Axel Griffin

I was born September 21, 1986, in Syracuse, New York. I was the fifth of my mother's six children and my father's firstborn. It was the last day of summer and the start to an interesting life journey. I was born half blind and half deaf. This turbulent beginning of my life proved to have a socially crippling effect on me.

At the tender age of 7, my mother was arrested for attempted murder of my father, which led to my sister (the oldest) and three brothers going from one house to another within the projects where we grew up. For 28 days we slept on couches, floors, and other folks' mattresses when we had our own less than a football field away. Now, as an adult, I prefer being home more than anywhere.

Most of my preteen years I spent alone in my bedroom. I would spend hours drawing, painting murals on my walls, reading about Greek gods and goddesses, exercising, and watching reruns of classic sitcoms, cartoons, and movies. I learned to be extremely comfortable spending long days in my space. I would sit lost in my thoughts constructing new and ambitious ways to express those thoughts using color, shapes, and designs.

It was the only time I truly felt free from the neighborhoods and the toxic people who seasoned the community with their love for misery.

Many of my most common childhood memories consist of ill moral values, love-hate relationships viewed as normal, kids raising themselves, and a fast lane to a life going nowhere. Drug deals were role models, but there were beer cans used as crack pipes left sitting on the floor of pissy hallways. In the same halls the older kids would have sex, deal drugs, and use drugs. But in my young, innocent eyes, these were normal occurrences.

There were very few positive male role models in my community unless one was an athlete or in constant trouble of some sort, so my male role model was Dwayne Wayne from the hit show A Different World.

Another chunk of my childhood was spent visiting hearing, eye, and other specialized doctors. I was assigned to a special education class where the work was remarkably easy. I assumed that I was a genius. How wrong was I? As a result of my being in special classes, there was a lot of ridicule from most of my classmates, and I had to endure it and avoid it at and away from school.

To be sure, there were presents under the tree, food on the table, and clothes on our backs. I lived in a clean house overstocked with food. We were one of the few families who had cable and every major gaming system.

At night, after one of my mother's many small get-togethers while she was good and drunk, she would play the same two CDs on replay, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack. Two albums that are dear to my heart because of that era of my life.

During my teens, it was only my mother, my youngest brother, and me when we moved to the south side of Syracuse, NY. Quickly I learned about the various gangs. I also learned about the stores that didn't ask for ID for cigarettes and alcohol. Around this time my parents decided to divorce for a multitude of reasons. At the same time in court, my brother and my assigned lawyer informed me that my parents decided that I would stay with my mother, but they hadn't decided where my brother was going. I sat in court to listen to my parents fight over my brother.

Also, during my early teens, my father would drive my brother and me to New York every Thursday for years. I never missed a day. At seventeen I would spend days or weeks in the Bronx getting to know the city beyond Manhattan. A new world was introduced to me.

One thing that gave me hope came about when I was seven years old. My art teacher, Ms. Bonfe, introduced me to the idea of going to art school. More specifically, FIT and Pratt. As a senior in high school, I applied to only three schools: FIT, Pratt, and Onondaga Community College. I got into FIT on my first try. I prepared for years for that moment. I did not find out until my last day of school that I got in.

After graduating from FIT, I experienced hopelessness, unemployment, car repossession, and multiple odd jobs searching for a new career path outside of the art world. I've earned two master's degrees, attempted to obtain a Ph.D., and worked over ten years in the human services and the nursing industry.

During COVID, I was a full-time stay-at-home father to my wife and our two boys while working as a full-time caseworker and a full-time doctorate student. In the midst of that, I wrote 31 novels under the name Axel Xander Griffin; I published 5, with number 6 on the way.

In a matter of two years' time, I lost my oldest brother; almost lost my wife and daughter a week and a half later; my daughter almost died in my arms twice before she was six months old; my mother almost died in front of me; and my mother told me that my father was not my biological father. Three months after that I learned that my biological grandmother passed, which was around my birthday. I was the oldest of two grandchildren and the only grandson.

I lost not only me but also a father, an aunt, a grandmother, a grandfather, a sister, and a bond. My family history is something I don't know, and many of my childhood memories have a new meaning. My life as an adult has a new meaning. My ability to trust is tarnished for an indefinite time. At the same time I pay far less attention to people.

One thing this experience did teach me. I learned to forgive and accept truly.

That's what my art is about: reaching for the root of something buried deep and learning to accept what cannot be changed, what cannot be given back, and accepting that sometimes life is completely unfair, causing inconceivable pain that has no expiration date. Returning to my art is the only new beginning I can give myself.