Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident 2026
Patricia Briggs is an art historian, critic and artist. She makes sculptural pieces that draw on vessel shapes and decorative motives found in the history of ceramics. In 2025, Briggs was a winter resident at Watershed Center for Ceramics and spent October as a resident artist at C.R.E.T.A. Rome. As an arts professional she held the position of Director and Curator at the Weeks Gallery, State University of New York-JCC from 2013 to 2019.
Prior to that, she managed the Fine Art Galleries at University of Wisconsin-Parkside from 2011 to 2013 and served as a faculty member teaching liberal studies and art history at Minneapolis College of Art and Design from 1999 to 2010. Her writing on contemporary art appears in Artforum, History of Photography, Women’s Art Journal, Senses and Society, Art on Paper, and other print and online journals.
I took up ceramics four years ago when I retired from my career as an art historian and arts writer. Considering my background, it is no surprise that my work is inspired by the history of ceramics. I am particularly interested in the ways that historical vessel forms, such as the Greek amphora and the medieval apothecary jar, have come to us ready-made, embedded with meaning associated with their original functions. I modify these forms with modern icons, words, and shapes as a way of commenting on, or making meaning in, the contemporary context.