Check Out Alex Giffen’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Giffen

Hi Alex , we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I got bit by the printmaking bug in 2013 and have been scratchin’ the itch ever since. Starting in college, at University of Houston, I took a silkscreen class and followed that passion post-graduation to an internship at a serious publishing press. I worked my way from Intern to Master Printer and Manager of a professional publishing press as well as the community press. During this time, I sought out information and textbooks and experimented with the techniques while honing my skills on the job. I developed a love for collaborative printmaking and large scale multiblock woodcuts. I was able to work closely with artists I had admired for years and make some really remarkable work with some really remarkable people. Four years ago, in 2021 I left the position and started my own independent publishing press in Richmond, Virginia called The Asylum.

The Asylum started out as a backyard shop specializing in woodcuts and etchings, and I hosted three all-inclusive artist residencies and remotely published another 15 artists’ work while I was in Virginia. Now, whenever you start a business some parts of the plan happen your way and some parts of the plan, have other plans. I planned on hosting a couple residencies, but I did not plan on these residencies having such a profound impact on the artists who participated. I used my prior experience in one-on-one collaboration and tailored each residency specifically to the artist. I offered a space for them to stay as well as all materials, at no cost to the artist, and we split the work we made. I took this work, as well as my own work to markets every month and made enough money each time to fully fund each residency and alleviate the financial burden of creating work for the artists I invited. I started a clothing line with upcycled and vintage button ups with denim, woodcut printed patches, and I self-published new work monthly, collaged and even wrote some poems. I am incredibly proud of what I accomplished in Richmond, but let me tell you what, I was ready to leave.

2024 was a year that really turned my life upside down, with the deaths of the entire maternal side of my family, my dog Marly, and moved back across the country to my home state of Colorado. I never in a million years anticipated any of these things and I am still profoundly shredded and trying to get through the days. I’m still trying to find the next location for The Asylum but in the meantime, I am making my own work, doing some soul searching and painting out the past at the Globeville Riverfront Art Center. After the winter, I will be loading my floor model etching press up in a box truck for the second time and driving her out here, hoping by that time to have a solid space lined up, one with a bay door and a concrete floor. I’m still printing, focusing on woodcuts, but smaller scale and mostly by hand. I’ve also been making some pretty large paintings, which feels strange, because I have not painted since college. Since college 12 years ago. That’s wild.

Aside from the ways I print professionally, I am wildly obsessed with printmaking which sits perfectly at the crossroads of science and art. The miniscule changes that create massive differences in outcome never cease to delight me and fuel my next print. Printmaking is a dance of physics and aesthetics, and the music never ends. In my collage work, you can see the printmaking, and in my print work you can see the collage, and now in my paintings you can see collage and printmaking. The layering, the transparency of different inks and papers and paints, it’s all my way of pushing the “same ingredients, wildly different cuisines” type vibe. Printmaking is my central love, my heart and soul, and my favorite thing about the way I know print is that I arrived at what is possible rather than starting out at a long line of rules not to break. I push the art based on the science and experiment and I learned everything on the job where you don’t really accept a ‘no’ from the print gods, you just kind of adjust the variables and ask again.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road has not been smooth but it has been worth it. Since I did not graduate college with a degree in printmaking, the majority of printmakers I interacted with were not necessarily happy I was there, doing the thing, printing the prints, professionally. There were some people who voiced that I didn’t deserve my job and it should have gone to someone else. In 2016 I was strangled by a male ex after I came out as a lesbian and almost died, and in 2017 an artist I printed for professionally, put his hands around my neck for a photo at the world debut of the work, which I did not respond well to. Needless to say, having a severely life altering traumatic event become so wrapped up in my professional world was devastating, and by far the largest struggle I am still overcoming. I struggle with severe PTSD and because of how I didn’t react well to that artist, there is a lot of slander in my industry, a lot of trendy haters, which is definitely annoying. That time was dark, I was working up to 5 w-2 jobs at one time and struggling with a couple addictions, trying to cope, trying to be on time, trying to just survive being constantly in fight or flight. I was severely taken advantage of professionally because I didn’t go to grad school, so I was used up, underpaid and cropped out of photos taken of collaborations and publications I was part of. Since starting my own press, and being fully self-funded, I’ve struggled securing meaningful industrial support of any kind and my passion, and at times spite, has fueled a lot of the last four years. Now I’m working on repairing myself as an essential shop tool and refocusing on finding the joy in printmaking again. I’m using painting and collage more as self-care mediums, trying to identify what matters to me now, and process out all the absolute shit I’ve been through both in life and in print. I love printmaking and to be honest, printmaking doesn’t give a damn about my details, or my lack of a graduate degree, printmaking and I are thick as thieves and as Lemmy would say, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down!”

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
In print, my specialties are large scale woodcuts, etchings, experimental monotypes and collaboration. Even when I am working independently, I somehow try and view the experience as a collaboration, partly because I learned everything I know on the job, solving someone else’s creative problems. I view my own work as a three way dialogue between myself as artist, myself as master printer and the work itself. When working with others, that three way dialogue is easier because someone else is there contributing. I’m known for my technical precision, color theory, registration magic, and large scale chiaroscuro woodcuts. Like really large like five to eight feet tall large. I would venture to say that if you asked the artists I worked closely with, I’d also be known for this strange mystical way of manipulating all the moving parts of the construction of a print. I don’t know what to call this, but I would say it is one of the things that sets me apart from others for sure, and definitely the reason why I haven’t met many things I can’t print. My professional portfolio speaks for itself, and my personal portfolio is finding one hell of a voice.

In my personal work, I use a lot of female imagery and create dialogues around traditional belief around femininity and how it is changing. The way I relate to gender has never been binary and I’ve enjoyed the changes that favor inclusion and evolution. My sexual identity and how I came out later in life is also something I explore in my work. I have been subject of the male gaze and the female gaze, and I enjoy unpacking the difference in my work. Collage is kind of like putting together a puzzle that has no guide and was never created and it’s fun to build up layers of ideas visually. I always used to say I didn’t want to make art about flowers but after examining that wild and odd thing to say, I realized, I’m obsessed with flowers, what they are, what they do, how they change, the meanings humans have assigned to them. I use these meanings to communicate more complex ideas that I can’t find another satisfying way to represent. I play with the idea of degradation and ruin, juxtaposed with painfully beautiful carvings, colors, details and I love the tensions that exist here in the space between birth and death. Rust, shell casings, barbed wire, bleeding heart flowers, baby’s breath and forget me nots.

What makes you happy?
This has always been such a strange question, and I will do my best. I feel happiness every time I walk into my shop/studio and see all the work I’ve been doing this last decade. I also feel happiness when I wake up in time to see the colors start to pop. I experience a lot of happiness reflecting on my career and all the stunning work I’ve had the absolute honor of printing, and how I got to print for an artist I wrote papers about in school. I feel really happy when I look at my printer proofs and realize how much fun and how lucky I am to have done all that for money. Things that light up my senses make me happy, like hot sauce and roller-skating. Basically, the happiness comes from answering the question, how does this experience play with mind and matter? I’m getting to where I enjoy being human and finding out how I interact with the world physically is an incredibly fun time. I recently, like last week, acquired a gigantic, red, pinstriped press, and her name is Lola. She definitely makes me happy and I can’t wait to see what large scale stuff we print.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ttheasylumm.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ttheasylumm
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ttheasylumm
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5yOVZNoLMODuXin6Evh91U?si=4ffc30ade7fd47e0