Working with Joy means to wake up and open up to an endless personal universe of images that nourish your soul.  Encounters with this world can be exhilarating and frightening but always life affirming.  Joy provides the space, materials, encouragement, and safety to enter this encounter with images from the interior.  You can expect to be surprised, transformed and released. What is not known becomes known through the process of allowing an image to emerge. We try always to remember that the image is secondary to the process.  This work is not about creating “art” but about taking a journey into our heart and soul and making an image that then speaks to that process and reveals something known or unknown.
 
How does this happen?  Together we create a safe environment for our inner critic to be tricked into doing something other than protect us.  While our critic is out of the room, the image that wants to be revealed comes through the simple process of applying a material to a surface and then following intuition to the next shape or color.  We find ourselves in the moment, out of time and space until the piece is done.
 
Joy’s large and bright studio holds shelves and drawers of well-stocked paper and art materials organized in such a way that they are visible and easily accessible.  You will feel as if someone has let you loose in an art supply store.  
 
You need absolutely no experience with making art or using art materials.  Joy and the materials will invite you to go at your individual pace and to discover this world in the way that meets your particular need. 
 
Joy works with people individually and in groups.  Working individually means that you and Joy spend some time talking and figuring out where the entry point is for your work with images.  Then you work on your own with Joy available as needed.  When you finish, we spend some time discussing your process and what happened internally.
 
Groups generally start with a short meditation and a “check-in” when individuals say a little about what is happening for them in the moment.  This time helps to create a feeling of containment and assurance.  It also often brings a subject or image to mind for that person or for another in the group.  We work together silently in the studio for a period of time.  At the end we talk as a group about what happened for us during the “studio” time.  We show our work not for criticism but for elucidation. 
 
People working with Joy and in her studio say they experience a release, a freedom and a sense of their spirit moving and enlivening.  They often say that the mystery of the creative process is revealed not through a rational explanation but through intuition and emotion.  A greater mystery is experienced through the small gesture of paint on paper.
 
 
 
CLASSES:
 
Off the Edges and Outside the Lines
This workshop is for people who want time to explore imagery using art materials, increase their intuitive faculties and try out ideas on paper without facing criticism or judgment. Joy presents several ways to access an image and explain how to work with it using the simple art materials provided. A variety of art materials will be available including watercolors, collage materials, pencils, pens and oil crayons. Art phobic individuals are encouraged to attend. 
 
 
Silkscreen Workshops
You learn the basics of this simple printing process which involves making a stencil and squeezing ink through it onto a piece of paper, layering colors on top of one another.  You can expect to leave with an armful of colorful prints and the feeling that your brain got a light workout as well.
 
A monthly favorite for many, these workshops are a lot of fun.  We take a relaxed approach to making the images with the silkscreen process.  This is NOT the silkscreen class you may have labored through in the past.  We don't mind if all the stencils don't line up exactly - in fact we like it when things don't work out exactly because it gives us the next idea.  The motto in this studio is: "it's not possible to make a mistake."  We play with color and shape and end up with a pile of very satisfying images.  The way we make silkscreens here guarantees satisfaction.
 
Private Instruction – individual and groups
Joy works with people individually.  We schedule time and then decide how we want to work together and for how long.