A New Discovery

Well, at least a new discovery for me. We went to Evoke Gallery in Santa Fe (with thanks to the images herein) in order to see the work of Patrick Mcgrath Muniz who never disappoints. After studying those paintings, we went on to an adjacent gallery and were bowled over by what we saw, images by Alice Leonora Briggs.

The title of the Briggs exhibition “The Fate of Poetry” relates to a recent article in Glasstire in which Nobel Prize laureate, Derek Walcott is quoted, “The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, despite history”.

Briggs works in scraffito, a method of scratching imagery that has been traced back to the sixth century. She scratches her images through an inky surface to a white underlayer using engraving tools ex-acto knives and even steel wool.

The glass artist Harvey Littleton (1922-2013) is credited with the saying “Technique is cheap”. I can agree in some cases, but when technique is used to accentuate a goal it only enhances it.

Briggs lives in Cornucopia, a border town between Texas and Mexico, known for drug violence. Add to that her brother’s death in a mountain accident when she was seven, and it is not too surprising that much of her work is about mortality.

Many of the works in the exhibition reference the reign of Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) President of Mexico when 50,000 died in the fight against the cartels and drug violence known as the Six Years of Death. From that series, I found this image the most upsetting and effective. It is taken from an area within the Juárez army barracks that is designated for torture. It is titled “El Talller”, the workshop!

Briggs owes a debt to many of the 16th century German engravers such as Durer and especially Hans Holbein the Younger for his “Dance of Death” woodblock series. Look at the image of hell in the background of “No Enrranflados”. The title is the term for individuals who operate without protection as they do not belong to gangs and do not report to the police or military.

How moving can an image be. For me, the work of art must first hit me and then the story, the technique, the style can enhance that first reaction. A man shields his eyes from the sight of the bodies in the background under the title “Those who Still don’t Believe”.

My last illustration, at first, just looks like a portrait but then behind, you see the bobbed wire fence. It is called “The Crossing”. It represents the journalist, Julian Cardona (1960-2020), who was the artist’s informant and collaborator with Briggs on the other side of the barrier between Texas and Mexico. They worked together on the book, “Abecedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon”.

It is not often, that a single work of art grabs one in an instant, much less an entire exhibition engages, and it is so exciting when it does.