Meet Alicia Griswold | artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alicia Griswold and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alicia, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I’m not so sure I pursued an artistic career so much as I eliminated every other source of income and professional satisfaction. You could say that creativity pursued me, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I started by writing mostly because I didn’t get to take an art class until the last semester of high school. In college, I worked for the campus television studio and was in film club. I met Lillian Gish. She was in her 90s. In dance class, we went to see the new modern dance group, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and I was stunned, forever, by Judith Jamison. She was still in her 20s then and owned the floor. I did not. Nor was I much of a photographer. Or actor. But I wrote because it was cheap. If I’d had the money, I would have painted, but that was yet to come.

Creativity is what possesses you when you’re lucky enough to find ways to avoid your parents’ life. Creativity is what it takes to earn your keep, your typewriter, and your rent. If you have confidence, the road is short. Relatively. If not, as in my case, the road is long, winding and full of cliches.

As a writer, I was best at features and interviews for Creative Loafing where I worked from around 1979-to the mid 1990s with breaks for graduate school at the University of Alabama’s MFA program in creative writing. I wrote a diary novel about a wanna-be witch/gardener who solves a murder. It was quite creative and included drawings.

Back in Atlanta, I finally took my first drawing class at the Atlanta College of Art and eventually taught writing (ENG101) and creative writing, worked as the college registrar and learned to paint. Other writing jobs followed as did printmaking, book binding and more painting, some sales, some shows, some corporate rent paying, trade journalism and more teaching.
And now I am a full time artist.

Creativity is an approach to life. It was the only one I was willing to follow. I don’t think I’m particularly successful, but I am free to live my own life. All I ever wanted.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I did work as a reporter for Adweek magazine and learned a lot about marketing and the ad business but as I interviewed mostly agency owners and their PR people, as well as clients, I came to understand the complexities of selling a product and a brand. Also, the importance of having a plan of action. My work is quirky, arguably light-hearted before slanting downward. For example, my favorite poem is titled “Men Between Marriages Need Midwives.”

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ve lived in Atlanta since 1976 and have outgrown or outlived so many places. For a weeklong trip, we’d be at the High, the Botanical Garden, SCAD Fash and a lot of restaurants. I’d show them the beltline because it’s really one of the most creative ideas to emerge in our city since the railroad itself. Then I’d take them up to the mountains for a weekend at John C. Campbell Folk School.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I don’t know whether to thank or blame the people who helped and believed in me. Michael J. Kalter, my college English professor, who died in 1988. Several instructors at the Atlanta College of Art, including the late Michael Venezia and Larry Anderson, The printmaker Stephanie Smith for organizing the Atlanta Printmakers Studio and including me in its infancy. She taught me how to bind books which led me to pairing book structures, images and words into what I learned was something called “artist books.” That’s what I do now. More people, simply by liking my work enough to pay for it (!) have given me what has always been a struggle to reconcile—confidence in my work.

One project I loved working on was Clark Whittington’s Artists in Cellophane. Check it out at artomat.org. I got to sell work all over the country through that project and his cool vintage cigarette machines. This was in the early 2000s, and it’s still going!

Let me acknowledge Sandra Oei for suggesting you talk with me. She’s instrumental in my at-long-last ability to take myself seriously and add business to my skills.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sending_pages/

Linkedin: no way

Twitter: nope

Soundcloud: uh?

Facebook: rather not

Yelp: no

Youtube: not yet

Image Credits
Photo credit for the books: John Thigpen
Photo credit for drawing: Alicia Griswold
photo of me: Alicia Griswold