man, that's not the case. I've got a whole world of experience. I mean, “I've met Mabel Dodge Luhan; who have you met?" You know what I mean? It's like, okay, I'm teaching at Cranbrook Academy of Art. You know? It's real interesting. But I think that there is, at least in my case, this kind of notion of you're from Texas and, you know, you grew up in Southern California or wherever, and there's just something that's not very sophisticated about that or aware or that type of thing.

MR. ADAMSON: But you didn't really feel that way when you got to Tyler, it sounds like. You felt that you were part of it.

MR. GRIFFIN: No, when I got to Tyler, I would say I was feeling pretty intimidated and freaked out.

MR. ADAMSON: Really?

MR. GRIFFIN: But it was my own making, because I wanted to achieve something. I wanted to do well. It was nothing that was projected on me. It was totally coming out of my own making. And I think it's because I saw this great work, I saw these teachers, like Stanley [Lechtzin] and Olaf [Skoogfors] that were going to Europe and they knew these characters, and Jack Prip. And I'm just thinking, well, man, I've got a lot of work to do. I want to do well. And in order to do well, I'm going to have to work really hard, and I just don't have enough. I need more. And that's why I wanted to go to graduate school.

So the goal in graduate school was of course to evolve some more technical things, but really to get to be a better designer, more inventive. And I would have called it design at that point in time, not concepts, even though, you know, there was Minimalism and Conceptual Art and that type of thing, but I never thought of it as being conceptual. You know, that's a word that I think entered the, if you want to call it, craft mainstream at a later date.

MR. ADAMSON: How aware were you, by the way, of those larger art – fine art values?

MR. GRIFFIN: Somewhat. Somewhat. I would not say – I'm really interested in fine art intellectually. And by that I mean I'm interested in movements in painting or sculpture or the fine arts in general because of their intellectual interest, but I must also say – and this is in part, I think, because of the atmosphere I'm in here – I love to look at painting because I'm interested in how they achieve what they achieve in terms of, you know, when the painter uses the word "atmosphere," like how do you make atmosphere; or how they talk about color; or how they use value shifts. And what I admire about painting is that they're able to make a world within an eighth of an inch. You know, I mean it's a very prescribed place. And I'm talking about painting, I'm not talking about a greater view of fine art.

So I love to look at painting, but I'm not interested in making paintings. And I also like looking at sculpture for those same reasons, but I'm really not interested in making sculpture. I mean, I have made sculpture, objects in isolation, but I'm not really at all – I'm not at all interested in making that. I'm really interested in decorative art. That's what I really care about.

MR. ADAMSON: Right.

MR. GRIFFIN: So at Tyler, I remember the first semester as just being grueling, and it was nothing that anybody did except me. In other words, I just was feeling that I had to work really, really hard, and I would hardly even take a lunch break. I mean, all the other students would go over, and I didn't leave the shop. And I'd eat a sandwich and keep working.

And Pat and I even had a schedule where she was teaching – by the way, the move to Philadelphia was a really great thing for her career, too. She had taught elementary school for two years. And when we arrived in Philadelphia, there was a teachers' strike, a horrible teachers' strike where people were throwing things at each other and it was mean and really problematic. And so we thought we don't want any part of this.

So she looked for a teaching job in the suburbs, which was basically nonexistent, and what did happen was she found this school that was called the Ashbourne School. It was a private school, but what they did was they picked up all the special ed kids from the public school district. So in other words, the – the public schools were outsourcing their special education kids, and at that point it was very new. And so she took a job there at a minimal pay as an aide. So that was a big coming down for her. But what was interesting, the school was run by two Ph.D.s and they had seminars every morning for 45 minutes where they'd talk about issues in special ed, and then the teachers would go to work – remarkable atmosphere. She got so into the subject that she started taking classes at Penn [University of Pennsylvania] and then eventually got her master's degree in special ed. So she became a really unique teacher because of that for special education.

Anyway, so what we would do is we'd both go to work and then, when we'd meet for dinner and I had an – we had an apartment that was within walking distance of Tyler. It was practically across the street. And so we got – we'd have dinner and then I'd go back to the studio, and then at about 10:00 or 10:30 in the evening we'd both start walking toward each other and meet somewhere along the way and then walk home. And that's the way it was every night. [Laughs.] I mean, on the weekends I would work during the day and I wouldn't work at night, but I was in the studio all the time and I made a lot of work in my first semester. And most of it, as I look back on it now, was just work, but it wasn't good.

