Courtney Griffith

I create drawings and sculptures through burning and sourcing charcoal and ash. In the series Whatever returns from oblivion returns to find a voice, I dip my hands and fingertips in hot beeswax to create wax forms which represent pyrophilous fungi. Pyrophilous fungi emerge in bright oranges and pinks from the aftermath of a wildfire. They are a symbol of hope and newness, thriving in post-fire conditions and paving the way for new lifeforms to return.

The title is an excerpt from Louise Glück's poem The Wild Iris

This installation is the result of a year-long research project about the ghost net phenomenon along the California Coast, displayed at Slidespace Gallery and made possible by the Nancy Cook Travel Photography Fellowship and Ghost Diving USA.

Industrial fishing nets are made from incredibly durable synthetics. When these nets become lost or discarded at sea they are referred to as “ghost nets”. They roam the sea indefinitely, entrapping fish and marine mammals, existing like ghosts trapped between realms, unable to pass on, unable to function as they were designed, outliving the human users and manufacturers. 

The poem Tithonus by Lord Tennyson is about a mortal who was cursed with immortality in Greek mythology. Ghost nets share this curse, as they are made of non-biodegradable synthetics.

The installation is composed of a segment of an actual ghost net recovered by Ghost Diving USA, cyanotypes, and a framed print of the divers as they submerge to remove the nets from a deep sea shipwreck off the coast of Long Beach, CA. An excerpt of the poem Tithonus by Lord Tennyson is displayed in vinyl text along with the artwork. The underwater photographs are courtesy of Ghost Diving USA and photographers Kian Fari, Tianyi Lu, and Curtis Wolfslau.

Unable to biodegrade, plastics exist like ghosts trapped between realms, outliving their human users and manufacturers. I photograph synthetics from local beaches like scientific studies of marine organisms, challenging the finality of trash and its categorization as separate from nature or civilization.

The Weight of Absence is a performance, where I embrace a body-sized charcoal log and move back and forth across paper. The performance is about moving through life with memories from loss, and how those memories can take on an almost physical weight. Memories can be also generative, like how charcoal, a remnant of destruction, can function as a drawing tool.

Performed from 2021-2023, duration variable 5-10 min

As a redwood recovers from wildfire damage, the rings begin to close around the burn scar, absorbing it as an internal part of the tree. These performance drawings and charcoal prints mimic this growth pattern as a meditations on resilience, both personal and environmental.

On Loss and Resilience is a continuation of my charcoal drawing performance project titled The Weight of Absence. These images document an iteration of the performance at Ocean Beach, where I embraced a body-sized charcoal log and moved back and forth in the sand and in the ocean waves.

Performance documentation courtesy of Michael Halberstadt

This series is a response to the marine phenomenon of ghost nets, which are lost or discarded, industrial, non-biodegradable fishing nets. Due to their durability, they continue to fish without purpose, outliving their human operators and manufacturers. I animate found nets using beeswax, giving the sculptures an uncanniness, a feeling of a missing human, or a ghost. I want to call attention to humanity’s role in the creation of this haunting phenomenon which persists far beyond a human lifespan.

In this series, I use destruction as a creative tool, tangling, tearing, and burning malleable materials that are easily scarred like rope, canvas, and wood. I often work with found or discarded materials, sometimes even using fragments of old artworks, recycling them into something new. Working cyclically, I am interested in exploring how destruction can be formative, constructive, regenerative.

“The forces of creation and destruction are so tightly linked that sometimes we can't tell where one begins and the other leaves off.”

-Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass

Entropy examines creation, loss, and transformation through various forms of charcoal and burnt wood.

Earth paintings are made with natural pigments and oils painted on unprimed canvas. The artworks' natural origins are made clear through the simplicity of materials and process, breaking down the invisible wall that separates man-made objects with nature. Similar to the Tea Meditation series, these paintings are largely biodegradable, allowing the paintings to eventually return to the Earth. In reconnecting painting with the natural world, viewers are reminded that we are a part of a vast system, that all is borrowed and must eventually return.

This series explores the connection between sustainability and ephemerality. The concept originated from the realization of just how toxic oil painting, my original discipline, and many other forms of art-making, can be for the artist and the environment.

This realization led me to challenge myself to create a series of “natural” paintings. The canvases are composed of reclaimed stretcher bars and unprimed canvas. For the paint, I use tea, and occasionally vegetable dyes and charcoal powder.

The temporal nature of tea allows for visual meditation on ephemerality as it continues to brew even after applied to the canvas. Once dry, the paintings will begin to fade and change over time, eventually biodegrading. This is the inseparable link between ephemerality and sustainability; for an ecosystem to sustain life, everything within that ecosystem must be temporary.

I am interested in exploring the concept of ephemerality through images of growth and decay. Like the decomposition portrayed in my paintings, human existence is temporary, however we possess the ability to perceive the infinite, something greater than our own existence. Our impermanence gives our lives value and our ability to perceive something greater than ourselves gives our lives meaning. The space between describes the human experience.

“Growth and Decay” is a response to the prior series, “Ephemerality”. While “Ephemerality” is composed of images of decomposition, “Growth and Decay” showcases spaces that house both decomposition and new life. This series is an attempt to make visual life’s ability to extend beyond an individual organism’s lifespan. “Ephemerality” focuses on the temporary, where “Growth and Decay” implies the infinite.