Artist Bio

From the coast of southern California Briana moved to Missouri for the Kansas City Art Institute. She graduated in 2007 with a BFA in Fiber, specializing in weaving. From there she fled the art world & joined the Peace Corps, working & living with rural women weavers in a small village in the Middle Atlas Mountains where people lived close to their food & other natural resources. After Morocco she moved on to sustainable farming in Massachusetts, where she met her eventual partner. After settling in Kentucky & saddled with college debt she became a Licensed Massage Therapist & farmed on the side. Making art or weaving again were far from her mind.

After the birth of her first child in 2014 she became interested in woven wraps to carry him in. Rather than buy a wrap she decided to purchase a used loom & weave her own. She soon fell deeply back in love with weaving. Making wraps at first, but soon rediscovered her joy in small color, fiber & texture studies, conveniently of a size suited to cowls.

She continued to dive into her weaving while struggling with PPD & PPA after the birth of her second child in 2016. Finding others interested in her work & wanting to sustain her weaving habit financially she started Bri Weaves and began attending shows & craft fairs in 2018.

In 2019 she was accepted into Kentucky Crafted,* stopped massaging to focus on the business, & promptly got pregnant with her last baby.

The worldwide pandemic, cancellation of all shows & craft fairs & birth of her last baby required big pivots in 2020, as did a move further into the city in 2021 & a chronic pain diagnosis in 2022 of Trigeminal Neuralgia. Through it all she wove, & some semblance of stability returned. She currently sells her goods via porch shopping, online sales & open studio days from her home & urban homestead in Louisville, Kentucky. She also does a limited number of craft fairs & shows work in local exhibitions. She can often be spotted walking the neighborhood as the “goat lady” with her two Nigoras, Betty & Boon, who produce cashmere for her products, or with some combination of her three rambunctious human kids, Eldon, Arlo & Remy.

Bri Weaves would not exist without the unending support of her husband Josh, & his business, Southern Solar LLC, local family who regularly take on childcare, & dear friends & loyal customers who buy & honestly review her products. Bri Weaves has afforded her her dream loom, fiber goats, a plethora of yarns & dyes & limitless fiber, color & texture combinations to discover through the joy of weaving. Bri Weaves is now self-sustaining & intentionally contributes to local organizations for the betterment of her community. She could not be more grateful to be doing this work.

* Kentucky Crafted is the symbol of artistic excellence and quality craftsmanship reserved exclusively for artists adjudicated into the Kentucky Arts Council’s Kentucky Crafted Program. The Kentucky Arts Council is the state arts agency funded by the Kentucky General Assembly and the National Endowment for the Arts.