The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Janice Lessman-Moss
Professor Emeritus Kent State UniversitySchool of ArtKent OH 44240 United States Home Phone: 3309310739 Website: http://www.janicelessman-moss.com
Bio
Janice Lessman-Moss is a weaver who engages the unique vocabulary of digital design in relation to the binary functioning of threads on the loom to create her art. She has been awarded numerous Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council beginning in 1984, and received an Arts Midwest/National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Crafts. Lessman-Moss won the prestigious Governor’s Award for the Arts in Ohio in 2016, the Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, and a coveted United States Artists Fellowship also in 2019. Her work been presented throughout the United States and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the Kent State University Museum, Galleria Willa in Lodz, Poland, the Museum of Fine Art and Culture in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Praxis Gallery in Cleveland. In addition to exhibiting her digital weavings, she has created commissioned work for the Usona Institute, Madison, Wisconsin; the National Polymer Innovation Center at the University of Akron and for private residences. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Lessman-Moss resides in Kent, Ohio where she is Emeritus Professor of Art at Kent State University. She received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University and MFA from the University of Michigan.
Artist Statement
As a weaver I embrace the connection between the computer and the loom to create works of beauty and meaning. The two tools share a common binary language that link the matrix of pixels on the computer screen with the intersection of threads on the loom. The generative potential of both tools facilitate the creation of networks of systems, based on the circle and the square, that form the foundation of my work. The virtual environment of the computer provides possibilities for imagining, improvisation, serendipity, for layering shapes and lines in a relationship of organic and orchestrated evolution. Output on the loom represents a methodical accumulation of moments mapped through the construction of materials, engaging the hand and body in a rhythmic unfolding of a unified whole. This connection of the abstract and concrete provides the platform for the development of my ideas and my continuing fascination with the integration of form and surface. Motifs interact in a complex topography of pattern creating an immersive experience of color and texture, rich with poetic associations.
