About the artist

Axel Griffin

My art is about reaching for the root of something buried deep, and learning to accept what cannot be changed.

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Thoughts — a hooded figure crouched on a ledge above a canyon of coloured buildings

1986

Syracuse, New York

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.
The preteen years

A room I could get lost in

Most of my preteen years I spent alone in my bedroom. I would spend hours drawing, painting murals on my walls, reading, exercising, and watching reruns of classic sitcoms, cartoons, and movies. I learned to be extremely comfortable spending long days in my space. I spent many hours lost in my thoughts.

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.
Growing up

What looked normal

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. But in my young, innocent eyes, these were normal occurrences.

There were very few positive male role models in my community, so my male role model was Dwayne Wayne from the hit show A Different World.
Nights

Two albums on replay

At night, after one of my mother's many small get-togethers while she was good and tipsy, 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. R&B music was always blaring in my home.
Every Thursday

New York, and the Bronx

My father would drive my brother and me to New York, where he grew up, every Thursday for years. I never missed a day. At seventeen I would spend days or weeks in the Bronx with family getting to know my new world.
School

Ms. Bonfe, and FIT

In elementary school my art teacher, Ms. Bonfe, introduced me to the idea of going to The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) or Pratt. As a senior in high school, I applied to only three schools: FIT, Pratt, and Onondaga Community College. I got into FIT.