Paul Briggs in Retrospect
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It's been said that the difference between genius and talent is that "talent waits until it has the money." That would be a fitting description of the late Paul Briggs, who was probably the only authentic genius many of us will ever have had the pleasure of knowing. An artist of prodigious talent and remarkable productivity, he was a master of photography, printmaking, quilting, drawing, cartooning, mon-kiri Japanese paper cutting (which he did free-hand with only a piece of paper and a small pair of scissors), and the digital imagery that consumed his attention for the last ten years of his life.
The one art he never mastered, though, was the art of self-promotion. In fact, the whole idea of promoting his own work, or getting a gallery to represent him, or even selling his art for money was anathema to him. To support himself, he ran lights and managed props for the Colorado Symphony, a steady job he eventually lost after cussing out his boss for god-knows-what reason; frustration with the demands on his time would be my guess.
After his blowout with the Symphony he went to work for the Stagehand's Union, getting jobs off the bulletin board as they became available. Any suggestion that he'd be better off trying to make a living from his art fell on deaf ears. He wouldn't even discuss it. He wanted nothing to do with gallery owners, artists' representatives, or the commercialization of his work. He never took a nickel for any of his art. Most of it he gave away to his friends.
The only one-man show ever held of his work took place at Denver's Changing Scene Theatre in the mid-90s, and even that would not have come about had I not made the arrangements in his behalf. Al Brooks, and his wife Maxine, who together ran the theatre, were at our house for dinner one night. Al mentioned that he was looking for an artist to show in the lobby during a premier of a gay-themed play called "The Un-tied States of America." I suggested Paul Briggs.
Paul agreed to it, and a few days before the opening, he and I went over to the theatre to hang the work. Opening night, he was nervous; but Al and Maxine were thrilled, and everyone who saw it was absolutely blown away.
Paul had a plethora of idiosyncratic interests that naturally found their way into his art: tattoos, Native American costumery, cowboys, bucking broncos, jackalopes, cacti, and motorcycles, of which he owned one bad-ass 1300 cc Harley Softail, pimped to the max with a turquoise and white paint job and a set of tassellated black leather saddle bags. He loved postcards of which he kept an extensive collection in his living room on a revolving carousel. He was fascinated by UFOs, cattle mutilation, and alien abduction. Or more to the point, he liked the imagery of UFOs, and as a photographer in the 1970s made several attempts at faking flying saucer shots.
He was a great fan of games, especially crossword puzzles and Scrabble, which he played on a regular basis with his old friends Jody Georgeson, Linda Maxwell, and Nancy Mangus. He was into jokes and wordplay and was a formidable punster. He and I were at a restaurant one time with a gal I was dating, celebrating the fact that she'd just won a part on a kids' TV science show.
"What part did you get?" Paul asked.
"Test tube," she said.
"What kind of lines does a test tube have?" I asked.
"Tube, or not tube," he chimed in without a moment's hesitation.
Paul had an encyclopedic knowledge of Colorado history, geography, and geology. He was an avid camper and hiker, and could tell you the names of the plants and grasses growing beside the trail. He knew which mushrooms you could eat, which ones could get you high, and which ones would kill you dead.
He kept a pool table in his garage, and practiced enough to be able to compete in the taverns and biker bars he liked to hang out in. He spoke yeoman Portuguese, a language he picked up over several trips to Brazil, and from Brazilian friends who stayed at his house whenever they were in town.
He had a tin ear and an atrocious singing voice, but he loved music, especially jazz, salsa, and anything Brazilian. He knew -- and could play well enough to turn heads -- exactly one song on the piano; Maria. West Side Story.
I would be remiss here if I were to gloss over the question of his sexuality. Paul was gay. Openly. And while gay themes abound in his work, one sensed that he wasn't entirely comfortable with his sexual orientation. He'd get annoyed, for example, if you referred to it in casual conversation. On the other hand, he was justifiably pissed at the anti-gay rhetoric of the Republicans and the Christian Right, and was never shy about speaking up or speaking out when it came to gay rights.
By the same token, he made it a point to stick up for the underdog. His next door neighbor told me that he alone among all the people on the block refused to sign a petition demanding that she institutionalize her autistic son. On the contrary, she said, Paul went out of his way to befriend him.
Needless to say, he had a host of friends, many of whom he'd known since his student days. I met him in 1965 on his first day at Colorado College. We had a friend in common, whom he'd known at Boulder High. On the night we met, we all went out to a 3.2 joint called Giuseppe's and got good and shit-faced. I left shortly thereafter to begin my freshman year at Denver University. Paul was good about staying in touch, though, and he often sent me hand-drawn postcards with odd messages on them. A friendship blossomed from there and lasted until his death 47 years later.
What impressed me most about him in the early days of our friendship were his fully-formed aesthetic and his unique way of looking at the world. He saw beauty in things most of us tend to dismiss as kitsch. Things like front yards packed with gnomes and lawn jockeys and flower pots -- yards, in short, that might have embarrassed the neighbors, but which evidenced the funky, home-grown creativity of their owners. He liked paint-by-numbers kits, and floral wall paper, and replicas of motorcycles fashioned from beer can tabs by amateur artists.
Despite his many friendships, he was a profoundly lonely man who longed for a committed relationship with somebody able to understand and appreciate him. Sadly, a lifelong partnership remained forever beyond his grasp. The closest he ever came to it was a roommate situation with a guy named Ken, a homeless drunk whom he picked up in a bar somewhere and invited to move in. The relationship, as far as I could tell, was neither romantic nor sexual. Paul just wanted someone around to fend off his loneliness. It was Ken who found him on August 12, 2012, dead of a heart attack at age 64.
What survives of his oeuvre are the drawings and prints he gave to his friends, and the digital works Jody Georgeson and I were able to retrieve from his computer. Even though it's only a fraction of his lifelong artistic output, it's still significant, amounting to over 200 images, many of which are contained in this website. They stand as a testament to his imagination, his humor, his skill, and his taste, and they remind us of the joy and wonder he brought into the world. In Shakespeare's immortal words; "He was a man, take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again."
Don Morreale / Denver, Colorado / Spring, 2013
Note: Images on this website are copyrighted, and may not be used without express permission from the estate of Paul D. Briggs
