A new exhibition at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art celebrates the career of Lela Powers Briggs, a woman with an artistic gift that challenges the better-known artists of the same era. The career of Lela Powers Briggs exemplifies the life of many Iowa women artists of her generation. Largely self-taught, Briggs was a keen observer of the world around her and documented her life in a series of paintings and drawings of farm and domestic scenes, animals, historic buildings, landscapes, and portraits. Although her artistic compass was limited to Iowa and family vacation destinations, her work shows bold explorations of style unusual in the 1930s and 1940s. This exhibition, titled Expressions of Home: The Watercolors of Lela Powers Briggs, is on view May 16 through August 30, 2015. Born Lela Powers in 1896 in Powersville, Iowa, a town her grandfather founded, Briggs’ family moved to Waterloo when her father founded the Powers Manufact

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