Tif Sigfrids is happy to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Nora Riggs entitled “Creampuffs of Passage." The show will open on April 8th with a reception from 6 – 8 PM and remain on view through May 13th. A local Athens band, “Panic Wave” will make a performance during the opening at 7 PM.

For the show we are presented with six new paintings, most depicting dead-eyed figures engaged in everyday activities, drinking coffee in bed, eating spaghetti, hanging out. An aura of adolescence wafts from the surfaces, perhaps stirring our own memories of that puzzling time-period. It has been said that Rigg’s “working from life is a constantly evolving archeology of the everyday objects that hold all our memories.” Something as simple as a table laid with a pot of spaghetti and sauce served straight from the jar, unheated, can set us back twenty or thirty years and seem to encapsulate every aspect of what it was like to live on our own for the first time.

The images quickly dissolve, however, into a miraculous amalgamation of pattern and color producing the scenes on view. What initially read as flat surfaces unfold to reveal texture produced by layers of adjustment and representation that was arrived at slowly, over time. Much like a fragmented memory, that gathers its information from multiple sources, the paintings are a perfect stew of things easily recognized and highly imagined.

Nora Riggs (b. 1972) lives and works in Northampton, Massachusetts. She completed her BFA at RISD in 1994 and her MFA at Indiana University in 1996.