MR. ADAMSON: What kind of things were you making? Jewelry?

MR. GRIFFIN: Jewelry. Almost exclusively jewelry. Yeah, it was all jewelry. And the one thing I did do that first semester – Stanley had developed a way for making interlocking wedding rings which had – I'd seen pictures of them as an undergraduate and they were just amazing. So I thought, well, I'm – I want to learn how to do that. So I made a bunch of those, three of them, and learned how he did it and the system and set the stones. I still have the rings. And I made them in silver, just sort of like models. So – I can't remember, I think I made 15 pieces. I was just cranking them out.

And you know, then the end of the semester came and we – I did take a break for the winter or for the Christmas break, and then came back and we started in again. And he used to give these assignments once a month which I just hated, you know, and we were always looking for ways to not do them. And he was always agreeable to that; in other words, you had to do it, but he didn't mind if you did something really imaginative, too. And I remember one thing where he said, "I want you to raise a vessel with a 10-inch dimension," and this really surprised me 'cause Stan is a real smart guy. But he didn't realize – he thought it would be 10 inches tall or 10 inches wide. Well, we decided that circumference was a dimension. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: So I mean, I showed up with something about like this, and he said, well, this isn't 10 inches. And I said, “Well, you got to go around the outside,” and I just –

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: And he was not happy about that. He was really upset about it. He –

MR. ADAMSON: What was he like as a teacher?

MR. GRIFFIN: He's kind of a – he's – I found him very inspiring, but Stanley's tough and he's a little cranky sometimes, too, you know? But he's very tough. And I think I had an unusual relationship with Stanley, and I'll talk more about that, maybe even a little bit of a privileged relationship.

But anyway, during that second semester he gave an assignment that was to do an homage and I'm thinking, oh, man, what am I going to do? So I basically thought, well, okay, I can do an homage. And I did a little pin that was an homage to Fernand Leger, the painter. And what it allowed me to do was to work with some acrylic and to put things in front of one another like on a Leger painting where he basically – if you were to take the painting apart, you'd see that it's a lamination structure. And anyway, I combined those kind of mechanical elements that Leger would use, and color, and shapes – and boom! – and it just changed the world. And I realized, wow, this is a really good piece – and then just kept kind of working that way.

And then the other thing that happened during that time as I was doing this, I began to get really interested in kind of combining all the mechanical stuff with the jewelry. And at that point, you know, I had this – because I had an industrial experience and more of a fine-art design experienced in undergraduate, I could run a lathe, I could run a milling machine. And, of course, Tyler – we were in the new building and Stanley was getting all this equipment; nobody knew how to run it, but I did. I mean, Stanley could run some of it, but I mean I really knew how to run the stuff. And so I started making all of my metalwork on these machines.

And then – I mean, you talk about stars aligning, then David Watkins and Wendy Ramshaw came to Tyler. So here I am doing all this work and they show up, and I'm thinking, "Wow! Look at that. That kind of looks like what I'm doing. You know, maybe this is a good idea. And they're really important people."

And then shortly after that, Claus Bury came, and boy, oh, boy, I'm just thinking, "Wow, I am on the right track. I mean, these people really are good, but I'm on the right track." So it just evolved from there.

The other thing in terms of Stanley was that he was making a transition from the resin work into the acrylic, and so he had to – he got an autoclave and got some grants and all these things. And so that summer he got the autoclave in, but he didn't have an oil tank and all these things that are necessary. And so I built the tank for the – not the autoclave, the pressure vessel, but for the oil reservoir. The part that I – I'd been a welder, not only the training, but the other thing I didn't mention was that when I was in undergraduate school, after I got the welding training, I got a job at StarKist Foods in the maintenance department as a welder. So I was welding commercially; I mean, I was welding all the flues that fish go through. And, I mean, I helped build the 9-Lives pet food line, and all that stuff. So I knew how to build stuff.

