ALICE LEORA BRIGGS
About Alice Leora Briggs
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 narco-violence 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 narco-battered borderlands. She renders them in her native amalgam of classic and contemporary imagery and oblique narratives coaxed from European art history. In her persistent way, all of Briggs’ work finds a way to link our contemporary anxieties, desires, and expectations with those of the art historical past. Her visual quotations from Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Hendrik Goltzius, and others meld seemingly incongruent worlds into the singular time and place of her drawings.
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Alice Leora Briggs was born — and continues to live and work — in Texas. She has taught painting, drawing, and other media at several universities and art schools throughout the country, including The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Iowa, and the University of Arizona. Her works are included in the permanent collections of more than 30 museums and institutions, and she is the recipient of more than 35 awards and honors listed below.
Selected Awards and Honors
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 2020
Tulsa Artist Fellowship, George Kaiser Family Foundation, residency:2016 - 2017
Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Tulsa, OK, 2016
Dorothea Lange – Paul Taylor Prize, Honorable Mention, Alice Leora Briggs and Julián Cardona for “Abecedario de Juárez,” which combines a glossary, interview-based narratives, and drawings to create “an unhinged graphic dictionary of the language of violence” in Juárez, Mexico, 2015
Guest Speaker, 22nd Annual Latin American Studies Symposium at Birmingham, Southern College, Birmingham, AL, 2014
Guest Speaker, University of Texas at Arlington, TX, 2014
Visiting Artist, Distinguished Lecture Series, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, 2013
Visiting Artist, Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX Artist Resident, Casa Chuck, San Antonio, TX, 2013
Featured Artist, This American Life website, 2013
Fulbright Scholar, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava, Slovak Republic, 2011
Artist in Residence, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, CO, 2010
Materials Grant, Larry E. Elsner Art Foundation, 2010
Visiting Artist, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, 2009
Visiting Artist, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, 2009
Artist-in-Residence, Border Arts Residency, La Union, NM, 2008 – 2009
Dozier Travel Award, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2 weeks in Poland), 2008
Best of Texas, Texas Oklahoma Prize, Wichita Falls Museum of Art at Midwestern University, Wichita Falls, TX, 2008
Drawing Center, New York, NY, Viewing Program, on-line portfolio in curated artist registry, 2007
Visiting Artist, Department of Art, Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, 2007
Artist-in-Residence, Jentel Foundation, WY, 2007
Visiting Artist, Caine School of Fine Arts and Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT, 2006
Visiting Artist, School of Art, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 2005
Seventh Avenue Streetscape, Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, public art project, Phoenix, AZ, 2005
Visiting Artist, Department of Art, Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, 2005
Visiting Artist, School of Art, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 2005
Artists Project Grant, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Phoenix, AZ, 2004
Visiting Artist, Department of Art, Cochise College, Sierra Vista, AZ, 2004
Visiting Artist, School of Art, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 2004
Arizona Artist Materials Fund Grant, Contemporary Forum and Cummings Endowment Fund, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ, 2003
Juror, Student Art Exhibition, Pima Community College, Tucson, AZ, 2003
Grant, International Exchange (for exhibition in Slovak Republic), Tucson/Pima Arts Council, Tucson AZ Ponies del Pueblo, public art project, Tucson, AZ, 2003
Grant, Larry E. Elsner Foundation, 2001
Visual Artist Fellowship, Tucson/Pima Arts Council, Tucson, AZ, 2001
Visiting Artist, Lecture and Panel Discussion, Contemporary Arts Society, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ, 2001
George McCullough Cash Award, Arizona Biennial ‘99, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson , AZ, 1999
Individual Artist's Grant, Utah Arts Council, 1996
Visual Artist Fellowship, Utah Arts Council, Salt Lake City, UT, 1994
Juror and Guest Lecturer, Utah Intercollegiate Exhibition, Gittens Gallery, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 1994
Visiting Artist, St. Xavier University, Department of Art, Chicago, IL, 1994
Visiting Artist, Idaho State University, Department of Art, Pocatello, ID, 1994
Visiting Artist, Casper College, Department of Art, Casper WY, 1994
Selected Collections
Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, AZ
Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR
Border Art Residency, El Paso, TX
Carlton College Gould Library Special Collections, Northfield, MN
Cornell University, Main Library Special Collections, Ithaca, NY
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, De Young, CA
Firestone Graham Foundation, Albuquerque, NM
Flatbed Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Austin, TX
Fort Hays State University, Fort Hays, KS
Larry E. Elsner Art Foundation, Logan, UT
Library of Congress, Rare Books/Special Collections, Washington, D.C.
