Rick Griffith: Tools
Designer, activist, and visual artist, Rick Griffith, intertwines these three practices throughout his rigorous and imaginative body of work. Presenting a historic series of his collages, foundational text diagrams detailing his design philosophies, and a new series of prints reflective of his political and ethical values that addresses race and social justice, this exhibition also includes several of his sketchbooks. As registers of his ideas and the foundation for all future projects, these notebooks make clear how images and ideas repeat, reassemble, and are repurposed over time and across projects. They are essential “tools” for his creative approach and inform the other works on view. The cycle of projects on view connects through a shared visual vocabulary that demonstrates, through different media and across different periods of time, an urgency to utilize creative and visual practice in service of personal, political, and moral imperatives – and promotes visitors to consider doing the same.

Images courtesy of the MCA—Wes Magyar, photographer.