In this episode of the WWN podcast, artist India Cruse Griffin talks with Kate about how culture, family and faith have shaped her work and driven her to create art that provokes emotional connection for and between people who experience it. While she calls her early creations “the art of a perfectionist,” she now uses a collage style that leaves space for the individual interpretation of each viewer. From growing up in Wayne County to her expanding recognition across the state, India takes us through her journey of developing her artistic talent. Enjoy!
Transcript
India Cruse Griffin: I am India Cruse Griffin, and I’m a mixed media collage artist.
Kate Jetmore: From Civic Spark Media and the Western Wayne News in Wayne County, Indiana, I’m Kate Jetmore. As a native of Richmond, Indiana, I’m excited to be sitting down with some of our neighbors and listening to the stories that define our community. My guest today is India Cruse Griffin, a professional collage artist and retired art teacher. Her art is based on her family and on growing up in Richmond, Indiana, and is created using newspapers, magazines and acrylic paint. She began as a perfectionist, but now describes her style as very free and textural with a lot of color and spirit. After years of exhibiting her work throughout Wayne County in art galleries, university exhibitions, hospitals and museums, she’s now widely recognized and has been sought out to create art for Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Butter Fine Arts Center and Indiana University to name just a few. India is now a full-time studio artist at the Harrison Center for the Arts in Indianapolis. Welcome, India, thanks so much for joining me on this show today.
India Cruse Griffin: Sure. How are you?
Kate Jetmore: I’m good, and I’m excited to have you here. As we said in the intro, you grew up in Richmond, which you describe in your official bio as a small multicultural Midwestern city in Indiana, so I’d love to know what kinds of multicultural experiences did you have as a child and young person in Richmond that influenced your decision to pursue art?
India Cruse Griffin: Well, I think it’s pretty funny because a lot of people do ask me that when I say multicultural because at the time that I grew up here in the sixties and seventies, it was not very multicultural, and it’s grown a lot, but my parents and my grandparents just made sure that we were just culturally aware of people and who they were. We traveled a lot outside Richmond and came back, but there’s just a lot of cool things that they had us do. We went to Expo 67 in Canada and we did things like that. We always traveled, they always took us to museums, so a lot of that was a part of that. One of the reasons why I say multicultural city is mostly because that just simply means that everyone is open and comfortable with who you are and accepting of who people are.
Although the time in which we grew up was probably a little stressful on a lot of different people, but here in Richmond, and I think it says a lot to the community is that we were really embraced. I don’t ever remember not being embraced by people. We moved from the north end when I was in kindergarten to the south side. We were one of the only few black families in the neighborhood, but I’ve just never felt not a part of the community. I went to Central United Methodist Church, I went through confirmation. I still consider myself as Methodist slashed into Baptist now, but I just think our community was just really more accepting, and if they weren’t accepting, they sure never let anyone know. I like for people to realize that the city I came from, they care. They were kind and care and they still are.
Kate Jetmore: That speaks volumes and I feel the same way about Richmond. I hear you speaking a lot about the community of Richmond, but also you mentioned your church and your family. I would love to know how all of those different elements came to influence, not only your decision to become an artist, but the style that you have as an artist.
India Cruse Griffin: Well, a lot of it, the style came about actually after I had my first child, but before then, I was just really very much a perfectionist. Doris Turnbaugh lived across the street from us, and my mom would take classes with her and I would go over there and sit by her and paint and draw. A lot of the things I did in my early years were very unspecific and just very much art of a perfectionist, I can say. Knowing that my mom was big in the community and she was a artist as well, I did get a lot of chances to meet artists that were actually working as working artists, so I kind of knew what that was as a young child.
My friends tell me now that knew me when I was little, they’re like, you always said you were going to be an artist, and it’s the truth. I did always say that. They’re like, now look at you. It took a little bit of a path, but I just really think that just getting to know people in Richmond and going to museums and my mom having friends that were artists really just added to my interests.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah. I hear so much possibility in what you’re saying, that your parents kept as many doors open as possible for you and your siblings, and that it seems like for some people, some kids who like to draw or paint, it’s like a pass time, it’s something you can do in your downtime until you get serious about life, but that you saw around you that being an artist was an option.
