The James Renwick Alliance named him Distinguished Glass Artist for 2014,[5] and subsequently Janis presented a talk about his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

[6] He has also received over ten separate District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities' Artist Fellowship awards,[7][8][9][10][11] most recently for FY 2025.

[15][16] Janis has exhibited a 2011 solo show at The Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts,[39] as well as the Portsmouth Art & Cultural Center, Portsmouth, VA,[40] the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA,[41] Ohio Craft Museum, Columbus, OH,[42] Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD,[26] Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago, IL,[43] Sunderland Museum, Sunderland, England,[44] Flemish Center for Contemporary Glass Art, Lommel, Belgium,[45] National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center Gallery, Bethesda, MD,[26] Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL,[46] and Lynchburgh College, VA.[47] In 2021 he was one of the artists invited to The Phillips Collection's juried invitational, Inside Outside, Upside Down exhibition, a show that was described by The Washington City Paper art critic as forcing "us to remember a time that left us 'confused, battered, and disoriented' through the eyes of 64 D.C.-area artists.

"[49] At the 2022 collateral exhibition Glasstress of the 59th Venice Biennale of Arts by Adriano Berengo, A special collaborative sculpture work by Tim Tate, Michael Janis and Chris Shea was installed in Berengo Studio's Art Space in Murano, an old glass making furnace abandoned in 1965 and transformed into an exhibition space.

The show's large central cast glass and copper sculpture by the trio presented themes on climate change denial.