Disquiet has marked art since its beginnings: tides of slaves buried in Egyptian tombs, memento moris of Dutch still lifes, spears of Shakespearean wit. Likewise, occupation with human frailty is integral to Alice Leora Briggs’ work. When she was seven years old, her brother fell to his death at Grand Teton National Park. Perhaps as a result, Briggs probes with curiosity and intensity those facets of human life that we often seek to closet. The artist finds her subject in the crime that plagues Ciudad Juárez and in an asylum built by a visionary on the outskirts of this Mexican border city. Briggs explores the daily adaptations made by the citizens of the borderlands. She renders them in her native amalgam of classic and contemporary imagery and oblique narratives coaxed from European art history.

 

Collaborations with writers have been an important facet of her work since 2005. Rather than illustrate texts, she creates works that respond to and resonate with the voices of writers. In her most recent project, ABCEDARIO DE JUÁREZ, a collaboration with Juarez reporter, Julián Cardona, Briggs is deeply involved in both writing and drawing.

Her work is included in numerous public collections, including:

Arkansas Art Center

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Denver Art Museum

El Paso Museum of Art

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, De Young

Flatbed Press, Austin, TX

Library of Congress, Rare Books/Special Collections

Limerick School of Art and Design, Limerick, Ireland

McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

Phoenix Art Museum

Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale AZ

Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

University of Arkansas at Little Rock, UALR Gallery

University of Arizona, Special Collections, Art of the Book Collection

University of Chicago Library Special Collections, Rare Books

University of New Mexico Art Museum

University of Oxford, Bodleian Library

Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM

 

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