New Exhibition Celebrates the Art of CCAD’s Denny Griffith
For nearly three decades, Denny Griffith was a major presence in the Columbus arts scene—first in various leadership positions at the Columbus Museum of Art, then as the beloved president of the Columbus College of Art & Design. And all the while, Griffith was making his own art: abstract pieces characterized by bold colors, strange shapes and a profound liveliness.
Two years after retiring from CCAD, all that artmaking came to an end when Griffith died of cancer in January 2016. But his work—and his link to Columbus—persists. “Columbus meant so much to him, both as an artist and from his work at the museum and obviously his work at CCAD,” says his widow, Beth Fisher, who now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she and her husband had both hoped to move until his diagnosis.
In furtherance of Griffith’s local legacy, Fisher has arranged for the Sarah Gormley Gallery to represent her husband’s work. The gallery, at 95 N. High St., unveiled its first solo exhibition of Griffith’s work on June 5.
“To be able to participate and support somebody who was so meaningful to the arts community, both as an artist and as president at CCAD, is such an honor,” says Gormley, who follows in the footsteps of Griffith’s longtime gallery representative, Marlana Hammond Keynes of Hammond Harkins Galleries. Last fall, Keynes closed her highly respected Short North gallery, leaving the late artist temporarily without a home. “Marlana represented Denny for a really long time and did a wonderful job,” Fisher says. “I still wanted Denny to have his work have a presence in the community.”
For this new exhibition, Gormley focused on two groups of Griffith’s paintings: the “Under the Microscope” series—a response to his father’s leukemia diagnosis—and the subsequent “Soliloquy” series. The first batch of paintings suggested the patterns of cancer cells under a microscope, but by the time Griffith began making the second batch, the images had become somehow softer and plainer. “He really started to edit them and simplify them,” Fisher says.
“Soliloquy #25,” a work in oil and encaustic, features giant circular or oblong forms against a ruddy background. “There isn’t a lot going on, other than the ellipses and the color field in the background,” Fisher says of the works in the series.
For Gormley, the magic is in contemplating what the artist might have been thinking during the creative process. “The more time you spend with [the pieces], the more meaningful they become,” she says.
And for Fisher, the exhibition is a chance to keep her husband close by. “I still see him as very much a part of my life,” she says.
This story is from the June 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly. It has been updated to include a new opening date for the exhibition at Sarah Gormley Gallery.
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