Born in Chicago, IL
Lives and works in Washington, DC
Michael Janis is a contemporary artist who works primarily in glass,
using figurative and narrative forms to explore identity, assimilation,
and collective memory. His work bridges studio glass and contemporary
art, positioning glass as a conceptual medium through which social history
and psychological experience are examined.
Drawing from layered family histories — as the child of a Chinese
and Filipino immigrant and the grandson of Greek and German immigrants
— Janis’s work is informed by questions of belonging, transformation,
and cultural inheritance. Trained originally as an architect, he brings
a disciplined, structural approach to glass, combining material precision
with narrative ambiguity.
After a twenty-year career in architecture in the United States and
Australia, Janis returned to the U.S. to focus fully on his artistic
practice. In 2005, he became Co-Director of the Washington Glass School
in Washington, DC, where he has played a central role in advancing individual
artistic inquiry, public art, and community-engaged projects.
Janis has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Florida
Art Glass Alliance Emerging Artist Award (2009), the Bay Area Glass
Institute Saxe Fellowship (2010), and designation as a “Rising
Star” at Wheaton Arts (2011). His work has been featured in the
Corning Museum of Glass’s New Glass Review (#30 and #31), and he
received the 31st Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in the Arts
from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
The Fuller Craft Museum mounted a solo exhibition of Janis’s glass
panels and sculpture in 2011, and his work is held in the museum’s
permanent collection. Additional permanent collections include the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Imagine Museum (FL), the Fort Wayne Museum
of Art, the Baker Museum, and the American Glass Museum.
Janis’s practice also includes significant public art commissions
that extend his interest in narrative, history, and collective memory
into civic space. Notable projects include the design of monumental
cast-glass doors for the Library of Congress Adams Building and a front-entry
sculpture for Prince George’s County’s Laurel Library. In
Washington, DC, he was commissioned by the DC Office of Planning and
the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities to develop a major public
art memorial honoring the enslaved people who built the U.S. Capitol,
a community-engaged project bringing visibility to the foundational
yet often overlooked labor that shaped the nation’s capital. In
October 2025, Janis was awarded the commission for the front sculpture
at the new Harriet Tubman Elementary School in Washington, DC.
Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2012, Janis taught at the National
Glass Centre at the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom and
served as an Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for International
Research in Glass (IIRG). His work has been widely published, including
an extensive profile in American Craft Magazine (April/May 2013), followed
by an interview detailing his studio’s role in creating cast glass
panels for the U.S. Library of Congress.
In 2014, the James Renwick Alliance named Janis a Distinguished Glass
Artist, and he presented a public lecture on his work at the Smithsonian
American Art Museum. In 2024, the Lowe Art Museum at the University
of Miami named Janis a Distinguished Artist, where he presented his
work and conducted workshops