And by the way, I was earning union wages. So in other words, I went from – because of one year in El Camino Junior College, I went from earning McDonald's, which was about a dollar or a dollar-ten an hour, to $4.50 an hour. I was making the same money that people were supporting families on. So, I mean, I had a lot of money, comparatively. And I got overtime on Saturdays. And so when I went to my job, I mean, I was making really good money. And I was fortunate in that I could split my college time and still work there.

So anyway, Stanley figured that out in a hurry, you know. And, of course, Pat and I were there for summer. We weren't going anywhere. And so I would work in the shop and do my own work and help, you know, Stanley with stuff. And the autoclave was part of it.

Mr. ADAMSON: And was that the basis of what you're calling your privileged relationship with him?

MR. GRIFFIN: No, no it wasn't. This is unimaginable to me now, but when we drove to Philadelphia, I communicated with him and said well, “We're going to be leaving town and we're going to” – I think we left in June or July – and we're going to get to town and we're going to look for apartments,” and so on and so forth. And we thought we would just camp. And Stanley said, "Oh, you can just stay with us." So we arrived in Philadelphia. We had a van and a little trailer, and pulled up to Stanley's house. He was married to Edith at the time. And Edith and I are still really good friends. We communicate every year, you know, correspond every year. And we were just able to stay in one of the extra rooms. And so we looked for an apartment, found one in about three days, but we couldn't occupy it in a week. And so I said, you know, “I'd like to see a little bit of the area around here, so if you wouldn't mind, can we leave our trailer here, and Pat and I will just go camping and kind of see what's around this area.” And also I just felt like I was overextending –

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: – hanging out in this house. Edith was – I mean, she's just a wonderful, wonderful woman.

And so anyway, we took off, and then we got back and picked up the trailer and moved into our little place. So in a way it started out that way.

And then the next thing was we were there and they'd invite us over for dinner on a Sunday night or something. So Pat and I would go over and, you know, there'd be dinner, and then all these people would come by. [Laughs] Olaf Skoogfors would come by, Fred Woell was going through town, Al Paley would be coming through town. So we're at the dinner table and here's all these characters – Bill Daley – I mean, just people – Doris Staffel. I mean, wow! And we're looking around and thinking, yeah, this is pretty great. And they were just so generous to us.

And we would house sit the house if Stan and Edith were going on a trip. Pat and I would stay in the house. So I mean, it was good. But I just will never forget going to those dinners, and it was very impressionable and a great experience. You know, what more could one want.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: So that's privileged I think. And so I realized that he was – I mean, he was mentoring me. You know, and they were – they didn't have to do that. And I know that other students didn't get to do that. So I was in a privileged position.

MR. ADAMSON: Being in Philadelphia, did you also come in to Helen Drutt [Gallery] – contact with Helen Drutt at an early point?

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah. I met Helen, went to her gallery, and got to know her. So whenever we were in Philadelphia, we would always go by the gallery and visit with Helen and were very aware of her activities, her collection, and her interests. And that was inspiring to go and see work. And she was very generous about that. In fact, when the time came for our graduate show at Tyler, we did talk to Helen about possibly having the show at her – there were three of us that had a – we did our brochure together. We had to have a solo show but we decided to combine it. And so we did talk with Helen, but we ended up having it at Tyler.

And the other thing I remember was I had met Olaf over a period of time and I thought well, you know, he's right here, I'm going to ask him if he'll give me a crit. So I called him up. He said, "Yeah, come to the studio at 10:00 Saturday morning."

So I threw all my work in a box, and went over and we talked about the work, and then we – you know, it just expanded. We were going to talk about this work, and then he'd say, “Oh, did you know about this show at the Museum of Modern Art? This kind of fits in.” And you know, four hours later, after lunch – [laughs] – and you know, it was just great.

So you know, frankly – although I've had people who have come to talk to me, I don't know if people do this – that type of thing. But I think for the most part people are pretty generous about just seeing younger artists or other – I know I certainly would. And – but I still think it's unusual, as I look back on it.

MR. ADAMSON: Well, back then it must have seemed like anybody that was interested – it was less common, and you know –

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, I think – I just felt, well, gosh, you know, I've met him so many times and I've talked to him and he's always been so friendly and pleasant. I want to talk to him professionally. And it was great. So I did that a couple of times.

