Metaphorical Reality: Keith Bryant

Keith Bryant creates work from a place that exists beyond the confines of language yet enhance the realm of understanding riddles in life, connection and independence. Working in wood, metals and ceramics, his forms employ abstraction metaphor. Bryant’s sculptures address ideas of loneliness, isolation, architecture and landscape.  

Artist’s Statement

My work is an attempt to make visual my personal reality—thoughts and feelings based on my experiences making the abstract concrete and multi-interpretive.  To tease out these ideas I use and respond to different materials and techniques ranging from found objects to fabricated forms made from concrete, steel, plaster, lead, plastic, wood and/or clay.  There is an endless need to discover materials that match my current ideas, which creates continual research to create the right fit.

Current works come from a place of reacting to loss, hope and a sense of lifting up. These abstract concepts find their way into my work through process.  The physicality of examining ideas in the studio creates a deeper understanding of the issues behind my work, evolving into a physical manifestation of metaphor and form.  This intuitive meandering frees my artwork from direct narrative, allowing the forms to speak more directly and universally to my musings as opposed to my story.

Keith Bryant

About the Artist

As an educator in the arts for over two decades Keith Bryant has taught for UNC Charlotte in the Department of Art & Art History since 2000. His instructional focus is ceramics, sculpture and three-dimensional design.  A move in 1990 brought him to Charlotte, NC for the first time to teach at Central Piedmont Community College after teaching at University of South Carolina, Columbia. Bryant holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a BFA from Colorado State University and a residency at Philadelphia College of Art – today known as the University of the Arts. Bryant’s work has been exhibited nationally and held in corporate collections throughout the southeast and mountain states.

Selected Collections:

            Philadelphia College of Art Study Collection, Philadelphia, PA

            Colorado State University Study Collection, Ft. Collins, CO

            Springfield Museum Of History and Crafts, Springfield, VT

            Winthrop College Study Collection, Rock Hill, SC

            Monarch Tile, Inc., Florence, AL

            Duke Power Co., Charlotte, NC

            Vantas Co., Charlotte, NC

            ICL Inc., Charlotte, NC

More Information

• www.keithbryantsculpture.com – Official website.
• coaa.uncc.edu/people/keith-bryant