Loralei R. Byatt is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes photography, collage, assemblage, and multimedia installations. Collage has been a focus for many years but it is not limited to 2-D pieces.
She creates collages on x-ray light boxes using translucent materials—her own photographs printed on transparency paper, found film negatives, circuit board schematics, and found numbers and letters. The concept was expanded when she made a whole house into a light box. Similar materials were affixed to the windows of an historic row house in Detroit. Passersby could see her collages from the street. Byatt used this approach again in a piece in Womxnhouse Detroit, a neighborhood house that was filled with artist installations. To show the emotional difficulties of growing up with an alcoholic parent, she made the assemblage on four windows using x-rays of a fractured foot, family photos and self-portraits printed on transparency paper. Byatt was a semifinalist in Contemporary Collage Magazine’s collage awards for this body of work in 2023.
She also creates altered artist books by collaging onto the pages of old books and completed two series of collages on flash cards that are displayed on rusted metal sheets.
Byatt’s work reflects the city that she lives in—Detroit. Although she grew up on the prairies of Canada, she has fallen in love with the city. The grit and industry make their way into her art.