NORA ECCLES HARRISON MUSEUM OF ART AT USU DISPLAYS"DEADLY SINS /MEASURED VIRTUES" RECENT WORK BY ALICE LEORA BRIGGS
LOGAN — The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University
will feature the work “Deadly Sins /Measured Virtues” by USU
alumni Alice Leora Briggs. An opening reception and artist talk are Wednesday,
Sept. 20, from 7-9 p.m. at the museum.
Briggs received her bachelor of fine arts from USU in 1977. She went on to receive a master’s and a master’s of fine art from the University of Iowa.
Her work is part of the contemporary revival of figurative realism in
American art. Combining art historical references, medical illustrations,
candid photographs and drawings, Briggs uses a method of incising a material
called clayboard with India ink to create richly detailed drawings and
mixed media installations.
“Briggs’ drawing skills are so impressive; they rival such
Old Masters as Albecht Durer, Pieter Brueghel the Elder or Roger van der
Weyden,” said museum director Victoria Rowe. “The images link
the past and present by taking on contemporary issues such as medical
experimentation and processes, the beginning and end of life and natural
disasters. Briggs reproaches us for our indifference to human suffering.”
Prior to the exhibit opening at USU, Briggs described her work.
“I create clusters of images made by artists in previous centuries,
drawings made of the spaces that I pass through and of the objects that
I encounter, diagrams of all sorts, photographs translated from newspapers
and magazines,” she said. “I have a manic duty to make marks
on surfaces. Each of my images is an accumulation of thousands of marks
which chart how my eyes jerk and scan over objects and through spaces.
For me, poetry comes from mortal substance — the physical experience
of my body moving through the world and an acute awareness that my presence
in the world is temporary.”
Among the exhibited works are scraffito drawings, a series of mixed-media
tableaux of the seven deadly sins, and “Pergatorio.” A room-size
installation, “Pergatorio” uses aluminum recovered from soda
cans and offset printing plates that are obsessively attached with thousands
of tacks to create a machine-like environment. The interior of the installation
is papered with stock exchange tallies. It contains a chamber and an elevated
reservoir — filled with trompe l’oiel turquoise water —
and the Alter of the (L)apse, featuring a decapitated version of Andrea
Mantegna’s “Dead Christ” undergoing open heart surgery.
“Pergatorio” was funded by a 2003 grant from the Arizona Commission
on the Arts.
Briggs has exhibited her work in the Phoenix Art Museum; the Tucson Museum
of Art; Galeria Mesta Bratislavi, Slovak Republic; University of Joensuu,
Rantasalmi, Finland; the International Museum of Surgical Sciences, Chicago;
and the Salt Lake Art Center. Her work is in the collections of the Firestone
Graham Foundation, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art and the University
of Iowa Museum of Art.
“Deadly Sins /Measured Virtues” will be on display until
Dec. 9.
For more information about this installation, or to schedule a tour of
the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, call (435) 797-0165.
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art is located on the USU campus at
650 North 1100 East, Logan, Utah, 84322, (435) 797-0163; fax (435) 7978-3423.
Information is available at the museum’s Web site, http://www.artmuseum.usu.edu.
The museum is open Tuesday- Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, noon-4
p.m. The museum is closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays. Admission is
free. The museum is accessible to persons with disabilities.
Parking for the museum is available in lot C3 to the west
of the museum. The parking fee in this area is $6 ($3 will be refunded
if parked for two hours or less). Parking is free after 3:45 p.m. and
on weekends. Parking is also available in the USU Parking Terrace, located
near the Taggart Student Center for $1.50/hour ($7.50/day maximum). Free
parking after 2 p.m. is available at lot B, located at the corner of 700
North and 1200 East (by Aggie Ice Cream).
This project is supported by the Utah Arts Council, with funding from the State of Utah and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Larry E. Elsner Art Foundation, the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Quinney Nebeker Law Firm, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Department of Art, and the Caine School of the Arts in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
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Contact and writer: Deb Banerjee
(435) 797-8207
