In this interview, Mark Griffin discusses his sculpture/photography series “The Fabulous Mr. Head and the Fifth Sun” which opened at LA Artcore on March 3rd, 2013…

Mark Griffin: Somewhere along the line in my career I became what is called a figurative artist. I work with the human form, the human figure more often than I don’t. And that’s the case with this series, the Fabulous Mister Head series. It’s clearly an idea based on the human form but there’s also a little bit of a twist to it. In spiritual thought the human form is said to have not one body but four bodies – a physical body of matter, a subtle-physical body of energy, a causal body of mental formation, and a fourth body of pure consciousness. And, I kind of take that idea and I say, OK, this is a more inclusive idea of the human form. And that’s my launching point when I do figurative art. I try to visually express all of those elements physically and include it in the form and the expression. And so, these two … right now there are four sculptures in the Fabulous Mister Head series. This is Mister Head Three and that’s Mister Head Four over next to the pillar.

And, you can see, it’s like a giant head and one of the things that’s going on . . . as I play with the expressions I’m trying to express an ecstatic state – a human being in a psychological state beyond anything that can be conceived of. And so … the blazing eyes, the ultra-intensified caricature of the face, flames coming out of the heart. It’s like trying to talk about the idea of enlightenment in relationship with the human form and merging those two together. And there’s a kind of tradition of what you’d call spiritual art where different spiritual states are expressed in different forms of mandala and sculpture and you brush through that as I go through the process of making each piece. And at the same time I make an effort to put in signifiers that are very Western, very third millennium. So, there’s a cultural collision where all of the signifiers of the human form through different times and t hrough different psychological states kind of collide in the figure. And, it produces an energy that I’m finding I like very much and I’m drawn to explore more and more.

Using some of the old signifiers, the serpents representing the Kundalini. The giant bird coming out of the crown of the head — a swan with wings unfurled is a very ancient sign of enlightenment in old art. And, of course, flowers – signifiers of the soul.

I used the sun and the element of the fifth sun – these are two sun images that I got – I went to the NASA sunlight photography and pulled the images off of the NASA website. Dumped them into Photoshop, and messed with them in there and blew them up. And I wanted to have the idea of the sun and the fifth sun and the rising sun in relationship with the Mister Head figure as the idea of time, as the idea of light, of luminosity. And I find that they come together and activate each other in a very interesting way. So, that is why the show is the Fabulous Mister Head and the Fifth Sun.

Q: Could you talk about your process? How do you start?

Mark Griffin: It always starts with me and my sketchpad. I start with drawings. Start to get ideas, draw ideas, draw an element out (8:15) elements that want to get resolved, make a list, like the idea of coiling spans of flowers, a heart on fire, an unfurled bird – work all those images out. It’s drawing. If you went through my sketchpad you would see the drawing, the thinking of the drawing day-by-day. And eventually they come together and when I have enough I start in wax and I go into wax. It’s a one-to-one relationship. That bird – I made that bird in wax first. Everything is one-to-one and that takes place in my studio. And when I’ve got everything in wax then I truck everything over to a bronze foundry. I live a couple of miles away from the foundry I work at. And then I start the process of transferring the wax into metal which is – you go from wax, to make a mold of the wax. That destroys the first wax and then you have a mold with the second wax inside it. And then you heat that up and take it out. And then you have the second wax. You usually have to work on the second wax because there’s always a difference; it’s never perfect. And then you go from that to a shell, a silicate and Plaster of Paris shell. You just dip it, dry, dip it, dry. And then you heat that shell up to 3,000 degrees and the wax runs out. That’s why it’s called “lost wax process” because the wax flows out and then you have the hollow space and you pour the molten metal into that hollow space and that’s how you get the bronze shape. And you accumulate piece, by piece, by piece by piece. You have a big stack of parts and you weld them all together and you polish them.

Q: Do you do editions or just one?

Mark Griffin: They are a mold. They could go into editions. Up until now, I’ve only done one of every single one that I’ve done.

Q: What determines the silver from the gold?

Mark Griffin: Yeah, it’s aluminum and I wanted to get interested in multiple colors and tones and textures of metal just for its sheer expressive beauty. And it’s quite literally endless variety of tones and textures and colors that you can draw out of these metals. That piece over there [pointing to Mister Head Four] also has aluminum and bronze. And in the case of that one – the bar that goes through the center is stainless steel. And the base, that beautiful stone is calcite which is quartz and limestone. And it comes in virtually every color of the rainbow. That’s the first one of this series where I mixed stone with metal. I’m just deliriously happy with how it came out. I’ll explore that more.

Q: And talk about your choice to put the crystals on the . . .

Mark Griffin: Oh yeah. The crystals are an idea that comes from sound is form. When you see a waveform it looks like a geometric structure. And, so I’m expressing the idea of speech by the crystals. I use Super Glue and little pins inside them to produce the shapes. So, it creates the expression of sound, physical expression of sound.

That’s what I mean, it’s like the idea of – sound is invisible but it’s also geometric shape. So, you just take the geometric shape and you make it physical and you have a sculptural element.

Q: What about your influence? Your teachers?

Mark Griffin: I went through art school. When I went through art school I had two painting professors, one printmaking, and one sculpture teacher. And I do all of the elements, all of the art forms. I’ve been doing pure metal sculpture now since 2004. I really caught the bug.

Q: Oh dear.

Mark Griffin: I know it’s intense because it’s the most intense art form in terms of commitment to manipulation of matter and the amount of space it takes up.

Q: Yeah. So do you have questions?

Q1: How much do these pieces weigh?

Mark Griffin: This one [No. 3] about 150 to 175. That one’s really heavy [No. 4]. The stone itself is 200 pounds and the sculpture is probably about 100 pounds, 125. They’re heavy.

Q2: Does the base have any meaning other than the aesthetics?

Mark Griffin: Well, yeah. It’s the point where the sculpture touches the earth. And, there is an idea there that the different shapes and materials explore.

Q3: If it’s touching the earth, what’s the difference between this one that’s got the star and that one that’s got the stone?

Mark Griffin: The idea that I’m playing with at that point in the sculpture is the idea of gravity. You know, where the sculpture touches the earth . . . it’s one of the things that you deal with very, very intensely with sculpture is gravity. And, again, it’s an invisible force. It’s all around us and affects us in incredible ways. And what you’re seeing is me exploring ways to talk about it.

Q: What is the significance of the star?

Mark Griffin: Yeah, that is a seven-pointed star and I wanted to have it asymmetric. So the big significance was gravity and the connection point to the earth.

Thank you very much.