Jay Granniss is an artist from Salem, Massachusetts, who works in woodcraft, textile manipulations, and found objects. Granniss always had a need to understand how things worked. They took apart their toys and TV remotes to look at the circuits that drove them, much to the annoyance of their parents. Granniss’ mother was a theater director at a local high school, and instilled a love of theater in them. They began as an actor but eventually moved backstage, where they could build and design sets and props.

Granniss started woodworking at the age of 13 when they took over a section of their parents’ garage to turn it into a studio. It was in this makeshift space that they gained a fascination with design. Because of this interest, they studied engineering at Union College for two years. As an intern with the Santa Fe Opera, where their passion for technical theater evolved. After freelancing as a stagehand in Boston for a year, they wanted to apply that knowledge to the fine arts space and transferred to Montserrat to study sculpture. Their sculptures focus on the environment and upcycling materials left on the side of the road into artwork. From their background in engineering, they also incorporate technology into their work. They are specifically interested in the hardware side of tech, how it augments human biology and psychology from fabrication machines, to computers, to fabric.