Yet identifiable human beings are not prerequisite for anthropomorphism. Amelia Briggs’s lacquered silk-and-latex biomorphic shapes are stuffed with fiber, but I would readily believe they contain organic matter. Fuss (2023) could be a blood bag. Kelp (2023) looks juicy, like a chrysalis containing a liquified caterpillar suspended in fluids. Ruymann and Triplett Harrington write: “Like blown-up, abstracted cartoon figures, Briggs’s work playfully recalls the body.”
-Kendall DeBoer, Pillow Talk: Intimacy and Animacy in “Stuffed”, Boston Art Review
“…Nashville-based artist Amelia Briggs’ signature artworks float in a sometimes unsettling space, occupying sculpture, textile art and painting simultaneously. Her sewn and stuffed pieces recall the inflatable rafts and pool toys we often associate with carefree summer days, but they take on visceral and even alien-seeming forms, conjuring mortal and existential anxieties along with the sting of chlorine and the smell of coconut oil. If I had to name the best contemporary painter in Nashville, Briggs would automatically make the short list, and Alternative Medicine includes a predictably strong new selection from the artist. Prance is 5-and-a-half feet tall by almost 4 feet wide, and it’s the most eye-catching work in the show. It’s made of reclaimed materials, latex, fiber, oil and acrylic, constructed in the familiar style that makes so many of Briggs’ works look like inflated vinyl in the summertime. The basic composition includes a rusty-orange rectangle balanced upright on a slab of yellow — it’s almost Rothko-esque, aside from the slimy squirming lines. The whole form feels gooey and undulating like a living system, and the reddish rectangle that makes up the larger part of the composition resembles a large intestine, while also acting as a picture frame for the puffy, striated, wrinkled and glossy forms that ooze inside it. “Prance” reflects the history of American abstract painting, questions the aesthetics of traditional gallery display, and probes at the slippery fundamentals of existence — all in one painting that I want to take cliff diving at Percy Priest. This is why Briggs is one of our best…”
-Joe Nolan, Alternative Medicine Transcends at Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville Scene
“Playfulness and memory coexist in Amelia Briggs’ vivid pieces that explore notions of identity and invention. Rooted in the imaginative and mysterious worlds of children’s make-believe and notions of comfort and joy, the sculptures appear to be growing and extending in an almost freeform way, wriggling around like bloated, hypercolor spirits of the imagination. Filled with scraps of found fabric that are coated in canvas and painted in brilliant hues, they are “similar to a buoy,” she explains, as “each suggests a marker of something unseen while preserving the perimeters of an invented boundary.””
-Kate Mother, Curator/Founder of Young Space, Dovetail Magazine, The Path
“…Briggs’ new process has also freed her up to make more complex shapes that include painterly elements. It’s these painted surfaces that separate Briggs’ works from the shaped-canvas paintings of Lauren Clay, or the post-Koons sculptures of Hole Gallery mainstay Adam Parker-Smith. With “Oven,” tendrils of hunter green reach up from a fat, amorphous shape. Without the context of the exhibition’s concept, it might seem more like a cartoon sea creature, but through the lens of contemporary landscape, “Oven” is wild and silly, beast and bush. The panel at its center, which acts sort of like an oven’s window, has fiery orange elements, but also carnival-colored worms making their way through a rotting apple slice. This is the psychedelia that is literally happening underground — right where contemporary landscape painting has been hiding.”
-Laura Hutson Hunter, Off-Site: Amelia Briggs in Los Angeles, Nashville Scene
“I was first drawn to how anthropomorphic Briggs’ work is, and the fine balance between what is repulsive yet cozy. The objects appear to be like keepsakes, talismans, or artifacts from some unknown, mystical, or animated universe. Despite tip-toeing towards violent connotations where images of deer heads and “trophy bucks” come to mind, in their place is something surprisingly playful, surreal, familiar and warm. Briggs’ sensitivity towards combining various media, along with the artist's propensity for distinct characters, reminds me of my (robust!) keychain and sticker collections that I had as a kid, respectively. The viewer wants to hold onto these works—their longing, their nostalgia—as tightly as possible, before they melt away.”
-Will Hutnick, Guest Curator, Foundwork
“Ever wondered what your childhood toy box would look like if it grew up, dropped acid and went to art school? Probably a lot like Amelia Briggs’ studio, which is filled with her playful “inflatables” — deceptively cute sculptural paintings with puffy, brightly colored surfaces. She’s shown work at Elephant Gallery — her Moppet exhibit was a stunner — but this exhibit of new work at Belmont’s Leu Center for the Visual Arts takes a slightly different tack, following her research of the original fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Briggs says the work in Playlet references the toys that function as tools to create or invent abstract worlds. I imagine Wuzzles and Puffalumps with mythic backstories and secret hiding places underneath stairs. The artist will discuss her work at a Jan. 23 lecture, but you might want to get out to see it before the holiday spending spree sours you — Briggs creates the kind of imagination-rich wonderland that makes you remember that toys can sometimes still seem magical.”