Limerick School of Art and Design, Limerick, Ireland
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX
Međunarodna Galerija Portreta, Tuzla, Bosnia & Hercegovina
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoeniz, AZ
Richard M. Ross Art Museum, Ohio Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT
Rochester Institute of Technology Libraries, Cary Collection
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ
Sherwin Beach Press Collection, Chicago, IL
The Diane and Sandy Besser Collection, Santa Fe, NM
Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
University of Arkansas at Little Rock, UALR Gallery, Little Rock, AR
University of Arizona, Special Collections, Art of the Book Collection, Tucson, AZ
University of Chicago Library Special Collections, Rare Books, Chicago, IL
University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, IA
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Blue Heron Press Collection, Artists’ Books, Lincoln, NE
University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM
University of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK
Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Wichita Falls, TX
Education
University of Iowa: MFA
University of Iowa: MA
Utah State University: BFA
2024
Evokation. The Fate of Poetry: Alice Leora Briggs, Michael Abetemarco
Looking and Seeing. Alice Leora Briggs: Fall, John O’Hern
Glasstire. The Fate of Poetry: Alice Leora Briggs at Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, Michelle Kraft
California Literary Review. Alice Leora Briggs: Art from Juárez, Alix McKenna
2022
Southwest Contemporary. Illustrations from a Murder Capital: Alice Leora Briggs Portrays Ciudad Juárez’s Recent Dark History, Natalie Hegert
Glasstire. Abecedario de Juárez: An Interview with Alice Leora Briggs, Craig Bunch
Evokation. Abecedario de Juárez: Alice Leora Briggs, Peter S. Briggs
Abecedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon. Co-authored with Julián Cardona, University of Texas Press, Austin, TX
Liebesgedichte (Love Poems). Gus Kopriva and Heidi Vaughan, Redbud Gallery, Houston, TX, #39 poem by Mark Strand and image by Alice Leora Briggs
2021
Over the Line, essay in America's Most Alarming Writer: Essays on the Life and Work of Charles Bowden. Edited by Bill Broyles and Bruce J. Dinges, New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 2021, pp. 157-164
2019
Evokation. Abecedario de Juárez: Alice Leora Briggs, Peter S. Briggs
Library of Congress Blogs. Through a Glass Darkly: The Room by Artist Alice Leora Briggs in Homage to Poet Mark Strand, Anne Holmes
Abecedario de Juárez. Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies 1 Jan; 10 (1): 118–127
2017
Fine Art Today: Fine Art Connoisseur. Printing Poetry and Carving Life, Andrew Webster
Terreno: borderland linguistics. Lightfactory Publications, Vancouver, Canada
2016
Tucson Weekly. The Dark Side. Margaret Regan
The Room, Alice Leora Briggs and Mark Strand, a suite of 12 woodcuts, edition 24, editions 1-14 are housed in hand-made boxes created by Cloverleaf Studio (Austin), accompanied by title page, poem broadsheet and colophon signed by Briggs and Strand, co-published with Flatbed Press, Austin, TX
2015
The Austin Chronicle. Alice Leora Briggs: The Room, Mark Strand
Huffington Post. Haiku Reviews: ART 2014 Roundup III. Peter Frank
2012
Piecrust Magazine, Etiquette issue, Fall and Winter 2012, volume 2, issue 3, St, Louis, MO
Paddlefish 2012, number 6, Mount Marty College, Yankton, SD
2010
California Literary Review. Alice Leora Briggs: Art from Juárez. Alix McKenna
Adobeairstream. Interview with artist Alice Leora Briggs, Hilary Stunda
Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs, (illuminated manuscript/police blotter, approximately 150 images) University of Texas Press, Austin, TX (174 pages) Paddlefish 2010, number 4, Mount Marty College, Yankton, SD
2009
Killing Is Fun, Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs, broadside, hand-set and illustrated, edition of 126, published by Ken Sanders Rare Books and Scrub Oak Press, Salt Lake City, UT
El Levantados de la Ascensión, a paper-engineered pop-up print for Collapse of the House, Part Two, Lithographic Artists Books, Austin, TX
2000
Aesthetics of Water, print portfolio, edition 22, 20 artists in conjunction with Aesthetics of Water: The Fourth International Conference on Environmental Aesthetics, University of Joensuu, Rantasalmi, Finland
1992
The Essence of Beeing, hand-set and illustrated, 200 copies, written by Michael Lenehan, designed Robert McCamant, initial caps by Albert Richardson, Alice Leora Briggs illustrated the book and hand-set most of the text in lead movable type, published by Sherwin Beach Press, Chicago, IL
1992-4
More than forty-five reviews of art exhibitions and seven features stories on the visual arts published in The Salt Lake Tribune
Sgraffito
There is something wrong with my mind
Bienvenidos al taller Los Mecánicos
Burn Drawings
Woodcuts and Linocuts
THE ROOM, homage to Mark Strand
Mark Strand’s poetry is the heart of this suite of woodcut prints by Alice Leora Briggs. Between Decembers of 2012 and 2014, Alice Leora Briggs lived in The Room, a poem by Strand. The results are 12 woodcuts. Each one corresponds to a line of this poem.
Published in 2105, thirty-five copies of The Room were printed. Numbers 1 through 14 were reserved as boxed suites and the remaining numbers are available as individual prints.
The doors to the closets of his unhappiness open
Their shadows the spilled milk the world cries over
Where nothing, when it happens is never terrible enough
Archive: Sold
I Intend to Believe in the Future.
Estampas I
Ciudad Juarez
La Sica
El Rafagueado
Perro Callejero, IV
Near Impunity
Las Orejas I
Las Orejas, II
Perra Callejera
Perro Callejero, I
Perro Callejero, II
Perro Callejero, III
El Chapulin
Basura Social
Flight
La Limpia
Gordian knot
Narcozoologico
Uttered Heard
Suddenly you don't know
la Frontera
