The man behind a movement

Mark Murphy
- Photo Illustration by Adam Vieyra

At the private opening of Survey Select, a narrative-art show featuring 65 international artists, curator Mark Murphy looks a little worried. More than double the number of expected guests are wandering around the Wonderbread Factory, lingering at some of the more eye-catching pieces—Bonnie M. Smith’s collection of small, macabre sculptures; Logan Hicks’ meticulous, minimal black-and-white spraypainted etching; and Shawn Barber’s bold “Tattooed Self Portrait at 39”—but in the back of Murphy’s mind is a wildfire blazing up the southern slope of Mission Valley and threatening his University Heights home, which is filled with his personal art collection.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he says, smiling and continuing to play the part of gracious host who can speak at length about any particular piece or artist in the show if a guest is curious enough to ask.

Murphy wants to build a museum, and not only because he needs a safer place to keep his collection. The 43-year-old has been promoting art since the early 1990s. Back in Cleveland, where he grew up, he started Murphy Design, his own graphic-design and marketing firm, and from the very beginning, he used artists like Joe Sorren and Mark Ryden in his projects, making sure they always got a fair cut. Helping artists feed their families has always been a concern for Murphy, who, early in his life, decided that his role was not only to make his own art, but also to “be a bridge between the private life of the artist and the public.”

That meant putting together group-art exhibitions centered on a theme, then explaining and archiving those exhibitions by documenting them in art books, designed, written and published by Murphy himself. His first show was in 1998. Murphy organized a big exhibition of Lucha Libre-inspired art featuring depictions of masked Mexican wrestlers by artists like The Clayton Brothers and Charles Glaubitz. The resulting book, Guapo y Fuerte, is a sold-out collector’s item that Murphy credits for helping kick-start the current pervasiveness of Lucha imagery in the pop-art world.

A few days after the first two opening nights of Survey Select, Murphy is sitting in the large gallery space carved out of the huge Wonderbread Factory, the eclectic selection of everything from pop surrealism to classiclooking frescos hanging around him.

“I really wanted to take the next big step as far as introducing the public to artwork that celebrates storytelling,” he says. “The idea was really to put together an exhibition that shows a large, diverse selection of style and genre and introduce them to the idea that it’s all pulled together because of the storytelling nature.”

Survey Select marks the eighth year in a row that Murphy has organized a big group show during the week of Comic-Con, but this year’s show is different. This time, he’s keeping the art up for more than one day, and, more importantly, he’s inviting the public (past shows have been targeted toward collectors and other people in his inner art circle).

On Jan. 1 of this year, Murphy sat down and wrote a manifesto. He published it as a blog post and publicly stated his goals for 2010:

No. 1: Better educate the public about the visual, narrative arts and continually introduce living artists who are not afraid to stand outside of the box.

No. 2: Continue to exhibit important works of emerging fine artists who look to redefine the complexities of life within the visual narrative arts in an annual salon-styled exhibition.

No. 3: Lastly, and most importantly, it is my heartfelt desire to continue supporting the arts through actively collecting and archiving a steady mix of fine art paintings created by the masters of art history combined with today’s best in modern narrative painting.

So far, Murphy has followed through on Nos. 1 and 2. It’s the third one—specifically the “archiving” part—that’s going to take him more time. He’s already archived the art in his books and, most recently, he’s started archiving the art in film—Scribble.08 is a 38-minute short film produced and directed by Murphy about eight artists—but now he’s ready to archive the art in brick and mortar.

“My end-goal in life would be to put an actual structure in place where a museum could take place,” Murphy says. “And it will happen in three ways. One will be awareness—that’s the first and most important.

Second will be proper funding. And the third is building an archival body—doing these exhibitions and documenting them.”

On one of the back pages of Scribble, an incredibly personal book filled with Murphy’s own sketches, is a quote by Geoffrey Chaucer: “To draw to memory, to put on record; to record.” And in the front pages of another of Murphy’s art books, Dialogue: The Fine Art of Conversation, he writes, “You and I are emotional collectors of the past. Subconsciously, we’re connected to these personal artifacts. We are physical packers of ‘stuff ’ that we do not feel comfortable of letting go.” And later: “We save to be remembered.”

The quotes may explain Murphy’s driving need to archive a genre of art that he refuses to label as more than simply “art that tells a story,” but it doesn’t explain exactly why he’s so into narrative art to begin with. That may come from his childhood obsession with Saturday-morning cartoons. Many of the shows he watched as a kid were foreign, and he had no idea what was going on.

“I was so fascinated by what I was seeing,” Murphy says, “so I made up what was going on in my head.”

Mix that imagery with the first work of art that ever spoke to him—a piece by Salvador Dali—and you have the beginnings of Murphy’s taste in art. He loves the process of viewing art and decoding it by talking to the artist or, if the artist isn’t around, filling in the blanks with his own imagination.

“You get into it, you know,” Murphy says, looking around the room. “It’s an invitation to look beyond the picture and see what it might have been about.”

Now that Murphy has put together his big narrative-art show, he waits. He’s hoping people will respond to the show. Whether it’s nonprofits, civic leaders or just other art lovers, he wants to get some help in making his vision become a real-life museum.

“The narrative-art museum—there’s nothing like it in the world,” Murphy says. “San Diego is an amazing destination, so, if it works out and I can have it in this city, I would love to.”

Survey Select is on view at the Wonderbread Factory, 1440 Imperial Ave. in East Village, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through Sept. 5. Murphy will screen Beautiful Losers, Scribble.08 and animation shorts from 7 to 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 28. From 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, July 29, he’ll hold a ’zine workshop. For the full schedule of events, visit surveyselect.org.