India Cruse Griffin: Mm-hmm. It really was, and even though I did not take that option to begin with when I went to college, I was going to be a gym teacher because I loved to run and all those things, but I quickly learned that I wanted to go with my passion so that’s how I ended up with the arts. I always, I’ve never not drawn, I have never not created in some way. It’s just always been a part of who I was, and I’ve always found a way to use it in some way.
Kate Jetmore: Mm-hmm. I understand that you are a mom and I’m also a mom, so this is something that I’m really excited to ask you about and to explore with you, and that is, what it’s like to be an artist or a creative person, in your case, an artist, who has precious little time for creating art because she’s busy raising her children? Can you talk a little bit about the, well, definitely the downside, but also the upside to not having all that much time for your art?
India Cruse Griffin: Right. Yeah, it was really hard in the beginning. In fact, once I got married and had my first child, I continued to do art around and do special things for different people, but I quit actually putting my art out there and actually having it in exhibitions and things because I really wanted to focus on raising my children. My youngest child or my oldest child was three when I started this particular style. Pretty much a lot of people know the story is that she was tore up some magazines, I was worked part-time that year when she was three and I had just left Indianapolis and moved back to Richmond and I was no longer driving back and forth, but she had torn up a bunch of magazines and so I was like, oh dear, what are we going to do? We sat down and I said, well, let’s put these together and make a picture for daddy, so we did.
He came home and he was like, who did that? I was like, oh, Lauren and I did, and she was like, put mommy in the picture and stuff. It was all like that, and he goes, you should paint on it. I was like, hmm, at nap time I painted on it and the story just goes from there. It just became a part of my style. I showed Shaun Dingwerth at the art museum and he encouraged me to go ahead and put it in the exhibition to try to get in. I not only got in, but I won most original that year. It kind of started things, yeah.
There is some downfall to it though because I got popular pretty quickly, and then I started showing work at IU East. The thing is, with that, time was really a crunch because I could no longer be the artist I was before and still take care of my children and my child at the time, and so doing this type of artwork, I would carry a small bag and small work and then I would do that. We would go to the playground or a playdate and I would still sketch or things like that to create my art. When my youngest one came along… You were talking about, I know your stepmother.
One of the special things I remember when you talk about being a mom and a kid, I was at IU East at a show, and Lindsay was, I think four months old and she was all wrapped around me and I had her little bundle and I was walking around and I heard Sherry come up, they’re like, she goes India, they’re talking about your work. I said, what? She goes, hand me the baby, go listen to what they’re saying. I tell you, my girls know that story. That story to me just also speaks of community and people that she would just say, hey, India, I’ll hold her. I knew her to trust her enough to hold her, and she did, and I listened and then I was blown away because I thought, oh my gosh. She told me, she said she loved my work. That was a good thing.
Kate Jetmore: Oh, that is such a special story, thank you for sharing that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think it really illustrates what so many of us women feel, whether we’re artists or not, but I think particularly women who are artists, is that pull between, I need to make my art-
India Cruse Griffin: Exactly.
Kate Jetmore: And I need to take care of my children.
India Cruse Griffin: I need to be a mom. That’s true, and it is a really hard pull, and I felt that pull throughout my time of being a career. My kids got older, my work got more popular and all, but still they had times they had to be in bed or I had to be at a program for them and things like that, so I started creating my work after they went to bed at night and my husband and I got together a studio downstairs for me to work, and so at night I would go down to my studio and I’d work till two in the morning and get up and go to whatever I had to go to, right?
Kate Jetmore: Yeah.
India Cruse Griffin: The one funny thing about that is, people ask me, why is your work so bright? I was like, it has to be that I was working in my basement with little light, but things are much better-
Kate Jetmore: Didn’t look that bright when you were down there.
