On a Thursday afternoon, I call India Cruse-Griffin, and she answers from her studio in Richmond, Indiana, where she is busy preparing for her upcoming show. On the other line, I can hear the sound of her working, and I ask what her studio looks like at the time of the call. She laughs, “it’s a mess.” As it should be– her show opens in only one week in the Harrison Center’s main gallery. She is working away at finishing touches, still dreaming of final pieces to include in her February exhibit in the Harrison Center’s main gallery.

India Cruse-Griffin
*Day out*
Acrylic on wood
4’x4’

Talking to India Cruse-Griffin is easy. She speaks as if she already knows you, a habit that likely helps her as a longtime educator. She informs me that the school where she teaches has been experiencing flooding issues, and she and her colleagues have had to work remotely. “It’s perfect timing,” she laughs, “and the worst timing.” Cruse-Griffin is a collage artist– she applies magazine clippings, oil paint, and other materials directly onto wood or canvas. The work evokes a childlike wonder reminiscent of moments spent crafting on dining room tables. Childhood is certainly on her mind; in the biography on her website, she mentions drawing inspiration from “a personal understanding of growing up, as African-American, in a multi-cultural small midwestern community.”

India Cruse-Griffin
*Black Saturday*
Acrylic on wood
4’x4’

I ask her how this new show will differ from other work she’s done– “in the past few years, I’ve experimented a little.” she says. “The new stuff, I like it, but…” she hesitates. She begins to explain how this new exhibit, The Love We Breathe, is a return to form for her– a refocusing on the core themes that have been present throughout a lifetime of creating. “The core of who I am is who I was,” Cruse-Griffin explains. There is a love for nostalgia, for personal history, that permeates her work. She tells me memories of her children, mentioning that her mother has Alzheimer’s and has trouble recognizing her, yet remains quick to remember the grandchildren– a fact that she recounts with wistfulness and humor, and maybe a bit of frustration.

India Cruse-Griffin
*Hat day*
Acrylic on wood
3’x3’

The thing is, Cruse-Griffin cares about memory. In our conversation, she repeatedly mentions the phrase “reaching back,” which serves as a sort of refrain for her work: a constant dipping back into history to meditate on what matters most to her. When asked about the show's name, she answers with refreshing simplicity, referencing the love we breathe to be love for our family and friends. Her artistic process is centered around thought and care, and care is, in fact, a common theme throughout the exhibit. A mother’s care for child, a sibling’s care, and even the preciousness of all of these dissonant paper clippings, carefully put together, speak to Cruse Griffin’s intention to give everything a home. A child strings laundry on a line in a piece titled Speak to Me. “Laundry is always a part of my work,” she says, “it represents a mother working and a child looking on.”

India Cruse-Griffin
*Speak to me*
Acrylic on wood
2’x4’

“Mostly, it’s just about being.” She says of the exhibit, “falling in love– all the things that you love about your family.” Like myself and many other artists, Cruse-Griffin is not quick to explicitly say what her work means. There are too many unspoken details to encapsulate with a brief description. Art is so much about the unspoken: the mysterious things for which we have no language. I hear these mysteries in the way that Griffin talks about her work. “Without giving away too much…” she prefaces this in her description of The Love of Bubbles, the promotional piece for the show, inspired by a picture of Cruse-Griffin’s children playing outside blowing bubbles.

India Cruse-Griffin
*The Love of Bubbles*
Acrylic on paper
12” x 28”

Memory is sacred. There is a sense in which these tender memories of Cruse-Griffin’s children, family, and life are better protected inside her mind. As an artist, she diligently excavates these memories for people like me. It’s vulnerable, but more importantly, it’s loving. Cruse-Griffin is doing the work of an artist that too often gets overlooked: trusting in the worth of sharing one’s own experiences to a world that struggles to care much for others’ stories. India Cruse-Griffin cares, and her care is infectious.

India Cruse-Griffin
*First love*
Acrylic on wood
4’x4’

See The Love We Breathe on display now in the Harrison Gallery until February 27th. If you are interested in browsing or purchasing the pieces in this show, visit our online gallery page.