MR. ADAMSON: Was it in graduate school that you started to become involved in a more national, organized metalsmithing movement, would you say?

MR. GRIFFIN: I would say – well, in graduate school I participated in national competitions and in that type of thing and was well aware of showing, but I didn't – I was not – I didn't join anything. I was aware of the organizations, but I really wasn't involved in any way.

And the one thing I do remember is that in the summer between the first and second year, Pat and I took a period of time where we wanted to drive up to Vermont and New Hampshire. We'd never seen that country. So we left Philadelphia and we were driving north, and I knew that there was an exhibition of metalwork at the gallery at New Paltz. So I said, “Let's just stop in and I want to see that show.”

So we stopped and we entered the gallery and there was an attendant at the desk. And so he said, “Well, where are you from?” And I said, “Well, I'm a graduate student at Tyler and I wanted to see the show because there's a lot of people's work in here that I know and I just want to see what they're up to.” So he introduces himself, and it was Jamie Bennett, you know, which is just great. So – because we both knew each other. He says, "You're Gary Griffin?"

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: I mean, and we – from those – that – those shows earlier on. And of course, I was aware of him that he was a graduate student up there because I'd seen his work. And I think that – I think at that point that he actually was more involved in SNAG. I wasn't. I was just down there working, you know what I mean? Just making sure that I was doing okay. And which still was a big mistake – there was a SNAG conference, I think it was in – well, it was in New York, and they took them into the arms and armor collection of the Met [Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City]. I'm down in the shop working. You know, like, that's not smart. You know what I mean?

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: Still trying to – okay, I got to work hard and not take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity that probably would never happen again in your life without a lot of credentials. So yeah, I just – I didn't come up for air, you know?

And you know, one thing I should probably divert to with regard to Al Pine is Al Pine would talk about experience he's had – he had had, and of course he brought all this information in, but he would also give some oral history. And one of the things that I remember was he went to City College of New York, and two of his classmates were Bernie Bernstein and Fred Fenster, both really great silversmiths. So I was keenly aware of that relationship, and then I knew that Fred Fenster was at Wisconsin [University of Wisconsin, Madison]. So anyway, these kinds – those kinds of hookups, where it's professional, it's personal, you know, that kind of thing. And I mean, that's one of the reasons I wanted to look at Wisconsin is because of Fred Fenster, you know. And then of course later on I met Bernie and we know each other and friendly and same thing with Fred.

But I think that all of that – I think that that's the kind of thing that's so important to the teacher as part of the mentoring process to indicate to a student that there's a bigger picture. If you want to get into the picture, you can. It's not – you just have to take the initiative. I think it's bigger now, it's more sophisticated, it requires different strategies, and maybe even we weren't even naming it strategy when I was doing it. I was just saying, “Oh, I should do this.” But we would call that strategy today, and I would – I would say to a student, “Well, you know, strategically you ought to be doing this.”

So it's a – our world is more sophisticated. We've all been infected by business attitude. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah, exactly.

Do you – did you have people at Tyler who were your fellow students as well that you would want to talk about?

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah, I do. There were a number, but there were – there was one person that was not only at Tyler, but after Tyler and was extremely influential and inspiring. He was as second-year student when I was a first-year student. So when I came in, I saw his work and I thought, this is a guy that knows how to design things. And his name was Jem Freyaldenhoven. And he's dead now. He died of AIDS. He actually died here in Michigan. He was up for a guest artist trip. But he was a dear friend, really a dear friend. And when we were teaching at RIT he would come to Rochester in the summer and teach the summer classes and then stay with Pat and I in our home. But anyway, a dear friend. But Jem was a good metalsmith and a really good designer. And when he moved on professionally, he taught at Georgia State in Atlanta, but he was designing sets and he expanded. So he was really, really a remarkable guy.

But anyway, when we were in school, he wasn't one that gave up his secrets easily. And he had been to the Memphis Academy of Art. Really well trained in art and design, and I could tell from his work. And so I'd look at his work, and gradually it would unfold. And basically, he designed within a Golden Section, root-5 kind of system, which I was unaware of. I didn't know about that. So, you know, it's one of those things where you kind of draw it out of the guy. But it was very abstracted. I mean very abstracted. And he did this incredible chasing, very sensual, sexual type of work. I mean, it's just beautiful, beautiful work. Helen's got a couple pieces. Pat and I have one piece.

