The latest ceramic sculptures by Paul Briggs use knotted coils that don’t just suggest connection, they physically hold the pieces together. “In this present series, they are doing the work,” he says of Gravity, a new collection that marks a shift in his practice. In earlier pieces, the knots were symbolic. Now, as he explains, there isn’t something hidden inside the structure keeping it intact—the knots themselves bear the weight. Briggs connects those coils to Martin Luther King Jr.’s line that we are “inextricably bound to one another.” Here, the metaphor has become literal. See these, plus other works, and read his truly unusual and unexpected backstory, here.
