• Lois Bryant’s work installed in President’s Conference Room, University of Michigan, Fleming Building, Ann Arbor

    Lois Bryant recently sold two Jacquard weavings, “Who Will You Become?” and “Lib (Confusion),” to the University of Michigan for the President’s Conference Room in the Fleming Building on U of M’s central campus in Ann Arbor.

    The weavings are of mercerized cotton and metallic yarns, and are approximately 26” h x 27” w. The designs are based on some collages.

  • "Connection/Disconnection" published in Surface Design Journal

    Lois Bryant's Jacquard weaving, "Connection/Disconnection" published in Summer 2013 issue of Surface Design Journal, Spotlight on Education section (http://surfacedesign.org/journal).

  • Lois Bryant receives Honorable Mention in Rodin's 2013 Summer Show

    "Hot Mess, #2" received an Honorable mention in Rodin Restaurant's 2013 Summer Show. Rodin is located next door to the Detroit Institute of Arts, at 15 East Kirby Street, Detroit, MI 48202. The show ends on August 25.

  • Lois Bryant named Jacquard Fellow at Eastern Michigan University

    Lois Bryant is Eastern Michigan University's first TC-1 Jacquard Fellow working on the computer-aided Jacquard looms in the Pat Williams Digital Fabrication Lab.

  • Artwork acquired for Univeristy Michigan Hospitals

    The University of Michigan Museum of Art recently purchased 5 weavings for the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and Von Voigtlander Women's Hospital in Ann Arbor. One set of weavings is located in the main lobby of the hospital, and the other set is in the Gallery Corridor off the main lobby.

  • Knoll International Textiles publication

    Lois Bryant is included in a new compendium of textile designers for Knoll International. The book, entitled Knoll Textiles: Nineteenhundredfortyfive – Twothousandten was published by Yale University Press for Bard Graduate Center of New York City.

  • Review of "Moving Ground"

    ANN ARBOR ART CENTER SHOWS TWO ARTISTS 'MOVING GROUND'
    By: John Carlos Cantú
    Posted: Jan 19, 2011 at 9:54 AM [Jan 19, 2011] at www.annarbor.com

    Lois Bryant and John Cynar's exhibit "Moving Ground" at the Ann Arbor Art Center finds these two local artists moving along with their subject matter. Yet it’s only restless from execution to appearance.
    Illustrating movement was a 20th century aesthetic concern focusing on technology. From motor vehicles and motion pictures to kinetic art and Jean Tinguely’s sculptural machines, technology inspired that century’s artists to depict motion.

    But artistic interests change with time — and like much clever post-modernist art, there’s a wry twist to Bryant’s and Cynar’s aesthetic — because motion is certainly their inspiration but it's an inferred conceptualization. Their personal interest in such change requires an audience to put it into play.
    Lois Bryant has contributed two wide-ranging series of artworks — “The Ground Beneath my Feet” and “Landscape Studies” — that depict the ordinary as extraordinary. As she says in her artist’s statement, “I do not go to exotic places. Rather, I focus on ordinary aspects of the ground that most people overlook or write off as ugly, such as tire tracks and cracks on the pavement….

    These controlled patches are indeed embedded in her art. The larger number of the 27 mixed-medias and fiber works she’s contributed feature ground — as in the stuff beneath our feet. In fact, you can actually walk a considerable length of her “ground” in a work at the Art Center titled “On the Road.”
    “The Ground beneath my Feet” series expands the concept of movement by concentrating on the elemental qualities of ordinary pavement. Bryant crafts works that on one level seem to be homage to asphalt; but are, ultimately, more observation on ground yet to be treaded.

    By contrast, her multi-part “Landscape Studies — composed primarily of artificial grass, fibers, wire, and wood arranged to look like three-dimensional floral designs — are “The Ground beneath my Feet” by other imagery.

    These mixed-media studies of grass, flowers, and weeds feature a sense of expectant growth. They range from exceedingly large to exceedingly small, and each mixed-media composition approaches its subject like a first-time biological observation.

  • Review of "Rhythms of Life"

    THEY’VE GOT RHYTHM: RIVERSIDE HOSTS 4 DIVERSE VISIONS
    Ann Arbor News, Sunday, July 20, 2008
    BY JOHN CARLOS CANTU,
    News Special Writer

    "Rhythms of Life'' at Ypsilanti's Riverside Arts Center Gallery feels truly alive.

    The exhibit's contributors are Ann Arbor's Lois Bryant and Yiu-Keung Lee; Monroe's Marilyn M. Prucka; and Ypsilanti's Sally Houck. As the Riverside Art Center Gallery's exhibition statement tells us, "Each of these artists is inspired by the interaction between humans and their environment. And in order to do so, they illustrate four distinct rhythms of life.''

    Bryant's dozen textiles are divided between a series of multi-colored fire-based weavings and her "The Ground beneath My Feet'' series, which "takes its imagery from asphalt, cracked cement, footprints, and tire tracks, surfaces usually overlooked or written off as ugly.''

    "Hope Courage Peace Love-Pain Anger Loss,'' a handwoven jacquard fiber, has a series of words tumbling down the work in hues from a fiery red to a calm blue-green. "The Ground beneath My Feet No. 4'' is a magnificent horizontal textile that looks like a sand painting - or, at the least, a well-traveled footpath. Either way, this artwork is a bravura concept applied to the fiber arts.

  • Press Release

    Lois Bryant Completes Commission for School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

    In 2006, the Dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University challenged artist Lois Bryant to design and weave a tapestry for his office that shows the process of computer chip design. The weaving is located in the Dean’s office in the new Gates Center for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon.

    Bryant’s tapestry, “Chip,” shows computer science equations taken from the Dean’s whiteboard as the input on the left, a replication of a Pentium chip as the central and main design element, and binary code as the output on the right.

    “Chip” is approximately 4 x 6 feet, of cotton and metallic yarns. It was designed on computer using Photoshop, and woven on a computer-assisted handloom. Computers and weaving have had a relationship since Joseph Jacquard designed a loom that uses a series of punched cards to control the pattern of warp threads in 1801. Weaving is based on binary code, as weft threads must pass either over or under warp threads. When Jacquard joined the punched cards in an endless loop, he created a program for executing complex patterns.