What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1480634
OCTOBER 2-8, 2022 WHAT'S UP! 7 SPRINGDALE received when she can manipulate the space like this, rather than being stuck with a white cube to showcase her pieces. "The opportunity to play a lot with creating this environment is ideal in terms of my work. Any time I show, I like to create an environment … and play off the colors and textures around." Briggs began as a more traditional oil painter who was interested in the body, but as her work and interests grew, that morphed into incorporating elements that felt "cartoony." She began manipulating her canvases to make them more closely resemble objects. Now she uses mostly reclaimed materials from thrift stores, like bedsheets or materials dense enough to hold up to coatings of latex and paint. After some years of bartending and working in distributing, Briggs knew she had to get back into art making. She saved her money, spent six months doing only that, and then attended graduate school before working as a director of a contemporary art gallery. Sharing works on Instagram became a useful tool to keep her fixed to her process. "I used it as seriously as I could, to hold me accountable," Briggs says. "I would post my progress as a way to feel like I was involved in the art community." After Briggs built up a following, she began to get more opportunities like displaying in galleries abroad. Instagram was a tool for telling her story through art and connecting with other artists, enabling them to share their works with each other. Also adding to her rise as a full- time artist was her hobby of making custom mirrors with unique borders, in conjunction with designers, which many folks bought from her throughout the pandemic. One is on display in "Pony Gate." "I talked to a lot of artists who became full time during the pandemic," Briggs says, noting that it might not be what you expect. "A lot of people were spending more time online, trapped in their house, and were starting to think about how they wanted things (to look) in their home, and started buying more art. Like 'I want something more interesting.'" She doesn't like to give away much about what she thinks her artworks should bring to mind, though she admits some are more figure-like than others and that the "weird environments" might feel uncanny and familiar to any child of the '90s. Cartoons were influential to her and made an impact on what she was interested in creating visually. "I like it to be this unknowability, and the viewer will bring to it whatever recognition they might find in the work," she says. The theme of the exhibit is a bit based in the lasting influences of childhood. "Some may feel like characters. There's a certain interior process rooted in identity to how we become who we are and what aspects of childhood play a role in how we see the world. There's vulnerability from those experiences." Briggs says childhood cartoons were influential to her and made an impact on what she was interested in creating visually. (Courtesy photo/Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange) Briggs was commissioned by Creative Arkansas Community Hub and Exchange with funding from the Tyson Family Foundation to fill the windows of the Famous Hardware building. (Courtesy photo/Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange) "It's rare to find a place, manipulate a space like paint- ing the walls, not all galleries are cool with that." Amelia Briggs