Alice Leora Briggs
The recipient of the 2025 Scult Family Artist Award is Alice Leora Briggs. Alice Leora Briggs was born in an oil boomtown in West Texas. Briggs grew up in Idaho’s Snake River Valley and is now based in Tucson, Arizona. Through her practice, she investigates human frailties through drawings, woodcuts, letterpress broadsides, site-specific installations, and books. Her work has been featured in more than 50 solo exhibitions and is represented in more than 35 public collections, including those of Phoenix Art Museum; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; Library of Congress; Oxford’s Bodleian Library; and Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Her publications include Dreamland: The Way Out of Juárez (2010); an illuminated manuscript-police blotter created with writer Charles Bowden; Abecedario de Juárez: An Illustrated Lexicon (2022) produced with photojournalist Julián Cardona; and The Room, a portfolio of woodcuts created with U.S. poet laureate Mark Strand. Briggs was a Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa and is represented by Evoke Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Etherton Gallery in Tucson, Arizona.
(Above): Alice Leora Briggs, STYX, in progress (detail). Sgraffito drawing on 18 wood panels prepared with kaolin clay, acrylic medium binder, India ink; six acrylic on wood panels. Courtesy of the artist
(Header): Alice Leora Briggs, Dos, Two, 2022. Sgraffito drawing and acrylic on two wood panels prepared with kaolin clay, acrylic medium binder, and India ink. Courtesy of the artist
About the Scult Family Artist Award
The Scult Family Artist Award recognizes a mid-career (and beyond) Arizona artist. Each year, the recipient is chosen from a pool of candidates based on a number of criteria. Eligible candidates are artists who demonstrate artistic excellence through their work, are presently making and exhibiting new work, have demonstrated significant growth in their work over their careers, and have been residents of Arizona for a minimum of four consecutive years. The recipient is then selected based on the work they are currently producing in addition to pieces they have created in the past. The award includes a $20,000 prize, a solo exhibition at the Museum, and a lifetime PhxArt Membership. The panel of jurors included Lana Meador, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art; Olivia Miller, Executive Director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University; 2019 Scult Award recipient Ann Morton; and Jeff Scult.
The 2025 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards Exhibition
The 2025 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards Exhibition features works by emerging artists Chris Ignacio and Jan Talmadge Davids.
Chris Ignacio
Chris Ignacio is a Filipino-American puppeteer, producer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersection of voice, technology, and identity. He began his puppetry career in New York in 2012, training with experimental artists at La MaMa and working across theater, community arts, and livestream media. In 2023, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as a puppeteer in Florencia en el Amazonas, directed by Mary Zimmerman. He has also premiered original puppetry works at New York theaters including La MaMa, The Tank, and The Brick, and has toured both nationally and abroad. In Phoenix, Ignacio has served as a media designer for major institutions such as Ballet Arizona, Arizona Broadway Theater, Arizona Opera, and Childsplay. His original projects, including those featured in exhibitions at Vision Gallery and Mesa Arts Center, center community collaboration, particularly with young people or people with limited arts exposure. He holds an MFA in Theatre/Interdisciplinary Digital Media from Arizona State University (ASU), where he now teaches motion capture and 3D animation. Ignacio also serves as creative producer for the T. Denny Sanford Harmony Institute at ASU.
Image credit: Christopher Ignacio, O’Neill Center, Nat’l Puppetry Conference, 2022. Courtesy of the artist, photo: Richard Termine
Jan Talmadge Davids
Jan Talmadge Davids works in clay and mixed media to explore landscapes of her childhood and their local ecologies and to articulate ideas of place-making. Through installation and material sensitivities, she invites the viewer to engage in the ideas of fragility and vulnerability. Talmadge Davids was born in Tucson, Arizona, spending her youth in the southeastern part of the state. She attended the University of Arizona, California State University at Long Beach, and then came from Los Angeles to pursue her MFA at the Herberger School of Art and Design, where she found the opportunity to reconcile her past with her present, which is embedded in the desert landscape. Her work has been shown at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; The Carolyn Campanga Klefeeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, CA; Tempe Center for the Arts; eye lounge; The Tucson Museum of Art; and Art d’Core Gala.
Image credit: Janet Talmadge Davids, Arizona Black Walnuts, Juglans major, 2022. Porcelain, 3-D printed, slipcast. Courtesy of the artist
About the Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards
The Sally and Richard Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards (Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards) are presented annually by Phoenix Art Museum to provide recognition and financial support for emerging, professional, Arizona-based artists. Eligible candidates apply through an open call and must be considered emerging artists who are currently working and have resided in Arizona for a minimum of one year, among other requirements. The award includes a $10,000 prize, a group exhibition at the Museum, and a lifetime PhxArt Membership. The 2025 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards jury was assembled by Christian Ramírez and Lana Meador, Olivia Miller, Ann Morton, and Sally Lehmann.
EXHIBITION SPONSORS
The Arizona Artist Awards are made possible by the Scult Family Artist Award; Sally and Richard Lehmann; and the Cohn Fund for Arts and Culture, a founding gift of the Phoenix Art Museum Education and Engagement Excellence Fund.
Alice Leora Briggs: NOW WHAT? and the 2025 Lehmann Emerging Artist Awards exhibitions are organized by Phoenix Art Museum and curated by Christian Ramírez, the Cohn Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art and Director of Engagement. Their Phoenix premiere is made possible by the Cohn Fund for Arts and Culture, a founding gift of the Phoenix Art Museum Education and Engagement Excellence.
Additional support is provided by the Rob Walton, Jordan Rose, and Rose Law Group Fund for Contemporary Art.
All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.
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