Sin and virtue come together in new art exhibit in art museum
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of art has taken on a change of scenery in their latest exhibit entitled “Deadly Sins/ Measured Virtues,” a composition of recent works by Alice Leora Briggs.
Sgraffito drawings line the museum walls in a display that alludes to the author’s theme and motivation to create art. The paintings pay attention to religion, politics, torture and particularly mortality.
Angie Burbank, a freshman at USU said, “It’s interesting how the background has disturbing images that you don’t realize consciously, but they set the mood.”
Sam Clyde, also a freshman, was amazed by the amount of skill and dedication the drawings must have required, adding that the images were gruesome but intriguing.
“What interests me more than the subject matter is the image itself, the combination of light and dark,” explained Tyler Vance, currently in the fine arts masters program.
While Ben Clyde, a senior, noted a motif of things being broken down, being rebuilt, and a lot of strife.
Student exposure to these ideas is a main goal museum director Victoria Rowe envisions in the introduction of this exhibit, she said.
“We try to bring in art that’s not normally in the collection, a figurative work that students may not see anywhere else,” said Rowe at opening of the Briggs d.
Yet as Utah State students ponder Briggs’ artistic depictions, they share a commonality with the artists’ background: an education at Utah State University.
After graduating from USU with a bachelors of fine arts in 1977, Briggs went on to receive a master’s of fine arts from the University of Iowa and returned to Utah State as a drawing and painting teacher from 1986 to 1991.
Though the current exhibition is Briggs’ fifth show, it is her largest exhibition yet and has particular significance in her close ties to the faculty at Utah State, her former students, and memories of studying the visiting arts program and envisioning herself as a visiting artist. That goal having been achieved, Briggs explained the motivation behind the art proudly displayed on the museum walls.
“I’m very interested in religion as a force in culture and how it intermingles with political decisions. I think that’s a strong undercurrent in our culture. Recurring themes of mortality and crucifixions inject a contemporary world’s views which comes down to concerns about mortality and coming to terms with death,” Briggs said.
These themes are represented as common-place in the art world, Briggs explained; a great percentage of art deals with these same questions, drawing on vanity, existence, and the end of existence. The very repetition of these points is what Briggs says makes her take up the artist’s perspective to sketch the symbols of mortality.
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum will display the Deadly Sins/Measure Virtues collection until Dec. 9. There is no cost for admission and a listing of the museum’s hours or more information is available at www.artmuseum.usu.edu.
-cynthiadiane@cc.usu.edu