Today we’d like to introduce you to Griffin Katz.
Griffin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’d like to be as honest as possible. I’m getting stoned and listening to live and let die by Paul mc Cartney at the moment to get myself there. Here we go. I was born in orange county to a mother and a father. Growing up, I’ve lived in many places through the Los Angeles region at this point, I’m not exactly sure of the final number but I’ve moved about once to twice a year since I’ve been born. I like to put it simply as I’ve lived in the valley to the coast and just about everywhere in between. A rambling list of locations goes as such in approximate of the order throughout my infancy to my being of 19 at the present moment. Orange County, Woodland Hills, various locations in the valley bouncing two and fro from apt with just my mother as by the grade of about 1st or 2nd in elementary school, my father was no longer exactly in the picture.
From the valley, I’ll end up going to the strand a long stretch of beach accompanied with bike paths to admire the coastline sand multimillion dollar houses gentrified to the max with a litter of houses from old California scattered amongst the bunch. Manhattan beach what a hell of a plasticine place, like Robert Mapplethorpe said a wonderful place to grow up and a wonderful place to grow out of. But I didn’t exactly grow up in Manhattan beach all throughout my childhood for I begun my middle school experience in Manhattan beach and from 6th to 8th grade, I would continue attending school at Manhattan beach middle school (mbms), but I was on the move with my mother and her various boyfriends the whole time, my dad making a once in a lifetime cameo experience in my life from a brief period of time between living in the first apt out of the total three we would live in at the same unit (the Eagle? I believe) and ending contact between the first apt and my mom getting back together with a boyfriend who would come to be her first fiancé were we would live with him in the Hollywood hills while I continued attending school at mbms. Somewhere around that period, it would be the last time id see my father in person, I’d move maybe 3 or 4 times between the Hollywood Hills house, a funky orange playa del ray pad over the wetlands.
Oh, not to mention a 2nd strand house, this one being a maybe 60-70s California beach house, strand beachfront property as the 1st strand house has been. Then my mother and I would hop in and out of the eagle apt located right over the dividing road that separated the Redondo and Manhattan beach districts thought I was only by a few hundred feet technically in the Redondo district, I would continue to attend mbms and then go on to Mira costa high school, staying for only a year living in out the 1st apt in The Eagle and somewhere in this time moving to Redondo Union High School moving into the 2nd Eagle apt unit. Attending there for about a year and a half through these time estimates may be wildly inaccurate. I’m trying to convey my best version of a wildly fractured timeline. Its chaos through this whole journey, to make a long story short I cycled out of Redondo attending shores and graduating early in 2019, from the period of time between living in the 2nd eagle apt and my graduation I cycled out of the 2nd unit moved in the third unit by myself then left my moms at 16 bouncing from friends house until I ended up in a equestrians friends grandmothers Fleetwood trailer only about a mile or three from the beach hell maybe less. I slept in cars, friend’s couches, a supply closet, had the 3rd unit apt to myself that I lived in and eventually moved back in with my mom and her now 2nd fiancé, I ended up living in his garage in Atwater village right around end of my graduation, maybe beforehand. My mom then hooked me up with a place to live called upstart which is basically an artist commune but with a much sharper less strung outlook. I lived there for maybe a year or give or take a little.
Ended up moving into the apt I currently reside in now in little Armenia, with just the finest view of the observatory just by stepping outside my building. To afford this apt the musician who I moved in with had found a connection on Instagram to have your hair cut and finally shaved on video where you’d get payed 1000, naturally I hopped on the hair cut express. My hair, because of modeling purposes now being about nipple hair’s length give or take. Ford modeling agency was not happy about this they’ve put me on standby in the meantime, and I still currently am, funny enough, considered a non active model. Though I’ve realized just now the oddity of his story and what it’s truly about is art, my art specifically and my journey of discovery throughout my life. It’s always been there, my father before he died, this taking place during the period of living in the trailer, was an artist and it seems he passed it on to me. It started with a deep love for Legos while loving drawing and reading throughout elementary school where it shifted more predominantly into sculpting and drawing n middle school. High school came along and it seems like mix media is my drug of choice. I’ve been sculpting, painting, drawing, etc. since I was a child and currently at the moment in my lil studio apt with my second roommate (the musician moved back to his hometown in Texas) a writer, two brother tabby cats (Curiosity & Muse) and a dog named Max who looks like Falcor from the never ending story, if he were 100 times smaller and albeit cuter.