And anyway, he was very, very inspiring. And he was also a good friend in the sense that there were things that he would do that were unusual. Like we went to Longwood Gardens [Kennett Square, Pennsylvania], which is the Dupont Arboretum, and we went to different places, outings, and so he was really good about it. We'd all go together, friends.

The other two people that were good colleagues were Barbara Brodsky, who no longer works in metal. She was a grad student. And she was not much of a metalsmith, but she was also a really good designer and was keenly aware of fine art movements. So she was helpful to me. And then the other was Dick Posniak, who still lives in Philadelphia. He was a Kurt Matzdorf student at [SUNY] New Paltz, more of a hammer kind of guy. And he hasn't really made that much work after graduate school. But we were colleagues and friends, and Dick and Barbara and I had our show together.

And then there were other people too, but those were the primary ones that were really where we were talking a lot and arguing about things, that type of thing. Stanley had a seminar for the graduate class, and we would look at work and there was a lot of discussion. Stanley, I think he's a polemic, basically. And he's very logical and very systematic. He's got a lot of information. He's a very sharp guy. He's sharp.

And basically, I never was afraid to argue with Stanley. I mean, even though I was kind of intimidated by the whole experience when I first came in, I was never afraid to argue with him. I mean, that was different, you know? It was just like, "Oh. Well, I don't agree with that," whatever it was. And then as we progressed, I think I got more confident than that and realized that I was actually making some good work. But early on, it just was overwhelming and, as I said, that whole regional notion of going to the East and what it represents.

But what I always liked about Stanley was that I never felt like he – he would always argue with you, but I never felt that he was overbearing with it. But I'm not intimidated by that. I mean, I think it maybe goes back to high school, you know what I mean? Like Latin and Greek, and you better say what you mean and that kind of thing.

In fact – this is going back to high school. In our senior year we had an English teacher who – we were reading Shakespeare and the classics, and of course that was the, quote, "subject," but it really wasn't the subject. The subject was communicating. So we had to recite – and we also had to comment on the text. So you can imagine a class of 30 young men, and he'd say, "Well, Mr. Griffin, what do you think about this?" And you'd have to stand up, you'd pick up your book, you'd read a few lines. And he'd say, "Well, what does that mean?" You know? And if you used incorrect English, if you said things – "Well, I think,” he says, “Thinking is good,” you know.

But he wasn't an intimidating guy, but what you learned was you better say what you mean and don't fiddle with it, you know, just move it out. And it was – we never knew who he was going to call on, so you'd better be prepared. And sometimes you weren't, and you'd fumble around. And he would just say, "Down." I mean, "Sit down." Go to the next person. But it was a – everybody would laugh about him, but man, what an education. It was so remarkable in terms of talking about something –

Mr. ADAMSON: So you were well prepared for Stanley?

MR. GRIFFIN: I think I was prepared for Stanley. And, you know, I was certainly extremely challenged, I was highly motivated, and didn't feel – I felt like I had a lot of work to do to be at the level that I wanted to be. And so that, I would say, that I was a little overwhelmed or intimidated by that, but not intimidated by him necessarily. But I think that he can be, and many people do think of him as an intimidating person. But I never felt that way. And he is a polemic. He loves that process. And that, for some people is very, very difficult.

So it's that whole thing of fit like anything else. And I don't feel like I'm anything like Stanley in that regard as a teacher or as an individual. But I didn't really have any trouble with it and actually found it kind of challenging and interesting. So I wasn't afraid to – you know, especially by the second year, you know, when you've been lifting the weights for a while, you're feeling a lot more confident. And we would really argue about things, and I think he loved it, actually; he really enjoyed all of that.

Anyway, what I found I really – what I really benefited from in that kind of open seminar discussion was the notion of arguing a point of view. In other words, Stanley is a very logical person. You make an error, and he's going to be in there surgically and just working on it, you know. And that was really helpful to where he would point out those problems, as he saw them, in thinking or logic. And we would talk about contemporary metalwork, we talked about individual student work, we talked about the design of it, et cetera.

