October 17, 2008 Friday

Rick Griffin

Look at the above photo closely. Brad, on the left, and Chris, on the right, are life long friends that I went to elementary and high school with. We learned to surf together in 1958 at Torrance Beach, and Brad and I roomed together for four years at UCSB. Between them is a pastel chalk drawing done by Rick Griffin of Murph The Surf in the Makaha shore break. The photo was taken in May 2007 and the drawing was done in 1962, forty-five years ago and it is in pristine condition.

Rick Griffin is a well-known artist whose reputation is still growing today. He created the cartoon character Murphy, a surf gremlin, in the early sixties. Murphy graced the cover of an early edition of John Severson’s Surfer Magazine. Rick’s career took off from there with more Surfer covers, a regular cartoon strip in each issue, drawings on record covers and advertisements. Rick did album covers for the Belairs and the Challengers surf bands. He moved onto San Francisco with the hippie movement and became one of the five leading artists to do the famous psychedelic rock concert posters. He also did several record album covers including the beautiful Aoxomoxoa album for the Grateful Dead. The hippie movement played out and Rick evolved. He converted to Christianity and began doing striking murals of the Gospel of John stories. His fame as a serious artist was growing when unfortunately he died in a motorcycle accident in 1991 at the age of 47.

Architect Rob Quigley, life long friend of Rick’s and avid collector of his art, Bolton Colburn, Director of the Laguna Art Museum and hundreds of Rick’s friends gathered Rick’s works to stage a Rick Griffin exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum from May through September 2007. The highly acclaimed exhibit included pieces from all phases of Rick’s career from surf cartoons to his religious murals.

One piece that didn’t make the exhibition was the Murphy cartoon on Brad’s bedroom wall. Brad, Chris and I went to high school with Rick and Brad and Chris were close friends. Brad and his mother hired Rick to do the above cartoon. In fact, Rick did five such drawings in 1962, not all at the same time but through out the year. Whenever Rick needed money for a surf trip or when the surf was down, he would show up to do another one. Rick did chalk drawings for other friends, but Brad’s mother was smart. She researched the local art stores for the best lacquer for protecting pastel chalk. Rick’s other friends didn’t do this and those drawings are long gone. Brad’s mother razzed him about the expense of the lacquer. She claimed she spent more on the lacquer than on payment to Rick for the drawings. Thank goodness, her foresight has preserved all five drawings.

The amazing part of this story is that the drawings are still there and in excellent condition. Brad’s father had the house built in 1949. Rick did the drawings in 1962. Brad’s parents sold the house in 1967, when Rick was doing psychedelic posters in San Francisco. The family that bought the house still live there; though their children are grown and long gone. The woman of this family loved the drawings. She had no idea who Rick Griffin was when they purchased the house. Her son surfed and he thought it was cool to have surf cartoons on his bedroom walls. So they kept them. Through the years the woman learned about Rick Griffin and preserved the drawings. They remodeled the house, adding a second story but they left the back bedroom untouched. They painted the inside of the house including the back bedroom. But they had the painters carefully paint around the drawings using a fine feathered edge technique. The drawings are still there and in excellent condition. But the woman warned Brad last summer that within the next ten years she will have to give up the house; she is getting up in years.

Two women, Brad’s mother and the mother of the family that purchased the house from Brad’s parents, loved Rick’s drawings and have preserved them for forty-six years. So what’s going to happen? The bedroom walls are lathe and plaster, the house was build before drywall was invented, thus one cannot cut the drawings out of the walls. They would crumble to dust. The least that can be done is to capture the images through professional photography.

Meanwhile, we hope and pray that the next owner will also continue to protect these the drawings and keep them in perfect condition.

You may view Brad’s photos of all five drawings and a couple of Rick’s murals in my photo album via the link below:

http://gallery.me.com/lorenlmoore1