Alex Grey

Alex Grey is best known for his depictions of the body that provide a multi-dimensional “x-ray” of anatomical, psychic and spiritual forces. For many people his visionary art presents icons of the psychedelic mystical experience. Alex Grey was born on November 29, 1953, in Columbus, Ohio as Alex Velzy. He was the middle child of Walt and Jane Velzy. His father was a graphic designer who encouraged Alex’s art making. Elementary school teachers recognized and supported his devotion to drawing. As a boy, Alex collected insects and dead animals from his neighborhood and buried them in the backyard. At age ten, he picked up what he thought was a dead bird and was bitten by a rabid bat, the cure required 21 painful shots. Themes of mortality weave throughout Alex’s artwork, from his earliest skeleton drawings to later performances, paintings and sculpture. In 1966, when Alex was 12, his science project was about LSD, focusing on the mind-expanding ideas of Timothy Leary. At age seventeen, Alex won the national Seventeen Magazine Illustration Competition [1971]. Also that year, Alex was granted a full scholarship to Columbus College of Art and Design, which he attended from 1971-3. A haunting dream image caused a radical change in the artist’s appearance that year. In the dream, Alex opened a trashcan lid and saw himself staring up from inside the can, his head half shaved bald, the other half long. Alex decided to focus on polarities in his work so he maintained a half-shaved head for half a year. Several of his performance pieces that year featured this self-presentation. Taking the theme of polarities further, Alex journeyed to the arctic North Magnetic Pole to explore the phenomenon of "Polar Wandering." Returning to the Museum School at years end, having spent all his money, and broken up with his long-term girlfriend, the future was uncertain and the artist was despondent. He asked God to show him a sign that he should go on living. Behind closed eyes, I was spiralling through an inner tunnel of awareness, a re-birth canal, in the dark, but going toward the light. The light was infinite love and divine wisdom, it felt like God was there. The Polar Unity Spiral showed me that all opposites were connected by the different shades of grey. Grey brought the opposites together, and that was what I wanted to do with my art, so I decided to change my name based on that journey. Allyson, in whose apartment I saw God, had also seen the transcendental light on LSD and we fell in love and have been together since that night. Saved my life. The couple got married in 1977 and both decided to take the name Grey . Performed in 1978 at Helen Schlein Gallery [Boston], “Life Energy” was a series of interactive group processes to evoke the vital force, and Alex gave his first lecture, a slide talk on “The History of Life Energy." An interactive installation in the gallery drew the most attention: two life-sized charts drawn by Alex, ink on heavy paper, one portraying the nervous system and one portraying acupuncture meridians and points, chakras and auras. Participants were invited to stand before the charts and reflect on their own anatomy, both physical and esoteric. Based on the success of the charts, Allyson suggested doing paintings of the many levels of being and titling the series, Sacred Mirrors . Begun in 1979, Sacred Mirrors took Alex ten years to complete. This monumental work invites the viewer to reflect on their own divine nature by examining 21 layers of body, mind, and spirit. Material World begins the series with symbols of the chemical self, including the periodic table of the elements. The work continues with finely detailed oil paintings, the Skeletal , Nervous , Cardiovascular , Lymphatic , & Muscular Systems of a male and a pregnant female. The “mind,” where all distinctions and judgements are made, is represented in the series by male and female figures of three races. The Psychic Energy System , Spiritual Energy Sys