Mary Briggs Leff, 94, died Sept. 4, 2016.
She was born to the late Charles A. Briggs and Carrie Harvey Briggs on Dec. 3, 1921 in White Plaines, N. Y. At White Plaines High School, Mary played field hockey and the violin. She showed an early interest in art and began sketching and drawing with pastels as a teenager. She was admitted into the prestigious Cooper Union School of Art in 1940, and received a bachelor’s degree in decorative arts in 1944.
Following graduation, Mary worked briefly in the Kohama Textile Workshop in New York City. She married Robert Leff in 1945. They divorced in 1998. Mary continued to produce oil paintings, watercolors and ceramics while raising a family of four children, first in Ridgewood, N. J., and then Delavan and Kettering, Ohio. In 1971, Mary’s family returned to Delavan. During this time Mary began to work in new media, including decoupage, batik, dried flower arrangement and collage. In the 1970s and ‘80s she showed her work in galleries in Milwaukee and Chicago.
In the early 1980s Mary began to spend the winter months in San Miguel de Allende, a small city in the mountains of central Mexico, where there is a large American artist colony. She regularly showed her work at the Instituto Allende, where she studied with the Mexican artist David Pinto, who became a mentor. She also traveled extensively throughout the world, visiting Europe, East Asia and Africa. Her work was particularly influenced by traditional Mexican folk art.
In San Miguel, Mary photographed and exhibited her studies of the town’s picturesque festivals and surroundings landscape. The art of the Huichol Indian tribes of Michoacan, especially their yarn paintings and beaded sculptures, are reflected in her work during the 1990s and 2000s. Mary returned to the Unites States in 2008. She produced a series of striking paper collages in 2010 and 2011 and maintained an impressive galleria of her work on the walls of her residence.
Mary is survived by three children, Thomas P. Leff, an attorney in Wilmington, Del., Harriet E. Leff, an interior designer in San Francisco, and Robert C. Leff Jr., a retired manager with an airline in San Luis Obispo, Calif. A third son, Richard A. Leff, died in 1992. Mary has a surviving brother, David Briggs, who lives in Troy, N. Y.
Memorial services will be at 10 a.m. Oct. 8 at the Delavan United Methodist Church with the Rev. Maribel Celiz officiating. Burial will immediately follow in Spring Grove Cemetery. Friends may call at the church from 9 to 10 a.m. Oct. 8. A reception in the church’s fellowship hall will follow the burial service. Memorials can be made to the church.
Betzer Funeral Home is serving the family.
