Steve Briscoe
Processors, Barriers
and Implements

December 2, 2021 - January 22, 2022

Opening Reception
Saturday, December 4th from 1-4 pm

Button Pusher, 2021, wood, metal, plastic, 12" x 18.5" x 5"​

Produced primarily during the last two years of chaos and upheaval, Steve Briscoe‘s recent works offer a response, a stand in for the body/brain negotiating this new and shifting social, physical, and political territory. Mysterious, yet approachable, these objects speak to the hidden and oblique mechanisms that maintain balance, coerce cooperation, or initiate action in the face of distress.

Steve Briscoe: Processors, Barriers and Implements
 
The Processors, crisply checkered boxes acting both as metaphorical bodies and brains, describe some binary process or ask a topical or existential question. They are homemade, improvised and crude, imperfect and divided. I am using rope and pulleys as diagrammatic devices, referring to the equations of advantage – mechanical or otherwise.
 
In other works, the less precise cladding of black and white are more wall-like, hurriedly cobbled together out of necessity to keep someone or something out or in. They describe the fracturing that we feel, precariously balancing our interests against those of others. The fragmentary clutter threatens to overwhelm us, much as waves of information muddy our thoughts. We feel so alone in our bodies and minds that we often forget that we are interdependent, connected as part of a matrix of shared experience and environment.
 
The more tool-like implements are part of a long series of works that reference usefulness or a nonspecific purpose. Some of these were made in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol building and the inauguration that almost wasn’t.
 
Built now on forty years of trying different things, my sculpture is fabricated using the materials that are necessary. I try not to use more than is necessary and I try to recycle and repurpose as much as I can. I often allow second-hand objects to make suggestions, but I will add or augment or connect them to complete the work. Some are gestures, some are statements of position, some are observations, but none are singular in meaning or message.
 
I hope this selection of work provides worthy mysteries in which the elements and the connections between them imply relationships, dependencies, and order. Answers shift with the viewer, the time of day and the arc of history.
 
Steve Briscoe
10/31/21

Confusion Above, Danger Below, 2021, 
wood, metal, rope, glass, 49" x 16" x 5" 

More about Steve Briscoe

Biography:

Steve Briscoe is a visual artist working in a variety of media to create works that reflect on, resonate and engage with our world. Crafted and found things are melded into compositions that are knowing and questioning at the same time. He has been a resident artist at Paulson Press in Berkeley, Public Glass in San Francisco and at the Bemis program in Omaha. His work is in many Bay Area collections both public and private.
 
He and his wife, artist Lynn Beldner, live and work in Woodland, California.

EDUCATION
M.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute; B.A., Santa Clara University
AWARDS/FELLOWSHIPS
2002 Public Glass visiting artist, San Francisco, CA
1997 Paulson Press Artist in Residence, Berkeley, CA
1992 Bemis Foundation Fellowship Residency, Omaha, NE
1990 Susan Watkins Award Exhibition, New Langton Arts, S.F.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022 Pence Gallery, Davis, CA
2021 Transmission Gallery, Oakland, CA
2018 MAK Design + Build, Davis, CA
2001 Traywick Gallery, Berkeley, CA
1999 Traywick Gallery, Berkeley, CA
1997 Mike, San Francisco, CA
1990 Dorothy Weiss Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL
1988 ArtScapes Gallery, San Jose, CA
1982 Freightdoor Gallery, Santa Clara, CA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 Crocker-Kingsley at Blue Line Arts, Roseville, CA
2020 YoloArts Barn Gallery, Woodland, CA
2019 Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, CA
2019 Artspace 1616, Sacramento, CA
2012 Traywick Contemporary, Berkeley, CA
2011 Pop Up Gallery, Uptown, Oakland, CA
2001 Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1998 Cindy Bordeaux Fine Arts, Chicago, IL
          Traywick Gallery, Berkeley, CA
          Lemberg Gallery, Birmingham, MI
1997 Traywick Gallery, Berkeley, CA
         SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, CA
          Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA
          Works on Paper, Philadelphia, PA
1997 Outdoor Installation, Yerba Buena Center Garden, S.F.
1995 Opts Art Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1994 Works Gallery, Sonoma, CA
1993 DeVera, San Francisco, CA
1991 Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York, NY
        Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA
        Bedford Gallery, Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA
1990 Foster Goldstrom Gallery, New York, NY
          Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, GA
         S.F. Museum of Modern Art Rental Gallery, San Francisco, CA
         New Langton Arts, San Francisco, CA
1989 Richmond Art Center, Richmond, CA
         Lower Columbia College, Longview, WA
1988 Alumni Exhibition, San Francisco Art Institute
         Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA
1987 Faculty Exhibition, Northeast Missouri State University
1986 Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, CA
         Pacific Grove Art Center, Pacific Grove, CA
         Vorpal Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1985 San Mateo County Arts Council, Belmont, CA
         Diego Rivera Gallery, SFAI, San Francisco, CA
         University Art Gallery, Cameron University, Lawton, OK
1984 Meadows Museum, Shreveport, LA; Samuel G. Wiener Award
          Alexandria Museum, Alexandria, LA
1982 San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA

PRESS / PUBLICATIONS
Santa Clara Review, volume 107, issue 1, photographs from 1994 Flea
Market Series, 2020
Sacramento Bee, review, photo of work at artspace1616, by Julia
Couzens; March 29, 2019
Art Papers, review, photo of work at Traywick Gallery, by Carl Heyward;
May/June 2000
East Bay Express, review of work at Traywick Gallery by Apollinaire
Scherr, November 27, 1998
San Francisco Examiner, review, photo of work at DeVera by David
Bonetti; May 24, 1993
Artweek, review, photo of work at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Rental Gallery by John Rapko; December 6, 1990
San Francisco Examiner, review of work at Dorothy Weiss Gallery by
David Bonetti; July 20, 1990
Artweek, review of work at New Langton Arts by Carol Miller;
April 26, 1990
San Francisco Examiner, review, photo of work at New Langton Arts by
David Bonetti; April 13, 1990
San Francisco Chronicle, review of work at New Langton Arts by
Kenneth Baker; April 7, 1990
Artweek, review of work at ProArts Gallery by Jamie Brunson;
March 1, 1990
Artweek, review of Beyond the Frame at Richmond Art Center by
Jamie Brunson; June 17, 1989
Artweek, review of ProArts Annual, ProArts Gallery by Mark
Van Proyen; February 2, 1989
Artweek, review of work at Southern Exposure Gallery by Mark
Van Proyen; June 14, 1986

COLLECTIONS
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA
Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA
di Rosa Foundation, Napa, CA
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Bemis Center for the Arts, Omaha, NE
Jay DeFeo Foundation, Berkeley, CA

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