India Cruse Griffin: Yeah, and I would be shocked, I’d bring it upstairs, I’m like, oh my gosh. I was pretty much known for the green in the background, but the green was just really bright. A part of that was poor lighting in the beginning. There are things, but I still kept that kind of interest in my art. My art still is bright in a lot of ways because people did like that and enjoy it, but we worked it out. I got to the point where a lot of people know that I stopped being a professional artist where I was showing probably around 2014, and that’s when my oldest daughter went to college and my youngest daughter was going to high school and she was like, mom, it is hard with sissy being gone and it’s just me, you and dad.
She was very active in school, and so I made the decision I was going to stop, and I did, and I still did commissions and things like that, but I stopped for about five years. When she went to college and got through her first year of college, I started getting things back in order to start again. Boy, I’m so thankful I made that decision because I really believe being a professional artist is what I’m meant to do, but I was also meant to be an amazing mom, and so I hope to my girls that I am an amazing mom.
Kate Jetmore: I’m so grateful to you for sharing those words because I think so often women don’t say that out loud, but every time we do, the person in front of us just nods because they know that’s how they feel in their own life.
India Cruse Griffin: Exactly.
Kate Jetmore: I want to talk about the role in your work, India, of memory. When I look at your work, I see blurred lines, and that is what memory feels like to me. It’s kind of in soft focus, it’s not precise, and your collages are not precise either. Were you surprised by that outcome or is that the style you were going for from the get-go?
India Cruse Griffin: It was not the style I was going for from the get go. As I said, I started out just with Lauren and just getting things put down on paper, but other than the fact I got older and started wearing glasses-
Kate Jetmore: Everything is blurry.
India Cruse Griffin: Yeah, that’s right, everything was blurry. What I really liked about it is that when I created my work, I wanted people to see more than maybe, I was saying a lot in my work, but I wanted them to see more. If it had been very cut and dry and precise, they wouldn’t be able to see themselves in my work. I think that’s what’s so important about it is that people when they see my work, even today, they always come up and they’re like, this reminds me of something in my childhood.
I’m like, wow. I have people who come up, I mean, they’re just sobbing, and I’m like, why are you crying? They’re like, this is such an emotional piece that reminds me of me and my sisters or me and my family. It gets me every time because my work has just always crossed that line. I mean, I do paint the pictures of memories of things that happened in my family. My girls know who they are in the pictures, my niece knows who she is in the picture, my other niece knows who they are because I gave them specific colors of an outfit. Sometimes if it’s a mixed color, one has yellow and one has on white, they know that’s two different people, so it’s like, wait, that’s me and that’s her. I know who they are, they know who they are.
But when people come up, it goes from old ladies, old men to young people, they’re like, wow, this reminds me of something. That’s really important to me. I want everyone to realize that no matter who we are, where we come from, what we do, we have those same experiences. You can find that, I think, in my work, Tom Thomas was a professor at IUES, and he’d always say, he was always like, India, people always say your work is so calm, he goes, but there’s a storm brewing in there somewhere. I’m like, you’re right, it is, because there’s a lot of meaning underneath what I actually do. I put words in my art and things like that, and people have been starting to look and find those things and then ask me what it means. I was like, well, what does it mean to you first? It’s that sort of thing that has taken me to this level.
Kate Jetmore: It sounds very generous on your part-
India Cruse Griffin: Oh, thank you.
Kate Jetmore: I’m not sure all artists come from that place of, this piece belongs to all of us, I created it with some specific memories and people in mind, but I know you will see yourself in it, and that is the way it’s meant to be.
India Cruse Griffin: Yes, and it does not matter if it does not even match the same ethnicity as them, they are very adamant about saying, no, you don’t understand, my sisters and I went shopping, like this, and I love it because that’s really what I want people to see in my work. I want them to have an emotional connection. I know at the Butter Art Fair last summer, I did a picture of the girls doing a tea party, my mom, I called it the Princess Tea Party, but my mom taught them to have tea parties and she taught them about being kind and courteous and just all those things that you’re supposed to learn when you’re little.
