The Behavior of Nature
“You can wash yourself. You can protect yourself. You can feed yourself with all three of these corresponding species. And although they are double edged swords, so are relationships.”
Words by Henry Williford | Photography Courtesy of Amy Briggs and by Hueman Collective
Born in Dallas, Texas, Amy Briggs is a ceramic artist, sculptor and recent BFA graduate from Auburn University. With an affinity for surrealist sculpture and the subconscious, Amy works with ceramics, fabric, metal and light to create fantastical spaces and immersive sculptures. She has received several awards, including the Dean’s Purchase Award as well as multiple merit awards such as the Davis Frye Annual Award in Art, the Jule Collins Honorary Award in Art. Amy has participated in various group shows across the Southeast, and in 2018 she was invited by Auburn University to host her first solo exhibition, titled "Immersive Environments.” Amy is currently working on beginning a professional co-op for studio artists focusing on ceramics, glass and metal in the Auburn/Opelika area.
Finding meaning and inspiration in nature is a staple of the human experience. “The Behavior of Nature” is an ongoing sculptural ceramic series highlighting the metaphoric properties of nature. The series is currently comprised of three different bodies of work.
Kudzu
The first part of the series, “The Behavior of Nature: Kudzu,” is a ceramic vessel series that Amy says is a reflection of kudzu’s consumptive and invasive qualities that relate to mental and physical deterioration. The first piece has four vessels showing the consumptive process of kudzu and its engulfing properties.
Amy first found the inspiration for “The Behaviour of Nature: Kudzu” while working as a rafting guide on the Nantahala River in North Carolina. As she lead groups down the river, she was captivated by the kudzu enveloping the trees on the river bank. Day-after-day, she found herself conflicted by the juxtaposition of its beauty with it’s devastating force.
“That's all I saw, and I was like, ‘Wow man, that's like really invasive, but it's still so beautiful. It's super toxic, but it's also gorgeous.’"
As the theme of consumption and deterioration played before her on the river banks, she began to think about how this pattern repeated itself often in the human experience.
“I've always been entranced by nature, and I think it's because it has so many anthropomorphic qualities,” Amy says. ”Everybody says that nature is living and says that its got its own consciousness and an agenda, yet we still act as though it has no rights. That resonated with me on a lot of metaphorical levels. So, it started off as Kudzu because what do we see constantly in the South? This Kudzu, enveloping everything, just consuming.”
Caves
The second part of “The Behavior of Nature” series is “The Behavior of Nature: Caves”—caves representing the human subconscious. This piece was a one-time, mixed media installation where viewers individually entered into a simulated cave environment and sat surrounded by ceramic stalagmites as ceramic stalactites were suspended overhead. The simulated cave was illuminated by red lights, and the sound of dripping water was played to further immerse the participant.
For inspiration for this piece in the series, Amy turned to Howe Caverns in New York State–a series of caves discovered in a cow pasture by a local farmer, Lester Howe, in the summer of 1842. While investigating why his cows would gather near the same bushes at the bottom of a hill on hot summer days, Lester eventually discovered the series of caves. The caves were filled with stalactites and stalagmites, and today thousands of tourist are guided through the caves each year that once sat undiscovered beneath a modest cow pasture.
“Caves are the subconscious of the earth,” Amy says. “They are below that top level. Just as you see the surface of a person, but you can't know what's in their subconscious. You don't know what's in their mind. It's a cave of its own. It hides these treasures, these minerals, these valuable things that have been developed throughout time—whether as a person or as a cave.”
Desert
After completing the second part in her series, Amy felt compelled to continue. At the time, she was taking the summer off before her senior year at Auburn University, and she knew she wanted to make her senior project a continuation of “The Behavior of Nature.”
That summer, while on a cross-country trip back to Auburn with some close friends from Los Angeles, she visited Joshua Tree National Park. As they entered to park, she was struck by the seemingly alien landscape.
