In Residence: Alice Leora Briggs

Talking about Alice Leora Brigg’s work, it’s hard to not immediately jump into the content, and where it comes from. Alice Drafts painstakingly accurate figures in a variety of drawing mediums. Her subject matter is dark, but the beauty of the pieces instills an almost pious mindset in me.

BIO
Draftsmanship is the core of Briggs’ drawing, printmaking and installation. A 2011 Fulbright Scholar (Slovakia), her recent collaboration with writer Charles Bowden, Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez, was published by University of Texas Press in April. This police blotter/illuminated manuscript pays homage to the citizens of the world’s “murder capital.”

Carey: Working with heavy subject matter such as yours, how do you think drafting complements the work, where other mediums like photography may not?

Alice: It allows me to invent, and with a medium like photography – which I depend upon heavily – everything has to be there at that particular moment at that particular place, and you have to be there with a functioning camera. I am able to take fragments from everything; I have no respect for anything. I will sometimes use high profile photography even. Eugene Richards was at the Texas Book Festival; he was in the audience during a talk I gave , and I told him that I used a fragment of one of his photographs as a reference, and challenged him to find it….which he couldn’t. I’m able to think about these things almost like a poet thinks about words.  I can take pieces of things and put them into some constellation that hasn’t existed previously. Sometimes I’ll leave them intact enough so people can identify them, but quite often the references will loose their identity.

Carey: What do you think about doing your subject matter justice?

Alice: I’ll never be able to do that.

Carey: Do you feel like your work is an attempt at that?

Alice: Sure, I don’t think I’d have a reason to get up in the morning if I didn’t feel like I wanted to try one more time. It seems like a person’s work, or my work, is a sum of errors.

Carey: In comparison with a medium like photography, where there is an attempt to document things, in a sense…so we don’t forget, I feel like your work has a similar tone, especially in your book Dreamland. The work seems to focus on the idea of making sure these topics, images, don’t pass by the wayside.

Alice: Yeah, I think it sort of starts out that way. You have some sort of messianic zeal that you’re going to make some difference, and that you’re going to be able to convey something that you’ve learned for sure. But I think that the more you’re exposed to situations like the one  in Juarez, and the older you get, the more a person realizes it’s far more complicated. The reasons for going there and continuing to go back are in part….. I guess the word curiosity comes to mind. It’s part of being human. I’ve used this analogy a thousand times and I’ll use it again: It’s like a car accident. It’s something that causes you to recognize how thin that line is that you’re walking everyday.

More of Alice’s work can be seen on her website at: http://aliceleorabriggs.com/home.html