On the morning of Oct. 29, Griffin Cordell, a junior sculpture major at Winthrop University, got a call that his 11 foot tall sculpture that he had been working on since the beginning of the semester had fallen over.
Cordell described this piece as “an exploration in object and sound association, but in a subconscious sense.” He said the sculpture started as a drawing and, as the sculpture began to grow and take shape, so did his concept and focus on the mind’s dream world.
“I feel like the world speaks to us in a different language when we’re dreaming,” Coredell said. “It’s a visual language, but I’m trying to understand that language and speak it to the people that want to hear it [through this sculpture].”
The sculpture itself is a collection of objects and devices that Cordell has broken away from their conventional uses, held together by a wire frame secured in a line of concrete bases. This is what Cordell said was the downfall of his first design. When the winds of Hurricane Zeta came through Rock Hill, South Carolina, this structure was not able to withstand the storm.
While this certainly was disheartening to Cordell when he heard the news, he said he is also thankful, in a way.
“I think that artists can’t really be afraid to fail,” he said. “You always have to see it as a new opportunity for something.”
Cordell is not one to back down from a challenge. In fact, he not only welcomes them but often seeks them out.
“Whenever I make work, I try to design it to be something that I don’t think I can do…the reason I make art is to learn things about the world and about myself that I don’t already know,” Cordell said.
And he’s been doing just that since the age of three. When he was asked the dreaded question “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Cordell said he had a different answer every week.
He recalled playing make-believe, creating astronaut suits and any other outfit or accessory his dreams called for out of cardboard and duct tape. That’s when he said he realized that his way of processing the world and his thoughts about it was through making art. This led Cordell to pursue becoming an artist.
“I wanted to make things, it was a way to be everything I had wanted to be.”
Since then, he has continued his arts education. First, at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and now at Winthrop. He has experimented with many forms of sculpture and performance art, among other mediums.
“My artwork is like an extension of my life,” Cordell said. “I’m an experimental person, I’m an intuitive person, I think I thrive under change.”
Whether it be a hurricane or global pandemic, Cordell has found a way to continue his craft.
“I think there’s a danger we’re dealing with right now…being afraid of change,” Cordell said. “I think artists in general have al- ways responded to change. That’s our job, that’s what we do. We take what’s going on in the world and we put it back out in our own creative way.”
Photo by Olivia Esselman