“I just kept saying, ‘These colors! These plants! It's all gorgeous! It's all beautiful!’”
“I was enamored by the way that these desert plants figured out a way to survive in such a harsh environment, and (how) they figured out a way to thrive in an adverse landscape. I empathized. I empathized for a reason, unbeknownst to me. ... I empathized with that barrenness. I empathized with the toxicity of the environment to its natural flora and fauna. And that’s when I came back, and I started drawing up ideas for ‘The Behavior of Nature: Desert’.”
During her time working on “The Behavior of Nature: Desert”, Amy struggled to identify why she felt such a strong connection to the project—until the day her long-term, self-described “toxic” relationship came to an end.
“(I realized) that was me—I was the desert. I was growing through adversity in a toxic relationship with everything stacked against me, but I was still growing. I was still doing. I was still moving. ... I was finally able to go to the people who would ask me, ‘well, why the desert?’ and answer them. … In my subconscious, of course I knew that I chose it because I was trying to cry out to people saying, ‘I empathize with this. I am in toxicity right now. This is the culmination of everything I'm going through on the inside.’”
With her new found clarity and only two months left until her senior show, Amy found catharsis in the desert.
Growth and Cleansing: The Soap Tree Yucca
Amy chose which cacti she would recreate based on adjectives that she felt described each cactus and how they related to her relationship. The first piece in the series was the “Soap Tree Yucca,” which Amy felt best represented “growth and cleansing.” The Soap Tree Yucca is a plant that grows very quickly due to its great ability to hold water. It was also used by indigenous people to create soap, and for years people used what they crafted from this plant to wash and cleanse themselves.
The “Soap Tree Yucca” was constructed over the course of five days by attaching each hand-rolled and hand-cut leaf to a slab built dome, then bisque-firing the sculpture for two days. Foregoing the traditional glazing process, Amy instead chose to spray paint the sculpture and, for its final step before completion, she topped it with a deconstructed purple wig.
Detachment and Protection: Teddy Bear Cholla
The second cactus in the piece, the “Teddy Bear Cholla”, was chosen for its of detachment and protection. The spines of the Teddy Bear Cholla are used for protection by some animals in the desert. Some ground dwellers and birds use the spines to build nests and burrows to keep predators from intruding.
“Teddy Bear Cholla are also known as ‘jumping cacti.’ People who go through the desert know these really well, because you can have a rumble on the ground and pieces will just pop off. You can bike by them, and they will feel the vibration of your bike, and they will sacrifice one of their limbs so that the body of it can survive. That is such a protective quality, which is something that I wanted to have–protection and detachment from my toxic relationship.”
Universality and Expulsion: Fishhook Cactus
The last cactus in the series, the Fishhook Cactus, was chosen because it represents universitility and expulsion.
“That one is actually the most humorous of them all. It's ‘universality and expulsion’ because the Fishhook Cactus looks like a traditional Barrel Cactus. It's not a huge spectacle in the desert, but what it does to the human body is a spectacle.”
If ingested, the fishhook cactus can cause severe vomiting and diarrhea, something that can be fatal—especially in the desert.
“In my relationship, all I did was just expel, expel, expel, expel energy, words, time, everything like that. The hand-dyed fabric and the puckering at the bottom of [the sculpture] was that representation of expulsion for me.”
The Fishhook Cactus got its name from indigenous people’s use of their spines to create fishhooks.
“That's universality at its finest. You can have this plant and its toxic qualities, but you can also harvest from it and use it for your growth and your needs. … You can sustain yourself. You can wash yourself. You can protect yourself. You can feed yourself with all three of these corresponding species. And although they are double edged swords, so are relationships.”
You can find more of Amy’s artwork at www.amybriggsart.com and on Instagram, @thriftycreaturesceramics. Amy will be completing a residency at Odyssey Center For Ceramic Arts in Asheville, NC this summer. If you would like to purchase her art work or functional ceramics, contact her via her website or Instagram.
