About
Joshua Steven Bryant is an interdisciplinary artist making sculptures and paintings inspired by personal experiences, community, accessibility, and humor. Joshua’s work stems from experiences with disability through chronic pain that left him largely immobile for two years. From that time spent chair-bound, chairs have become a visual link across his work.
Bryant’s process is a blend of abstraction and conceptualism, heavily intuitive and a way for him to think out loud. He earned his BFAs and MFA from the University of North Texas. Bryant teaches studio art for UNT and has co-founded Paper Chair Studios, a nonprofit supporting local North Texas artists.
I keep coming back to the chair; not because I decided it should mean something, but because I spent years dependent on chairs early on with my chronic back pain. So the chair is still with me in a way nothing else is, showing up one way or another. The chair appears sometimes as an image, other times only as material: found wood, furniture, hardware, paint, and fabric that are disassembled and reassembled into new forms.
The process is between me and the material: friction, synthesis, intuition, and underneath that, a guilt I can't quite name. The materials and design choices guide most of my work aesthetically, but the process itself is inconsistent. Sometimes it’s tight and controlled, sometimes rough and precarious. Sometimes a piece takes days and feels like a lingering argument. Sometimes the process takes minutes, because something in it is balanced, even if only for a moment, and I was present enough to feel it.
The materials get the same patience I'm trying to give myself. From my time spent in chairs, a certain empathy grew. Beginning with chairs and extending to any object around me. They have their own bodies too, so I work around what they already are.
My practice reflects the relationship between me and the world around me.
Between me and what's expected of me.
Between my disability, my queerness, my soul, my community, and the systems that hold all of that together as I understand them.
Between me and wanting new systems, and the exhaustion of looking for them, and the pull toward just being content against my own complacency.
There's a small-town boy in me who wants things simple. There's the rest of me that wants to push against everything from that childhood experience. The work holds both. Each piece celebrates being individual and grieves how that individuality separates us.
The process and finished product are equal, reflecting my idealism, and next to it, everything I regret about failing it: the energy I don't have, my changing abilities to physically and mentally engage with the world around me, the things I could build and don't, the distance between who I think I am and who I actually am.
CV
Education
M.F.A. University of North Texas, College of Visual Arts and Design, Drawing & Painting
B.F.A. University of North Texas, College of Visual Arts and Design, Double Major: Drawing & Painting, Ceramics
Solo Shows
If I Would Have Did, I Would Have Done, Arts Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX (2023)
Keep it Between You and Me and the Neighbors, Cora Stafford Gallery, University of North Texas, Denton, TX (2022)
It’s Sickening and Stupid and You All Care, Brick Haus Collective, Denton, TX (2016)
Group Shows
You Are Here., Golden Triangle Mall Central Court, Denton, TX (2026)
The Eclectika’s 10th Anniversary Show, The Eclectika, Irving, TX (2026)
A Good Gathering, The Pool Near Southside, Fort Worth, TX, Curated by Dev’n Goodman and Shasta Haubrich (2025)
Deck the Hallways, Easyside, Fort Worth, TX (2024)
The Something out of Nothing, The Eclectika, Irving, TX, Curated by MCat Davis (2024)
Harbor Freight, Arts Fort Worth, Dale Brock & Visiting Angels Gallery, Fort Worth, TX, Curated by Kickpidgeon Kids (2023)
Chaos 9, Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX (2023)
Now Kith, The Pool, Fort Worth, TX, Curated by Kickpidgeon Kids (2022)
Chaos 8!, Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX (2022)
College Expo 2022, 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX, Juried by Jer’Lisa Devezin (2022)
DIGITAL MONSTERS, Solo Show, Online Exhibition, Curated by Nathan Harper (2021)
REMADE/READYMADE/POWERADE, Herschel Weisfeld Project Space, Dallas, TX, Group show in collaboration with Victoria Gonzales, Erika Jaeggli, and Claire Kennedy (2021)
30 Under 30, Greater Denton Arts Council, Denton, TX, Juried by Colby Parsons, Ann Howington, Ginger Cochran, Reanna DiPaolo, Katie Mont, Jeff Scott, Christine Sanders, and Jenny Bates (2020)
2020, Ro2 Art Gallery, Dallas, TX, Juried by Jordan Roth (2020)
Digital Dream Tour, Risen Shine Digital Gallery, Denton, TX, Curated by Claire Kennedy (2020)
Rising Eyes of Texas, Rockport Center for the Arts, Rockport, TX, Juried by Rebecca Gomez (2020)
College Expo 2020, 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX, Juried by Tamara Johnson and Trey Burns (2020)
Queer Me Now, The MAC, Dallas, TX, Curated by Narong Tintamusik (2020)
Queer Me Now, 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX, Curated by Narong Tintamusik (2019)
Draft Motors, UNT on the Square, Denton, TX, Curated by Matthew Bourbon (2019)
Expo 2018, 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX, Juried by Lee Escobedo (2018)
Sonar Scan, Brick Haus Collective, Denton, TX, Juried by Christopher Blay (2016)
56th Annual Voertman’s, UNT Main Gallery, Denton, TX (2016)
Raw Talent: 500X College Expo, 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX, Juried by Ariel Saldivar (2016)
Hybrid, North Gallery, Denton, TX, Juried by Margaret Meehan (2015)
500X Student Expo, 500X Gallery, Dallas, TX, Juried by Jordan Roth and Susan Roth (2015)
Curatorial
Eclektibition, The Eclectika, Irving, TX (2025)
First Impressions, Lewisville Grand Theatre, Lewisville, TX (2021)
Publications
Denton artists are starved for studio space. A new local arts group wants to help solve the problem, Lucinda Breeding-Gonzales, Denton Record Chronicle (2026)
Depictions of Nature, Memory, and Home at Arts Fort Worth, Jessica Fuentes, Glasstire (2023)
Joshua Steven Bryant: If I Would Have Did, I Would Have Done, Glasstire (2023)
REMADE/READYMADE/POWERADE, Glasstire (2021)
Queer Me Now: The Queer Body and Gaze, Glasstire (2020)
500X “Queer Me Now” Exhibition Removed Following Alleged Complaint From Building Management, Christopher Blay, Glasstire (2019)
JUNGLE TENDER: Edition No. 4, Curated by Nicole Chochrek (2018)