[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” transform_scale=”486%|486%” width=”100%” max_width=”215px”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/eportfolios.capilanou.ca\/chelsyzugazaga2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11621\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-15-at-2.48.44-PM.png” title_text=”Screen Shot 2021-02-15 at 2.48.44 PM” _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px|||||”][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” width=”92.5%”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”||199px|||”]<\/p>\n
Richard Alden Griffin was born June 1944 in Los Angele, California to James and Jacqueline Griffin. His dad, James, was an electrical engineer and an amateur archeologist and his mom was a housewife. When Rick\u2019s dad was young he wanted to work at Disney but he was not allowed, on the pretext that you could never make a living as a cartoonist. It seems the message was passed on to the next generation but Rick\u2019s response to it was to be the opposite of his father\u2019s.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/eportfolios.capilanou.ca\/chelsyzugazaga2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11621\/2021\/02\/e6e1f9a3-9d1d-496f-b2cd-164e419feb75.jpg” title_text=”e6e1f9a3-9d1d-496f-b2cd-164e419feb75″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||-1px|||” custom_padding=”||0px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ custom_css_main_element=”float:left;”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”-311px|||25px||” custom_padding=”2px|419px|0px|||”]<\/p>\n
Rick grew up in Lakewood city in Los Angeles County in the 1950s. In 1958 Rick moved to the Palos Verdes Peninsula between Los Angeles and Long Beach, an area famous in the 1950s for its surfing culture. Reading and collecting comic books was one of his main interests, surfing was the other. He enrolled to Alexander Fleming Junior High. The summer before entering Narbonne High School he surfed all summer \u2013 he had learned to surf at age 14. While in high school he started doodling surfers on T-shirts and notebook covers for his school buddies for 50\u023c a piece. He contributed to the school yearbook with his artwork. He was also a member and artist for the Haggerty\u2019s Surfing Club thanks to Greg Noll, a big wave surfer who had a surf board shop in Hermosa Beach.\u00a0 Rick would draw cartoon images on the walls of the shop and illustrated Noll\u2019s first annual surf publication. It was then that he met John Severson, the publisher and owner of \u201cSurfer\u201d magazine. John liked his cartoon drawings and hired him to draw a comic strip for the magazine. The main character of the strip called \u201cMurphy\u201d, a little gremlin who looked a lot like him, made it out for the first time from the pages onto the cover of \u2018Surfer\u201d magazine. It became an iconic image to the California surf culture.<\/p>\n
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Rick graduated from Palos Verdes High school in 1962 and a year after he left home with the intention of moving to Australia. A hitchhiking accident travelling to San Francisco left his face scarred and one of his eyes severely damaged. He ended up wearing a patch over his eye for a year. After that, an iconic \u201ceyeball\u201d was to appear many times in his art.<\/p>\n
Rick lived in San Clemente for the next few years, painting and surfing, during which time he created his own publication \u201cMan From Utopia,\u201d an untraditional, oversized comic book, packed with symbolism, including Jesus and sacred hearts, referencing Rick\u2019s salvation. He also did artwork for the up and coming alternative Christian rock bands.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/eportfolios.capilanou.ca\/chelsyzugazaga2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11621\/2021\/02\/9psych_shop_750x1000.jpg” title_text=”9psych_shop_750x1000″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”]<\/p>\n
Rick decided to go to art school and he enrolled at Chouinard Art institute where he met his future wife, Ida Pfefferle, a \u201csurfer girl\u201d, by the way she wore her hair. They shared a lot of interests: comic books, drawing, music and go see bands play at Hollywood nightclubs, British rock bands and folk singers like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.<\/p>\n
Ida became pregnant and moved to the bay area where her family lived. She rented an apartment in San Francisco where her neighbours just happened to be future poster artists: Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, and Bob Seidemann. In the summer of 1966 their Flaven Heather Highland Griffin daughter was born. Frustrated with the art school and the censorship of his strips he spent some time in Mexico living on the beach, eventually heading back to California to join Ida and settling down in San Francisco\u2019s Haight-Ashbury. It was the onset of the hippy, music scene that was about to burst. It was then that Rick created one of his first psychedelic rock posters for the Jook Savages Art Show. His next commission was a poster for \u201cHuman-Be-In\u201d in Golden Gate Park, January 14, 1967. A concentration of 20,000 people to hear Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Jerry Rubin and Lenora Kandel among others, including some rock bands like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_2,1_2″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”]<\/p>\n
Early that year Rick Griffin was commissioned to design the logo of a new magazine, The Rolling Stone<\/em> and in July that year, the Big Five (Wilson, Kelley, Mouse, Moscoso and Griffin had a solo exhibition at the uptown Moore Gallery, which generated a massive publicity, including a review in the San Francisco Chronicle. On September 1, 1967, Rick, alongside the Big Five, except Mouse, was featured in a LIFE<\/em> cover story called \u201cThe Great Poster Wave\u201d. In addition, Robert Crumb, the famous American counterculture cartoonist, author of Fritz the Cat<\/a>\u00a0strips published in the men’s magazine\u00a0Cavalier<\/em><\/a> invited Griffin to contribute to the second issue of Zap Comix, an underground publication labeled \u201cFair Warning: For Adult Intellectuals Only\u201d. Griffin\u2019s mutant Morning Paper poster seems to have inspired Crumb\u2019s character in Zap#1. He also contributed with his art to Zap#2.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/eportfolios.capilanou.ca\/chelsyzugazaga2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11621\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-15-at-2.48.44-PM.png” title_text=”Screen Shot 2021-02-15 at 2.48.44 PM” _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” min_height=”326.9px” custom_margin=”||-4px|||” custom_padding=”||10px|||” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”]<\/p>\n One particular feature in Griffin\u2019s posters is Rick\u2019s unique lettering style. He used that style on the first posters he designed in San Francisco, a slab serif style, but his lettering became more visually exorbitant as psychedelics influenced his creative style.<\/p>\n Griffin and a few other poster artists formed the Berkeley Bonaparte, a poster art collective that included Victor Moscoso, Stanley \u201cMouse\u201d Miller, Alton Kelley, Wes Wilson and Rick, a group of artist that became known as \u201cThe Big Five\u201d<\/strong>, creators of poster psychedelia. As a distribution agency they produced and sold psychedelic poster art.<\/p>\n Rick was a perfectionist and as a prolific artist who created concert posters, surf art, album covers, comic art, Christian art and other miscellaneous art works.<\/p>\n At noon on August 15th<\/sup>, 1991 Rick Griffin had a motorcycle accident in Petaluma, California and passed away three days later from major head injuries at the age of 47. He was a true visionary, gifted with outstanding talent.<\/p>\n Holly Myers wrote: \u201cThe gap between an artist like Griffin and those in the \u201ccapital-A club\u201d is one of context, not talent, and if Griffin\u2019s peg does not fit in that hole, carving new holes seems more interesting anyway. Plus Griffin\u2019s club is probably a lot more fun.\u201d(8)<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/eportfolios.capilanou.ca\/chelsyzugazaga2\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11621\/2021\/02\/SFOBigFive.jpg” _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default” title_text=”SFOBigFive” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.7.7″ _module_preset=”default”]<\/p>\n SOURCES:<\/p>\n