So I felt that – when I left Tyler, I felt that I was – I had achieved the things that I wanted to achieve in terms of design. I felt that I had achieved something in terms of a point of view that I wanted to continue to explore and evolve. I felt that I had grown technically. I'd done a lot of work on my own in terms of reading all the American Craft and Craft Horizons.

Oh, the other thing that occurred in graduate school that was really an important experience, as a group of graduates, we had to take the graduate art history seminar. And those were taught by art historians, and for the most part they were, you know, painting and sculpture type people. And I can't remember the teacher's name, but he taught a class that was more – it was a seminar where we had to give a report, but it was pretty broad and would include dec arts. But it was also ancient; it wasn't contemporary.

So what I remember was reports by some of my colleagues, I think, such as Egyptian wirework in jewelry – really interesting things for me. And he was wide open to it. And as it turned out, I think that even though he had all the training in sculpture stuff, his real passion was that kind of stuff.

MR. ADAMSON: Really?

MR. GRIFFIN: You know. So it was like the closet stuff – [laughs] –

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah the closet decorative arts enthusiast.

MR. GRIFFIN: [Laughs.] Yeah. But anyway, as students – we were complaining about the fact that there was nothing in craft history – [audio break, tape change] – and so in the second year – this is just remarkable that they got this guy – they brought him in down from Rutgers [Rutgers, State University of New Jersey] to teach dec arts undergraduate class. And of course, we were told as graduate students we can't take it because it's the wrong number; it's a 499 and you've got to – you know, typical institutional thinking. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: And so I said – we argued, of course, and we were able to argue our way into that class. So the guy that showed up was Martin Eidelberg –

MR. ADAMSON: Really.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah. Yeah! And I didn't know who Martin Eidelberg was. So you can imagine a Rutgers professor rolls into Tyler School of Art, and let me tell you something, he didn't know what he was walking into. So he said, “I'm going to teach a class in 20th century dec arts, and we're going to go up to about 1950.” And of course, his specialty is Art Nouveau and Art Nouveau ceramics, but he's so knowledgeable. And I'll never forget the first class. He's talking about papers and all this typed paper. And this kid raises his hand in back, and Martin Eidelberg says, "Yes?" "Well, we don't type papers at Tyler." [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: I thought, whoa, man. And of course, these were all the undergrads, and they're in art school, man. And most of the grad students that were in there, we'd all been to liberal arts schools, and all of us had written papers and typed papers. Okay, big deal.

MR. ADAMSON: Big deal, yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: And Martin required two papers of the grads. Which was fine because we just wanted the information. So anyway, we got it all worked out, and I can't – I still can't believe this to this day, but Martin actually let the undergrads hand their papers in handwritten because they didn't have typewriters.

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: [Laughs.] He probably will never forget that whole thing.

But anyway I thought he was the greatest teacher. I mean, he was the real thing, man. And the way he talked about the decorative arts suddenly took me back to all those experiences – I thought, well, I know what Art Nouveau is; man, I know what – hey listen, I've seen Lalique glass.

MR. ADAMSON: Yeah.

MR. GRIFFIN: You know, I'm with you. I am with you. And he was passionate about it and caring. And he also exposed me to the side that I was unaware of, which is, I'd seen the stuff, I knew the period and all that, but what I didn't understand was the whole cultural-social history and surroundings of it. So he turned me on to that. And that was one of the – another one of those great moments where all the stars aligned. You meet this teacher that has this kind of experience, and he says, “Hey, look, you can look at this cup this way, you can look at the design, and you can look at this as a social occurrence, you know, and that there was all this other stuff going on. And there was the femme fatale or whatever it was, and this influenced people's thinking.” So suddenly I thought, man, there’s an even bigger picture than I knew of.

So anyway, that was great. And what was really interesting is I did my papers – I did one paper on Stanley and then I did – I don't know, the other one was on Deco or Art Nouveau or something like that. I typed mine. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: You typed yours.

