2023 "Lock Down (Cell Persona)" Glazed Black Stoneware Ceramic Art by Paul S. Briggs

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Paul S. Briggs Biography
"Born in Beacon, NY, I grew up in the Hudson Valley region of upstate New York. … Read more Paul S. Briggs Biography
"Born in Beacon, NY, I grew up in the Hudson Valley region of upstate New York. Slab-building is my "principal " method of expression. Slab building is what I do to think through ideas, to philosophize concretely. Pinch-forming is what I do to quiet my mind. I have studied educational theory and policy, art education, theology, sculpture and ceramics. After a circuitous and fortuitous journey, I am an artist-teacher at The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, NY."

Cell Personae:
This installation comprises 25 cells that dramatize various facets of the prison industrial system, such as profiling, recidivism, and probation. Though clearly pertinent, and I’m not satiated with the latter subject as inspiration, this renewed series has given me scope to work more with the formal qualities of this “re-scripting the basic vocabulary of ceramics, slab construction and coils” (Adamson). Knot Stories are hanging wall sculptures and I find it thrilling that they are in conversation with painting, fiber works and text. My practices are back to a former balance and that I have more opportunities to share my ideas, as expressions and even catharsis, in slab form, the “principal” way I have expressed myself in clay over the years.

Related Statements

Knot Stories:
“Knot Stories" are a critique of language. It is concerned with figuration and with the very structures of language that allow that figuration to take place. It employs the formal qualities of the preceding series, Cell Personae, for they share passionate critique, but this series is moving in an alternative direction. As is usual in my work I’m looking to our use of language which is rooted in Protestant Reformation, the Antebellum period thinking about material shapes and living images and the rhetoric of prejudice against ideas as shapes. Some questions that compel me are, what does it mean to redact a text? And what changes about an idea when it is spoken versus when it is written? And what does it mean to materialize an idea, as in the words of Cornell West, “justice is what love looks like in the public sphere.”

This series gives me scope to work more with the formal qualities of this “re-scripting the basic vocabulary of ceramics (slab construction and coils)”. Knot Stories are hanging wall sculptures and I find it thrilling that they are in conversation with painting, fiber works and text. These pieces recuperated a former philosophical aesthetic balance in my work. I have liberty to share ideas as expressions and even catharsis, to philosophize concretely, but also to make something beautiful along the lines of the broad attraction found in nature. (Material is adapted from Briggs's personal/professional website.)

Paul S. Briggs (American, b. 1963)
Lock Down (Cell Persona), 2023
Glazed black stoneware
Uncertain of mark (the work was professionally installed at a height that is presently out of reach). However, another work I purchased by Briggs is unmarked. Still, a purchase receipt from Lucy Lacoste Gallery can be provided and the work can be inspected when deinstalled.
H: 8.50 x W: 8 x D: 6 in.
Provenance: Paul S. Briggs, Purchased at Lucy Lacoste Gallery, Concord, Massachusetts.
Exhibition: Paul S. Briggs: Dark Beauty, June 24–July 15, 2023, Lucy Lacoste Gallery, Concord, Massachusetts. (Publication)
Related works: Cell Personae Series.
Condition: Excellent. Handmade with aesthetic production irregularities. There is some wear on the bottom of the four small feet that enable the work to be displayed on a horizontal surface in addition to be displayed on the wall as presented in the photographs.
Ideas: Mass Incarceration, COVID-19 Lockdowns, Afropresentism, social justice, material expression.
Presentation: This work is designed to be hung flush against the wall with a cleat, which would be provided. It also has inconspicuous feet at the bottom and could be displayed on a surface.

Select Collections:
Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA.
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY.
Belger Art Center, Kansas City, MO.
Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN.
The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC.
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX.
Museum of Art at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI.
The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Rollins Museum of Art, Winter Park, FL.
Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA.
Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA.
New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA.
The Legacy Museum, Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, AL.
Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, Alfred, NY.
Fuller Craft Museum, Brockport, MA.

Literature
Donald A. Clark and Chotsani Elaine Dean, Contemporary Black American Ceramic Artists (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Craft, 2024), pg. 66. Illustrated related examples. See less