Thursday, April 26, 2012
new online art home for troy briggs
Hi friends that check to see what I'm up to here. As some of you know, I've been in grad school over at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the last couple of years. It's all wrapping up now and as part of my return to society I've started transitioning over to a new site found here. more to come... there.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
site specificity
views of I'm Losing my Memory Part X scene I as a part of the Ask the Lonely show at Worksound Gallery July 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
the room
I started this series when I first went back to colorado to help take care of my ailing father. I had a little studio by a lake where a fox would come out and watch me while I smoked. It was a very still time for my heart, I would go out at night after my parents went to bed and smoke, they lived in the middle of the forest so the sound of the wind through the trees or the sound of snow falling, sometimes cracking branches under its weight, these sounds are my most vivid memories of those months. I think that I am still listening to the almost silence, waiting for an answer or I don't know what.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
room 210
earlier this month I was asked to be part of a huge group show set in an old nursing home. The show was called the Manor of Art and was put together as a part of Mile post five. There were 100 plus rooms, each with a different artist or group set to do what they would. here are a few photos I took of what I did with room 210.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
something I'm working out.
Children are innocent and love justice, while most adults are wicked and naturally prefer mercy. - GK Chesterton.
This is a grey world. When I was a teenybopper I read the above quote and reveled in it. I could see the world clearly and was vindicated in my judgment! It’s always surprising to me how things change with time. Now I see the complex truth to that statement. I prefer mercy these days. The human race is stuck in between its’ competing natures, on one side we are animals and come from the world, more accurately from the animal perspective we are one with the world. The grays, the in betweens are our ocean. We revel in that at times by play-acting our oneness. Sex, meditation, cheering or hissing with a crowd, driving fast and howling at the moon, we drink until distinctions fall apart and we are the pool of the world.
On the other side, our distinctions are what separate us from the bulk of the animal kingdom. Pandora’s box and the Garden of Eden hint at a time where along with invention came mankind’s woes. Through distinctions we make sense of our infinitely complex and seemingly chaotic world. Although we created evil, we created good. Laughter and sadness. We split the world apart to understand it. In the sky eagles are at home, the ocean for the dolphins and for us, our thoughts and distinctions. We revel in this as well, play-acting our ‘one’ness. We stand alone on the mountain, saying “I am”, tracking the stars movements, discovering a new beetle, or even something as simple as putting things away in their proper place. Searching for our place in the world.
Stuck as human animals longing for both sides of our nature, competing for understanding, attempting to accept that we can’t understand the world by pinning it down or by flowing into it.
The arts are how we bridge the gap. Through empathy and metaphor we pretend to remove and move lines. The desire to analyze, separate, and distinguish separates us from each other and from our world, but it is also the tool that we use to connect, to articulate disparate pieces of our world. I can imagine first that I am a jar of water, then a pile of chalk, then my neighbor, watching me from their(my) window.
I am not these things. A picture of a crying child is not a crying child. (Ceci n'est pas une pipe).
The world is grey. In that grey mass we’ve made distinct shades and named them. In naming them we can “understand” the grey but by separating them it becomes a kind of untruth, not speaking to grey’s infinite gradient. The lines we draw or names we use are at birth a kind of lie. Through using these lies together though we can come to something like truth.
This is a grey world. When I was a teenybopper I read the above quote and reveled in it. I could see the world clearly and was vindicated in my judgment! It’s always surprising to me how things change with time. Now I see the complex truth to that statement. I prefer mercy these days. The human race is stuck in between its’ competing natures, on one side we are animals and come from the world, more accurately from the animal perspective we are one with the world. The grays, the in betweens are our ocean. We revel in that at times by play-acting our oneness. Sex, meditation, cheering or hissing with a crowd, driving fast and howling at the moon, we drink until distinctions fall apart and we are the pool of the world.
On the other side, our distinctions are what separate us from the bulk of the animal kingdom. Pandora’s box and the Garden of Eden hint at a time where along with invention came mankind’s woes. Through distinctions we make sense of our infinitely complex and seemingly chaotic world. Although we created evil, we created good. Laughter and sadness. We split the world apart to understand it. In the sky eagles are at home, the ocean for the dolphins and for us, our thoughts and distinctions. We revel in this as well, play-acting our ‘one’ness. We stand alone on the mountain, saying “I am”, tracking the stars movements, discovering a new beetle, or even something as simple as putting things away in their proper place. Searching for our place in the world.
Stuck as human animals longing for both sides of our nature, competing for understanding, attempting to accept that we can’t understand the world by pinning it down or by flowing into it.
The arts are how we bridge the gap. Through empathy and metaphor we pretend to remove and move lines. The desire to analyze, separate, and distinguish separates us from each other and from our world, but it is also the tool that we use to connect, to articulate disparate pieces of our world. I can imagine first that I am a jar of water, then a pile of chalk, then my neighbor, watching me from their(my) window.
I am not these things. A picture of a crying child is not a crying child. (Ceci n'est pas une pipe).
The world is grey. In that grey mass we’ve made distinct shades and named them. In naming them we can “understand” the grey but by separating them it becomes a kind of untruth, not speaking to grey’s infinite gradient. The lines we draw or names we use are at birth a kind of lie. Through using these lies together though we can come to something like truth.
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