Briza Camacho Lucio

Briza is a local artist, illustrator, and tattoo artist with over 20 years of experience based in Austin, TX. She has also worked in Nayarit, Guadalajara City, Mexico and Los Angeles, CA. Her talent for tattooing has secured her guest spots in the cities of Shinjuku, Tokyo, and Brisbane, Australia where she experienced a different way of life and art. 

Briza’s artwork is primarily inspired by natural ecologies, having spent most of her childhood in her family’s rancho of three generations in rural Nayarit, Mexico. The flora and fauna of the southern Colorado river and its tributaries and Chihuahuan desert plants are also significant sources of inspiration in her illustrative artwork. Briza frequents parts of the Chihuahuan desert such as Big Bend National Park and the Davis Mountains for inspiration.

As a member of a local indigenous dance group, Danza Mexica Xochipilli, Briza volunteers at the community youth program, Academia Cuauhtli, held at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (MACC). The program involves teaching children between the ages of 9 to 12 years old about Indigenous Mesoamerican dance knowledge by sharing with them about ancestral life ways. 

Briza attends culturally significant ceremonies throughout the year in the community. As a wife and mother of two, ceremony is a shared practice with her family and is an integral part of her way of life. The preservation and knowledge of local indigenous plant medicines are an important component of her family and their future generations cultural sustainability. 

In 2015, Briza was the winning participant of the Mesoamerican themed tattoo competition, “Tinta Negra y Roja”/“Tilli in Tlapalli” (Meaning Painted in Red and Black) held at the Centro Cultural Universitario Tlatelolco, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). The competition and art exhibition focus were storytelling and the ancestral art of tattooing in the Americas. 

Briza’s illustrative art mediums include but are not limited to digital and hand drawing, paint, with a passion for using natural pigments derived from local plants. Cultivating, harvesting, and processing local plant pigments allows her to include the very plants that inspire her artwork as the color medium as well.