MR. GRIFFIN: So anyway, years later I was with Toni Greenbaum, and Toni and I were talking about jewelry. And she came out because we had the “Messengers of Modernism” show here. And so, in talking to her – you know – I was telling her about this experience with Martin Eidelberg, and she said, "You know, I know Martin really well, and – in fact, I was with him last week and we were talking about this and that." And she said, “You know, he told me about a student that was, you know, interested in the same things that he's interested in, and it was a student at Tyler.” It was me.

MR. ADAMSON: Wow. That's something.

MR. GRIFFIN: Yeah. It's – it's just so funny how – excuse me, but you don't expect those kinds of things to occur professionally; you know, where you're just anonymous at a certain point, but then there's this strange hookup where you're with Toni Greenbaum and you're at a show and then suddenly she goes, "Wow, you're the guy!" You know? So anyway, that was – it was great.

And with – Tyler was such a good experience. It was really hard work. You know, I was just completely dedicated to it. So there was really not much of an outside world, even though I was aware of it; in other words, I was aware of SNAG, I was aware of the the blacksmithing stuff.

Oh, the other thing that did occur at Tyler was at that time, Elliot Pujol was teaching at Tyler for one year.

MR. ADAMSON: Oh, right. Oh.

MR. GRIFFIN: So Elliot is a very different personality than Stanley and more just kind of low key. And of course, in terms of work habits, they were totally different. You know, like Stanley is very precise, chemical and everything; Elliot's squirting stuff all over the place. [Laughs.] You know, it was – it was – and I'm thinking, oh, man, and this is something else.

But Stanley was in charge of the grads and Elliot was doing undergrads, and Stanley would do some undergraduate classes. So we became friendly, but we never had official classes with Elliot. But I was, you know – I'm just like always interested in information, so I'm thinking, well, what are you doing over here in this? And he was doing all those crimp pots, which were great. And then he would patina them. Well, you know, we talked about all that stuff with Stanley.

So I was real interested, and we became friendly with Elliot. And in the spring, Elliot is real connected with Penland [Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina] and a kind of – a different circuit for us at the time. So he said, “There's this blacksmithing conference that's never occurred before and it's in Lumpkin, Georgia. You want to go?” And I said, “Well, I mean, if you think it's worthwhile, let's go.” And I didn't – of course he didn't tell us that it was, you know, over a thousand miles to drive down to southern Georgia. [Laughs.]

MR. ADAMSON: [Laughs.]

MR. GRIFFIN: So we drove down and we stopped at Penland, spent the night there, and then drove down to Lumpkin, and it turned out that was the first ABANA [Artist Blacksmith’s Association of North America]. In other words, there was no ABANA, and Brent Kington was there and Alex Bealer and a lot of the people that are considered old guard in ABANA. And so we went and, you know, there was a few demos and this and that, and it was okay. I mean, it wasn't a big deal, you know. I wasn't blown away by it.

MR. ADAMSON: And you weren't really keyed into blacksmithing yet for yourself.

MR. GRIFFIN: No, I wasn't, but I'd done all that blacksmithing at Long Beach. I mean, it was part of my portfolio, but I really wasn't keyed into it. Anyway, the organization started, but I didn't really – we had left a couple hours before all those people got together. I mean, if I'd waited an hour, I probably would have been a founding member or something.

So anyway, we headed back up north and so I was kind of aware – I was aware of that stuff, but I was mainly making jewelry, so it was an outside interest. And Elliot was, you know, helpful in that way, but he was only there for a year. And shortly after that, he went to Kansas [Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas]. And then the next year, Stanley had grad assistants teach the undergraduate course, and then –

Well, actually, that was a really interesting thing because in the second year – you know, our second year, my – I got a fellowship, so I basically got a Temple University fellowship, which was a free tuition and a stipend. And we were living high on the hog, believe me, comparatively. And so Stanley gave assistantships to the other grads and they taught the basic undergraduate program, and some of the great undergrads, too. That should be mentioned. Robin Quigley was an undergrad at that time and Gayle Saunders. So those two people were just fantastic, and both went on to achieve a lot; Robin at RISD and then Gayle in terms of her work in jewelry. So you know, it was just a good group to be around.

And the – probably the only thing that I – I think I should have done more of in graduate school – I was so focused on the metalwork that I didn't really hang out enough with other – in other areas. I mean, I knew some sculptors. We were really friendly with the fiber people;