Ryan Lytle

Toolbox is a series of sculptures made from fiber and 3D printed materials that explore the relationship between technology, nature, and the human condition. This series highlights the challenges of labor in a society that is becoming more computerized and reliant on the gig economy.

These forms combine the synthetic and the organic to express the duality of life and utility. They are intended to convey feelings of familiarity while also subverting assumptions about usefulness and worth. The tension between human interaction and automated manufacturing is what I hope to emphasize by fusing digital technology with human touch. In our society, where workers are often viewed as expendable resources, these hybrid creatures symbolize the fragility of both labor and life. They serve as a reminder of the individuals behind the tools, whose contributions are frequently overlooked in favor of efficiency and profit. The use of fiber, a material that is both tactile and intimate, contrasts with the indiscriminate precision of 3D printing, emphasizing the emotional disconnect that can arise in a disposable economy. What does it mean to be a tool in a world that values speed over substance?

These works are part of a series of stuffed animal accumulation pieces inspired in part from my childhood collection. While constructing these sculptures, I found myself considering the nature and role of stuffed animals. They are most often given as gifts/comfort items to children (and adults) or meant to commemorate an event or accomplishment. They can be a proxy for loved ones separated by distance or sometimes just a marketing tool for brand recognition. Despite their versatile reasons for them coming into existence, stuffed animals have appeal for the same reasons. They are typically soft, cute, and easy to cuddle. What happens when the novelty wears off or relationships change? What is the path these stuffed animals take that leads them from being sleeping and traveling companions to at a thrift store being sold by the pound? I like to think of these sculptures as an accumulation of not only stuffed animals, but as a collection of memories and our acknowledgement of others.

For Dollhaus: Reimagining The Domestic Space, the Barry Art Museum has invited each artist to select a room of their choice, from bedrooms to formal dining rooms. Each participant receives an empty box and will design an interior that reflects their artistic practice. Encompassing glass, textiles, painting, and more, this exhibit will both celebrate the dollhouse as an artistic form and serve as a three-dimensional celebration of ODU’s creative faculty, with each room highlighting the diversity, creativity, and skill of Hampton Roads’ artistic scene. 

Table Etiquette (Dining Room)

2024

Fabric, Wool, Wood, PLA Plastic, Found Objects, LED Light

Fiber Friends is a playful exploration of material, color and pattern, heavily influenced by pop art and drawing on symbols from the natural world. The works explore identity through obscuring the wearer’s face, replacing it with boldly colored cartoonish figures of plants and animals.

Ryan Lytle and Kristin Skees have been real-life Fiber Friends for five years, both developing individual bodies of work using bold color and unconventional fiber processes. Ryan’s felted sculptures reinterpret animal totems as a vehicle for self-exploration, and the ecosystems of relationships using animals as personal metaphor. Kristin’s conceptual photographs of wearable knitted cozies explore personal identity and how it is revealed or constricted through interpersonal relationships and the relationship between artist and viewer.

Together, this Fiber Friends collaboration melds Ryan and Kristin’s individual working processes and concepts, relishing in their love of color and finding beauty in the absurd.

See more of Kristin’s work at https://www.kristinskees.com/ or https://www.instagram.com/kristinskees/

These works are a part of an ongoing series of installations based on foxes and their roles in folklore and mythology. Foxes are known for their meddling in human, animal, and spiritual world. As tricksters they manipulate the normal order of the world and create strange and unusual situations. Tricksters rebel against authority, poke fun at the overly serious, create convoluted schemes that may or may not work, and play with the laws of the universe. They exist to question, to cause us to question and not accept things blindly. The stories of the fox and of tricksters are often cautionary tales reflecting the concerns of society at the time. I believe that visual artists have a lot in common with the trickster, we present connections and points of view through manipulation of materials. We create illusions to present the world as we see it or to communicate ideas and messages.

These works were made as part of programing on pollinators for the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX

Cartoons and animation in all their technicolor splendor were a big influence on me as a child and continue to inform my work as an artist today. The generally accepted first use of the “falling anvil” trick occurred 1942 Warner Brothers cartoon "A Tale of Two Kitties" in which one of the animated cats unknowingly pulls an anvil off a roof onto himself burying him deep into the earth. The anvil was likely chosen as the common heavy object in animation simply because it was much easier to draw and reproduce than a piano or safe for example. Although not as commonplace as they were in the 1942, anvils continue to be synonymous with heft and crushing weight.

An homage to my childhood love for cartoons, Suspended Animation is a frozen moment of time in which anvils are suspended by ropes above targets placed on the floor. The installation lies dormant like a paused tv screen until activated by the viewer in the space when the potential weight of the anvils looms overhead. These forms represent the anxieties and pressures that hang over us as we navigate our lives and try to not get crushed.

The Chase

A temporary public project created for the NEON Arts Festival in 2017, then expanded on in 2018 with the inclusion of a community workshop. Woven relief sculpture panels, located on Olny Street in Norfolk Virginia.