Kari Elizabeth Byron (born December 18, 1974) is a San Francisco-based artist and television host, best known for her featured role on the Discovery Channel show MythBusters. On the show MythBusters, Byron is featured along with fellow Build Team members Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara and also assists co-hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman in testing the plausibility of various myths. She became involved in the show after persistently showing up at Hyneman's M5 Industries workshop in a desire to get hired at his company.
On her first day as a paid employee, she was asked by Jamie and MythBusters producer Peter Rees to help out with the "vacuum plane toilet" myth, and she was asked to model her buttocks for a cast: a job which would later have her comment (jokingly) that she was hired "for her butt". She was given a more prominent role in the show starting with its second season. Not having had a long history in show business, at first she found it hard to act naturally with this more visible position but gradually became more used to it.
Art and sculpting are important aspects of her life, and she has claimed that she creates some form of art every day, stating, "I would go crazy if I didn't." Some of her preferred sculpting materials are polymer clay, various found objects, acrylic gouache, wood and metals. Byron showcases some of her art on her personal website, and photography from her public exhibit debut Stray Doll in September 2004 is available at Anno Domini. She believes being an artist is a hard career to choose, but has found inspiration in artists such as various SECCA award winners in the past.
Preferring to make her audience think, she has had the following to say about her art: