Artist Joseph Griffith: UFO attacks subway cars, night streets, and other drawings
Tonight on my way home from Troy, NY, I ran into an artist in the 14th Street A/C/E station, Joseph Griffith, whose UFO-filled, pastel drawings I saw, liked and bought on University Place in the Village several years ago. Joseph is still drawing, still selling his work in the streets and subway stations, and seemed well and happy.
Joseph’s work centers on New York street scenes, subway trains in motion, and the UFOs that swoop down out of the sky to destroy them with laser beams, as well as tranquil night scenes of lampposts beneath elevated subway tracks, bright and silent apartment windows. Recently he has started to branch out into absurd and impressionist work. One of the drawings on display tonight was a copy of [that one Picasso or Degas or Matisse with the naked ladies dancing in a circle].
He has drawn UFOs because of their popularity for so long, “6 years,” that they gave him nightmares, so he stopped for a while.
Homeless for 12 yrs, Joseph lived in shelters — including the one on Ward’s Island where Bill Etra lived for the past 9 months or so until, happily, the city gave him his long-awaited apartment — and slept on trains when he couldn’t stand the shelters. He’s now living in a city apartment on 43rd Street. He took from his briefcase, containing papers and bundles of pencils, a nice little postcard-size photobook of his work that one of his collectors has put together. Some of the drawings within were in perspective, which I hadn’t seen in his work, as well as mixed media: figures of men cut from newspapers and glued into the scene.
The first time I met him he walked with a cane. Tonight he was seated in a wheelchair drawing but stood to get my change out of his pocket. I bought a drawing of UFOs attacking subway cars. 
And this is the new drawing I bought yesterday.
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January 10th, 2008 at 12:55 am
I love seeing these. I have three on my wall from 2005. I’ve wondered where he went. I googled him for years, and this is the first time I found anything. Mine all have a lot more green.
January 16th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Ask Joseph if he’d mind if I use his image on a website I’m developing for a homeless shelter. His work is beautiful
January 16th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
P.S re last post, I’m in Nottingham, England!
January 16th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I’m not in regular contact with Joseph — I just bumped into him in the subway station. I doubt he would mind as long as you credited him. Please credit me as the photographer, too.
January 24th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Dear Joseph, I like your drawings very much, specially the UFO ones. The only thing is that you made a projection of our own reality and violent ways. I don’t think, although real, that UFOs are or will be violent. We have been visited for thousands of years and NEVER we have been attacked by them. I think that is the opposite, I think they are visiting to prepare us for a future PEACEFUL encounter, wen WE become less violent. I hope this comment will inspire you to draw messages of peace too….
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Thank you for this post on Joseph. I have bought work from him before but I never stopped to talk with him. Now he lives in internet infamy!
June 6th, 2011 at 7:46 pm
Joseph is still selling at the 8th Avenue Station. Prices have gone up, and joseph has a buddy who helps him — Walter. Sometimes Joseph traces some UFOs, and Walter colors it in.
Joseph is doing well, and business is good he says.
My favorite of his works was ears of fall wheat — orange brown against an orange sun. Nice!
June 22nd, 2011 at 6:55 am
Joseph is a kind soul. I commissioned him to do a part of an exquisite corpse for my upcoming exhibit and he said I gave him “too much” money and when I said that I would come back to give him more of a commission if the piece sold he said with a smile “No, no…it’s yours. You bought it. You don’t need to give me anything else.” When I insisted he agreed with a boyish grin.
His piece will be on display at Space on White with an opening party on July 9th, 2011.
I hope he’ll come!