This woman comes up to me and she’s just looking at it and she gets all her face all the way up to the front, and she comes all the way back and she goes, oh my gosh. She goes, do you know how many stories are in your work? She goes, all of us are princesses. Everyone is, and we as women have to teach our young women to be princesses and to go on to be queens and be powerful. I just looked at her and I said, I never thought that’s what my mom and sisters were teaching us, but by golly, that is what they were teaching us.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah.
India Cruse Griffin: My girls were like, they didn’t know I painted it, and so they saw it on an Instagram photo that I had, and they freaked out. My niece called and said, I’m buying that painting. I was like, oh no, it already sold, and she’s like, oh no, I need another. They have talked about that since the exhibition. It not only affects my family when they see it, but it definitely sparks conversation and interest in other people.
Kate Jetmore: Yeah, and that those lessons do go on and on. I actually wanted to ask you about that, India, because you do have a platform as a woman, as a black woman, and I’m curious what it is you hope to use your art to say? You may have already answered this question, but if there’s anything you can add to it, what do you hope to use your art to say, especially to the next generation?
India Cruse Griffin: I have spoken to several different groups. I’ve had teachers call me and ask to speak to elementary kids. I’ve had them have me speak to high school. I’ve had them have me speak to college. What I get from that is just giving them the hope and the promise that you can do it. This one girl said to me, it’s just really, I’ve spoke to them a few weeks ago, and she goes, the one thing about this Mrs. Griffin is that in your day, there were a lot of obstacles. I said, yeah, there were. I have a picture of my mom with us kids, and she was going to a march for women’s rights, and my older brother was a baby.
I said, those type of things were still going on when I was young. She said to me, she goes, but what’s so cool about it is that we’re looking at you right now, you made it through all those obstacles, you’re sitting here now talking to us about art and how we can take whatever we want to do and take it forward. I think I didn’t realize how it was hitting the kids when I talked to them, how it was actually landing, but my hope is that they will see that it can be done and you just have to work hard. A lot of people are like, oh, you have to be talented. Okay, yeah, I think it takes a certain amount of talent, but I think it takes an awful lot of consistency. If people consistently work at something hard, that they’re passionate about, it will actually come to you.
Kate Jetmore: Mm-hmm, so it’s about showing up each day or showing up each week consistently?
India Cruse Griffin: Yeah, exactly.
Kate Jetmore: Speaking of showing up, we did mention in your bio that you spent many years in the classroom as an art teacher, you’re now a retired art teacher, and I’d love to know what that decision was like. Was it hard to leave teaching? Partly, with regard to this question about what do you hope to communicate to the next generation, I mean, you were with them in the classroom every day and now you’re not, so what was that transition like?
India Cruse Griffin: It was hard at first, but everyone always told me as a teacher, they said, one day you’ll just wake up and know that it’s time to move forward, no matter what that forward is. That forward could be sitting down for some people, but you know it’s time to move forward. School is what it is, and that we had gone through the pandemic, and I had gotten to a point, my kids were grown, I still adored being a teacher, I go to places, people are like, hi Mrs. Griffin, I was in your class, and it just all cracks me up.
It was hard to leave, but leaving, it was my time to be who I was meant to be as well. I was meant to be an amazing mom, and it was all God centered. Do you know what I’m saying? I gave up that time, and now it’s my time to be the artist. It’s so funny because people have just come into my life and said, hey, look about this opportunity, what about this opportunity? They’ve kind of pushed me forward. They laugh a lot though, because they’re always like, India, you’re famous. I’m like, I am not famous, I’m just a regular person. I get up every day and I go to work.
Kate Jetmore: Right. Yeah. Well, it is true what you said about, I’m just a normal person, but you’re also very clear about what you’re here on this earth to do, and that in specific moments of your life, you’ve chosen to fully be a mom, and now you’re choosing to fully be an artist. That in and of itself is an incredible message and gift of example that you’re giving to others. India, I want to thank you so much for joining me on the show today, it was a real joy getting to know you. I want to wish you and your family all the best.
India Cruse Griffin: Oh, yes. Well, thank you very much, and I appreciate it, you the same.