Jay is represented in Germany by Feinkunst Krueger Gallery in Hamburg, and is represented in the U.K. by Richard Goodall Gallery in Manchester.

Jay has spoken about his work for students at several universities, including Northwestern University, Columbia College of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Arkansas State University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Jay's other passion is playing in a band called Dianogah http://www.dianogah.com/ , which has been together for eight years, released three albums and a small pile of singles, toured the U.S. extensively, toured Europe three times, played in Chile, written soundtrack music for a John Hughes movie ("Reach The Rock"), played the "All Tomorrow's Parties" festival in the UK (with Cheap Trick, Mission of Burma, Wire, the Fall, amongst others) and is regularly featured as background music on NPR’s "This American Life".

The Bird Machine:

The Bird Machine was started in Chicago in 1998 by Jay Ryan, as a tiny garage sale of a print shop geared towards screen printing posters, which Jay designed for his band and other small bands. Jay had learned to screen print at the legendary Screwball Press under the watchful and never-blinking eye of Steve Walters beginning in 1995. During the period from '96 through '98, Jay worked at Screwball, printing other people's designs and designing and printing his own unique hand-drawn posters for bands such as Shellac, Fugazi, Stereolab, Hum, Seam, June of 44, and his own band, Dianogah.

When Screwball Press lost its lease at the end of 1998, Jay took the equipment he had accumulated over the years and moved to his cramped basement, thus setting up shop as 'The Bird Machine'. After several months, Jay was able to hire Mat Daly, newly transplanted from Pittsburgh, to help pull prints while Jay spent more time laying out posters by hand. Mat had a background in painting, and was soon designing his own posters, as well. During this time, Diana Sudyka became involved in poster collaborations with Jay, and began a gradual shift away from etching and into screen printing as her medium of choice.

During 2001 and 2002, long-time customer Dan Grzeca began printing his own work (for the Chicago avant-garde jazz community) at the shop, and Nick Butcher came to work at The Bird Machine as an intern while completing his bachelor's degree in Tennessee. Both of these artists brought the unique looks of their respective painting addictions to the shop, and adapted them accordingly to the screen print medium.

The Bird Machine shop moved across town in the fall of 2002, to a larger workspace where Jay would no longer bump his head on the ceiling. The shop has become a sort of round-the-clock workplace for the five people involved, with paintings, drawings, and hand-cut rubylith constantly battling for space on the worktables. The main focus of the shop remains on printing posters, which Jay has designed, but the give-and-take inherent in five creative people working in close proximity has affected the work of all.