-Laura Hutson Hunter, Critic’s Pick, Nashville Scene
‘Playlet’ focuses more specifically on the idea of play, the jumping off point to an invented world,” according to a press release from the gallery. “Comprised of inflatables as well as textile pieces, this show references the toys that function as tools to create or invent abstract worlds. As such, Briggs explores the means by which a child can use a simple prop to enter a vast world of their own making.”
-Art of Nashville
“Amelia Briggs has become synonymous with her cotton-candy palette and her “inflatable” paintings that might also be categorized as soft sculptures. Briggs’ March exhibition at Elephant Gallery, Moppet, found the artist inspired by the storefront space’s reputation for creative experimenting. Briggs outfitted the gallery like some near-future living room with a shaggy blue rug, with her already super-weird works blown-up to an absurd scale on the walls. She even fashioned one of the pieces into a Cronenberg-esque coffee table — a sick green arachnid decorated with tufts of purple fur.”
-Joe Nolan, Best of Nashville 2019, Nashville Scene
“…But at Elephant Gallery in North Nashville, which is painted a dainty periwinkle shade for this exhibition, Briggs exudes a confidence in craft that pushes the work into the territory of greatness. To create these paintings — which she sometimes refers to as “inflatables” because of their similarity to swimming-pool floats — Briggs packs fabric and stuffing around a wooden frame, wraps it in canvas and covers it with candy-colored paint…”
-Laura Hutson Hunter, Nashville Scene, March 2019
“Amelia Briggs’ work eludes comparison. The Nashville-based artist is best known for sculptural abstract paintings she calls “inflatables” — bulgy, candy-colored fusions of panel, pillow stuffing, fabric and paint that look like they might possess the unusual physical properties of Silly Putty. But each piece, inspired by toys, cartoons and other childhood memorabilia from the '80s and '90s, is as emphatically familiar as it is alien, and this visual slippage serves as a trap door to thinking about memory and identity formation.”
-Melinda Baker in the Tennessean, March 2019
“To a certain generation, Amelia Briggs’ work will bring immediate and powerful associations. I’m thinking those of us who grew up in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the elder millennials and the Gen X kid sisters, for whom She-Ra and Puffalumps and Popples bring waves of Malibu Musk-scented nostalgia. We’ll take one look at Briggs’ “inflatables” — puffy paintings on canvases that are stretched on top of fabric-filled forms — and see remnants of an Ocean Pacific childhood.”
-Laura Hutson Hunter in Nashville Scene, March 2019
I read that you reassemble and edit “visual cues associated with the graphic representations of comics, coloring books, and cartoons,” and wanted to ask you to expand on that and also to talk about your relationship to comics, coloring books and cartoons, and the effect that they’ve had on your work?
-Interview with Beatrice Helman for Maake Magazine, September 2018
"Briggs’s colorful pieces are difficult to decipher at first glance, further disrupting expectations and the viewing experience. The artist uses fabric, polyfill, and faux fur to create undulating, textured surfaces, then adds playful color with layers of paint. Many of her colors schemes feature soft, pastel tones, signifying youthfulness. Existing somewhere between painting, fiber art, and sculpture, her artwork inherently resists categorization. Equally ambiguous are the forms of her pieces: while a few works are triangular or square, most are irregular in shape. Works such as Responsibility (2018) and Face Forward (2018) have gentle ombres that transition across the fleshy folds of the fabric. Others, including Myth (2017) and Life on Land (2018), feature blotches of vibrant color and energetic lines that are reminiscent of plastic kiddie pools. Easiest (2018) stands out as the most representational of the bunch, bearing verisimilitude to a blanket with ruffles; looking at this piece, I am immediately transported to my grandmother’s house and a decorative blanket hanging over the back of a couch. The abstraction employed by Briggs leaves the work open-ended enough for viewers to create their own connections."
-Kevin Warth, Ruckus, September 2018
"The gravity of these pieces is both sustained by and contradicted by the scintillating color, which oscillates in a dreamy space between pale grey and neon extremes. A feeling of neglect pairs with one of nostalgia - the memory of play through the lens of some forgotten unknown. The viewer suspects a betrayal of sorts - the evidence of a puncture, excessive hardening, the material not being what it seems (as with moments where the substrate rolls and congeals to reference unknown biological substance). The referential shape of the canvases allows Briggs to toy with kitsch in a way that introduces an absurd happiness, tempting the observer to ask, “is this too good to be true?”
