We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joy Redstone a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

I have been a social worker for 27 years. My career has spanned prison work, ER work and homelessness, a well as my current job, running a low income mental health clinic. Being a therapist has taught my the importance of empathy and emotion, but also that the “devil is in the details.” Both of these lessons have been invaluable as an artist

Empathy is a crucial ingredient to my process of making art. Firstly, I must have empathy for my younger self, which is difficult at times. When I witness my life, I often want to apply the knowledge I have now to my earlier decisions, which is unfair. Often, when I am making art, I am remembering a certain experience or emotion. I am not too proud to acknowledge that I have experienced difficulties and I don’t pretend that my past actions were always wise, or that they honored myself. I don’t always have words to describe the feelings of those experience, and it is an act of kindness and empathy to my former self to release those feelings in art.

Empathy relates to art in another way. I try to project myself into the person who is viewing the art. Imagining their world, imagining the way they may relate to the subject of the photograph, or the colors. I think about the emotions I felt when taking the photograph and wonder whether the person the person who is viewing it is feeling the same ones, or different ones. I imagine that it will offer them healing to recognize beauty, connect to grief, touch the transcendent. I wish to give them those gifts.

Details are important when you are working with the inner worlds of human beings, If you make a promise, you damn well better keep it. If someone tells you one of their most painful secrets, you damn well better remember it. If you are communicating with people that are tending to your person’s medical wellbeing, you damn well better remember all the details.

Details are important to art. I make assemblage art, and glue hundreds of small items together to form a coherent symbolic whole. That takes both attention to detail and an ability to step back to view the image as a whole. But, in terms of the detail, each tiny rock or shell has to be glued in a lasting way. Often, each tiny item has to be revisited many times to make sure that the glue seal is permanent.

The perseverance learned from supporting other humans is important when it comes to making sure that the bonds are lasting in the art.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I became an artist late in life. Eight years ago, I experienced a bereavement which brought me to my knees. Yet, it transformed me. Time slowed and I began to focus in on the tiniest of items, such as stones, broken glass, bullet casings, broken jewelry, wood pieces, feathers, bones, and beads. I gathered these items and started to arrange them in patterns that mirrored my inner world, releasing the need to qualify and categorize my life experiences as either good or bad. I use what is broken, discarded and what I find in nature. My art recognizes and highlights a tension in the disparate value our collective places on broken, mundane, and discarded objects. Every fragment creates meaning when reassembled into a different form. I tell these stories to create and share meaning.

Irrepressible joy and unquenchable sorrow have touched my life, and pour through my hands into each piece of art. . I can only tell my story in fragments, as befits a person who fragmented before she knew what is was to be whole and rushed into the world with her broken pieces in outstretched hands, seeking.

I primarily make assemblage art although I have begun to branch into photography, and have recently had photographs accepted into juried shows. With my art, I celebrate beauty, create resilience, practice mindfulness and tell my story.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I am currently in the middle of a pivot. Last year, I had Covid for 6 months. I am luckier than most, and even though I was at times devastatingly sick, I am alive and continuing to heal. But, one of the ways that it affected me was cognitively. I experienced severe executive functioning issues and had to take a medical leave from work for a month. The best example that I can give about what it was like was that it was very difficult for me to understand when people were speaking to me, as I wasn’t necessarily expecting their response. I could hear their words, but it was like listening to a foreign language. I couldn’t sequence events, and I felt like I wandered around the house for a month, looking for my glasses and my phone. It was disconcerting to say the least, but it forced me to confront the way I had constructed my identity around being a smart and productive person. Without those touchstones, and stripped of the things that made me feel like myself, I had to look at the ways my self image relied on work and not on self love.

I went back to work and have struggled for a year with the physical and cognitive demands. Perhaps others can’t tell the difference, but I can. I am leaving my full time job directing a mental health clinic and am opening up a therapy private practice. There are many different motivations, but amongst them is the fact that it has at times been bruisingly difficult to work full time, single parent and a working artist. I have made a commitment to myself to put art at the center of my life. I look forward to making art in the day time rather than late at night. I look forward to dropping art off at galleries in the middle of the day without trying to have my meetings on the phone while I drive on I-25 or working late to make up for the missed time. I look forward to the way that ideas percolate and expand when given time and exposure to the natural world.

And while there are many reasons to believe that I will be successful, there is still the fear of the unknown. But I choose to trust.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I love communicating with people through art. On a few occasions, people have cried when they looked at a piece of my art, without even knowing the painful story which prompted the piece. Art is a communication, I believe, and I am trying to tell the stories that are most central to my life. When a person is that moved, I know that we are in a conversation that transcends words, that are hearts are speaking of what is most important and meaningful to us. I have always been a person of words, as befits a therapist, but I love learning this new language that is beyond words.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://worksofjoy.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joyredstone/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joy.eckstine/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joy-redstone/