December 21, 1971 · January 20, 2026
Bryant Lee Benoit
Mixed media collage artist and storyteller from Lafayette, Louisiana. Owner, with his wife Joey, of Benoit Gallery Indigenous Art.
Harmony Street
Bryant was a brick mason by blood. He learned the trade from his father, then studied architecture at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now UL Lafayette.
In design studio the students read poetry and built three-dimensional objects from it. “Taking words, internalizing it into a 3D form, adding color, texture and giving it reason to manifest or to exist,” he said years later. “It opened up Pandora’s box.”
He went to work in construction as a residential and then commercial project manager. He built homes across the Houston area and managed construction of the Fairfield Inn on Pinhook Road in Lafayette, the Waterhouse Apartments at Sugar Mill Pond in Youngsville and the Fairfield Inn in Mansfield, Texas.
In 2009, recovering from knee surgery, he asked Joey to buy him art supplies. He could already draw. He tried watercolor, then acrylic, then began laying paper and photographs into the paint. Joey posted the early pieces online, and collectors in California and across the country bought them before most of Lafayette knew his name.
Benoit Gallery Indigenous Art
A room for the stories.
Bryant and Joey opened Benoit Gallery on Jefferson Street in downtown Lafayette in August 2013. As a self-taught artist he didn’t want to hand half of every sale to someone else’s walls, so he built his own. People he had never met walked in to tell him their stories and show him their art.
The pandemic closed the downtown space in 2020. He rebuilt in the blue building on North University Avenue that had been his uncle’s TV shop, family land held for decades, with old cypress, plaster and paint, and reopened in November 2021.
“The name is Benoit Gallery Indigenous Art for a reason. It’s an umbrella. My art is about Creole culture, Black culture, Indigenous culture, all culture, because it’s under the same umbrella.”
In his words
“I’m a collage artist because I take images, photos and different backgrounds and collage them together, because even though you think everything is different there’s a fine line where everything actually is the same.”
Black Artists as Community Leaders in Acadiana, 2022
“I don’t like to paint scenes. I like to take the emotions behind it.”
The Southern View Magazine, 2018
“The collage for me tells the story of the old, the ancestors, and the new and the modern and how it’s all coming together.”
NEWS 15, 2023
A life in the work
Selected milestonesBorn on the winter solstice
December 21, to Mary and Russell Benoit. Raised on Harmony Street in Washington Heights, north Lafayette.
Begins making art
Recovering from knee surgery, he asks Joey for art supplies. Drawing turns to watercolor, then to acrylic and paper collage.
Benoit Gallery opens downtown
In August, on Jefferson Street in downtown Lafayette, after years of selling online.
Let Freedom Ring
Commissioned by Je’Nelle Chargois to create the first African American History Celebration commemorative poster. He made the series for years after.
Zydeco Extravaganza
Official commemorative posters for both years.
Creole Woman
Commissioned by singer and songwriter Erica Fox, unveiled at the gallery in January.
Passin Tyme on the record
His painting becomes the cover of Keith Frank’s The Resurrection of the Creole Connection. In November the gallery reopens on North University Avenue.
A Cultural Collage Interpretation
Solo exhibition at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, November 2022 through February 2023.
Festival International de Louisiane
His first year as a festival artisan.
ArtSpark grant
From the Acadiana Center for the Arts and the Lafayette Economic Development Authority, to paint portraits of influential Black leaders and cultural pioneers.
January 20
Bryant passes at 54.
Where to see it
Youngsville
Louisiana Sugar Mill
Purchased by the City of Youngsville. On view at the Youngsville Sports Complex.
Lafayette
Livin on the Land
Chosen by the McComb-Veazey Coterie for the ArtBox at Pinhook Road and Surrey Street.
On record
Passin Tyme
The cover of Keith Frank’s The Resurrection of the Creole Connection.
Commissions
The Longest Table · Bloodlines
A poster for Lafayette Consolidated Government’s Conversation Starters project, and a piece for a stage production drawn from the work of Ernest J. Gaines.
Family
Joey
Bryant met Joey Thibeaux in 1996. They married on September 9, 2000, and had just marked twenty-five years. He raised her son, Clem “CJ” Washington, as his own and adored their granddaughter, Aryanna.
Joey ran the business side of the gallery from the start. Today she leads the foundation and keeps the gallery open by appointment.
Bryant was a brother of Kappa Alpha Psi, Theta Nu chapter.
“Now, I will tell Your story. As promised.”
Joey Thibeaux Benoit, from the dedication of The Stories He Left Behind