Now I’m 19, almost 20, in LA trying to keep my head down and getting as busy as I can with my artwork. When I’m not working at Lucifer’s pizza to pay rent of course. The main body of work I have now completed work that is consists of two handfuls of paintings, about half a dozen mixed media collage pieces, and plenty, and I mean plenty, of paper works consisting of materials from ballpoint pen, Crayola markers, sharpies, watercolor, pastel, etc. That’s the jist of how I got to this very moment in my life living in the helter skelter year of 2021. Really just trying to survive and stay consistent and true to being an artist. Which simply enough, as I believe Warhol said, it’s simply about the work. Work work work, tedious, terrible, tremendous, time travel and more! By next year id like to have all of my larger paintings finished that I currently have in my studio apt. Though it may be a highly convoluted story you have read, it is as closely based in truth as possible, the world is a wild place and Id like to think that sharing the mania of our own lives through whatever form you may choose soothes and makes something of that wild nature of our reality. I’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Plenty of shit has hit the fan from the get go of being popped from womb to world. I’m hesitant in the moment of how exactly lay some of the obstacles or challenges along the way. Perhaps best to put it simply. A young single mother dealing with some mental illness, a non-existent father with a pill problem, mothers exes and their lives and personalities and the baggage that came with them colliding into my reality, I was never fully engaged in the structure or the process of school. Learning has always been up my alley, but bureaucratic and falsely idealized with point-based systems and common core curriculums taught by teachers who are a roll of the dice in terms of competence ego, etc. but there is much to be valued as well don’t get me wrong. Just not my cup of tea. Fighting between me and mother had me move out at 16. The constant moving since my birth always had its own learning experience full of triumphs and tribulations. An odd sexuality from a very young age add a spice to the mix of vast existentialism and self-loathing as a bag dropped from the jump of my life. These challenges and shit storms and all in-between have been nice fuel for my artwork. There’s 19 years to my life, there’s other instances of roadblocks or full on tire fires but you dear reader get the picture, its a bit of a fractured family dynamic, mixed with a vagabond lifestyle, with plenty of deep ties to identities and locations completely disappearing from my existence, kept inside by earth scorched into memory. Life is ever so hard, whoever you may be. But you’d be bored if the road you went down never had any hills to trudge up only to come whipping down onto waving bumping oscillating roads of possibilities, wonder magic, and the nature of reality to shit a problem into your existence and also give you the ability to laugh at it, maybe take ten steps back and see or rather think of it from a different angle make the most wicked experience into the worlds finest concerto or maybe turning the burden of experience into the finest baked goods in all of Italy. Either way, the shit it was fertilizes the fields, that’s the nail in the coffin for any feeling I have over obstacles that I’ve encountered.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a visual artist. Wildly unknown, yeah I bet you’ve never heard of me. I’ve been working seriously on trying to make an artistic career for myself for last maybe 4-5 years. I had an ego death at around 15 and 16 and came to the conclusion that visual art made me the happiest and life and the feeling hasn’t left since. I work on my paintings in acrylic, though I may use pastels, or oil, spray paint cans or a variety of other materializes to achieve the desired image I want. I’ve built roughly a 100 to 130 sets of paper pieces using again a mixed media approach to these pieces. I’ve been switching over to larger canvases and currently the proudest completed work. I have is a depiction of a skull roughly 5 1/2 feet by 3 1/2 feet give or take a foot. Working between a graphite portrait series of people in the year 2020-2021, a pop culture series in bright heavy alcohol based markers, plus about to finish what is to become my largest piece about triple the size of the skull work id mentioned previously. Between other artists and myself, I’d say what could be thought as making me different would be versatility, I use a lot of canvases and materials I find on the street and those not a huge hierarchy of materials in terms of quality and being applied on the same work such as a Crayola marker may share the same space as some fine Prisma color. Pastel, content, and materials are usually of varying assorts and I’d say the main hallmark being they’d be a pain in the ass to replicate. I’m not entirely sure, I think I’ll have a better answer if I make it into my 60s. A bigger body to reflect upon.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
My own definition of success would consist off of making a living off of my artwork, making profits off of creation by my own design. Having the funds to see the world, stay true to my artwork. Never losing myself in mediocrity or half-assed pieces. I’d say success in general for me would be the resilience to smile and laugh, make a joke, finish the project broke on your ass not sure what you’re doing and still persisting regardless. Nevertheless, success comes through uncertainty and dead ends to create and express the nature of being human and all that encompasses our inner and outer realities.
Pricing:
- Skull piece- 450
- Natalie -300
- paper pieces 20-100
- collages- 20-100
- White circles -250
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @stonekatzart
- Facebook: Griffin Katz
- SoundCloud: GriffinKatz
Image Credits
Brian Winn