-Briana Bass, Mineral House Media, March 2018
"Peachy Keen spent the evening talking art (and drinking a little wine) in the Nashville studio of artist Amelia Briggs. We discuss the gendered psychology of the found imagery she uses from vintage comics and children's coloring books and how she subverts narrative in her formal process, which is split between object making and painting."
-Vivian Liddell, Peachy Keen Podcast, December 2017
"Artist Amelia Briggs exiled herself to a small Michigan town to figure out if she had the dedication to pursue a career in art. Now, she is the director of Nashville's outpost of David Lusk Gallery, and she talks to fellow artist Alysha Irisari Malo, the co-founder of a new arts organization in Wedgewood-Houston. With CONVERGE, Alysha and her husband, Eric, are bringing neighbors and developers to the table together."
-Erica Ciccarone, WeHome Podcast, November 2017
"For this exhibition, Briggs brings together selections from two bodies of work that were inspired by coloring books, cartoons, and comics, as well as big questions about the role images and play have on development and identity. “Inflatables,” features pastel, irregular three-dimensional paintings that combine acrylic, oil, and stuffed fabric and faux fur. “Small Green Plane,” is comprised of concise, fragmented drawings that have been printed on silk, satin, or other fabrics. Both series occupy the zone between abstraction and actuality, echoing the vague, open-ended narrative of creativity as well as being."
-Melinda Baker, Tennessean, August 2017
"In we are not together yet, Briggs will show works that are a combination of sculpture and painting — think Robert Rauschenberg’s “Bed.” Her pieces incorporate stuffed fabric and inflatable toys with layers of vaguely cartoonish drawings and muted pastel colors that make the whole thing seem childish and more ethereal."
-Laura Hutson Hunter, Nashville Scene, August 2017
"It may be easy to talk about the influences behind Briggs’ pieces, what she likes about them visually, her process of making them. What isn’t easy is talking about why. A viewer starts looking for an explanation—especially a woman like myself who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s and finds the colors and bulbous shapes to be particularly familiar. There’s something incredibly innocent about the perky pink and turquoise, but something worn down about the textures hidden beneath thick paint. I want to chew on these inflatables, see how they taste, put one in my mouth, like a baby—maybe that will give me some answers. (When I tell Briggs this, she laughs lightly and says, “Do it.”) But Briggs’ work is formal, very rarely conceptual, and it dodges comparison."
-Cat Acree, Native Magazine, August 2017
"Most commanding could be the Inflatables, Briggs’s series of oil and acrylic paintings worked on top of meticulous constructions of stuffed fabric and faux fur on panels. Briggs invests heavily in the sculptural process of creating the canvases, treating them as objects first, devoid of any visual intention or plan. “It’s completely separate from thinking about painting.”
-Megan Kelley, Nashville Arts Magazine, August 2017
"I am always looking to present some sort of visual connection to a viewer’s relationship with cartoons or coloring books, whatever that may be. I am interested in these lines and shapes as a shared language that many people might relate back to their youth. I like to present a fragmented version of that narrative, one that has been emptied of specificity."
-Uprise Art Journal Interview, May 2017
Amelia Briggs’ small fabric prints from her series "Small Green Plane” were a wise curatorial choice and worked well to break up the mass of large gestural paintings. At 14″x14″ and housed within thin white frames, Briggs’ muted prints of partially erased—or intentionally incomplete—illustrations retained a level of conflicting austerity in what would otherwise could have been playful drawings. On first encounter the works are reminiscent of early 20th Century animated cartoons, yet maintain no particular image or recognizable form that would indicate this. Rather, this effect is produced from the quality of line and indicated action within the frame. Ambiguously specific, Briggs’ prints surreptitiously engage the viewer in content that is not there, letting the viewer complete the image for her.
-Audrey Molloy
"Fellow Nashvillian Amelia Briggs brings the eclectic ensemble full circle with her cartoon-derived prints, reminiscent of Kim’s quirky ceramic characters. Primarily a painter, Briggs utilizes her prints somewhat as preliminary studies for larger projects. In fact, they are overwhelmingly black and white for this show and could pass as graphite sketches from a distance. Based on the phrase “we are not together yet,” they concern the search for identity and complement Wilder’s political sentiment."
-Elaine Slayton Akin, Nashville Arts Magazine, March 2017