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

Alright, Joyce thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you wish you had started sooner?

Hahaha, I hope these answers sound natural and not confusing. My apologies in advance.

I believe that everything in life happens with time. For example, if I wasn’t an artist now, I would still be an artist in the future cause it always comes back to me. I kind of like the concept of “past, present and future intertwining at the same time”. But to answer the question, I don’t feel like I should’ve started my creative career sooner, but I do wish I had more confidence in my creative abilities when I was younger.
So there’s kind of two stories to this. One in relation to music, and one in relation to visual arts.

For music, my parents placed me in piano courses at the age of 3, singing at the age of 6. The learning of it was very much like “Go to school, practice every week, do performances” rinse repeat. When I used to take lessons in Philadelphia, my teacher (shout out to Alice) would always reward me with movies or restaurant days; those moments made piano fun to do. After I moved to Montreal, I had 3 different teachers, and I started taking piano exams so it stopped being fun. I quit at the age of 14 or 15? Comparison of other people’s skills in relation to mine was a huge factor in my growth for both music and art.

For singing, I stopped on and off cause multiple “friends” told me that my singing was bad, or my lyrics weren’t good. I had so many teachers back then encouraging me to sing and told me that I was good, but the negative comments kicked in more. That effected my ability to sing in public.

My only relation to music after that, was me playing indie music games on like… New ground or Miniclip. These game devs, would create games with premade sound patterns, and you would just make a song out of them or I would play Guitar Hero or Amplitude. I was also testing out Garage Band but not really understanding what I was doing. . When I reached Sec 1 (grade 7), I had a music class and played both bass and drums. That only lasted for a year. I switched schools and couldn’t get into any music or art classes for some reason until Sec4 (grade 10), I was able to get placed in a music class, but specifically for singing. We ended up performing in front of the school for a Christmas event. After highschool, I went to pursue other things in life…but…
What REALLY sparked my music career was a break up during my study in University. I used to listen to my X’s songs constantly because his music helped with my anxiety.
So when we broke up, my anxiety skyrocketed, and realized I couldn’t listen to his music anymore, so I started making music for myself.
That break up, not only helped me discover (rediscover?) my passion for music, but it also made me meet some cool wonderful people at the time that helped me excel. Because of them I’m a DJ now and working on releasing new music.

For visual arts, I was inspired during my elementary school years through my brothers (and classmate) always drawing in their note books. I would try to imitate what they would do, and create my own design.
What really sparked my drawing interest was when 2 of my brothers (who both drew at the time) stopped to pursue other things in their life. One of my brothers told me that I was gonna stop drawing just like him, and for some reason I took it as a challenge. Since then I haven’t really stopped…Well I have… multiple times actually 😅. I would usually stop due to comparison and lack of self confidence. My expectations for myself were impossible to reach, but I still kept that standard. During the wave where I was confident, I had the cool opportunity to sell my art online, so it was a little glimpse of what I could do.
Now what pushed me to continue drawing is by making artist friends and trying to enjoy the process instead of always giving up quickly. I think another reason as to why I like when I started my career is when I was in an art program at Dawson College. I took a digital art class and my teacher (s/o Rachel Echenberg ) made us create a fantasy world. I’m OBSESSED with outer space, so I made a photo collage of a landscape picture, with a beautiful view of space. This project made me create more “space” photos just for fun. When I went back to school for Graphic Design in 2022, I submitted one of my art I did for fun and got 100 on it. That moment made me realize, I’m already doing great and I just need to keep doing what I’m doing.

Looking back, I feel like if I was a bit more confident in what I’m capable of , I would be a little bit farther than where I am today. I probably would have went to a music school or an art school, if I was confident, or had the proper support at the time. Sometimes your environment plays a huge role in some of the decisions you make. Instead of following my passions at the time, I decided to go to University to study to be a lawyer. When I realized that wasn’t the life for me, I made a decision, in 2019, to move back home and start my art career seriously. Even though I wish I can go back in time and change things, I also don’t regret the timeline I’ve had so far with my career. The lessons I have learnt (and unlearnt), the experiences I had to go through to grow and evolve and find out who I am personally and artistically, I express gratitude that those things happened during that time.

I hope this answers the question ahaha

Joyce , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Hello! My name is Joyce, artist name JU!CE and I am a creative! What I do is I am a singer, a beatmaker, Hip Hop DJ, website designer, graphic designer and digital painter. In the past, I have curated art of people’s characters, album covers, magazines, website designs, DJ workshops, landscape edits, music intros/outros….I think that’s about it?
If someone commissions me to make art for them, I always try my best to understand their vision and create the picture that they have in their head. I want the person to feel good when they hear/see something I create.
For music I create so that people can have a sense of an “out of this world” experience, while also relating to the content that’s being presented. It’s a plus when people like video games/outer space and can sense that through my music. For my visuals, I want to cater towards other black creatives who like character designs (or just anime-esque art). For my photo edits, I want people to imagine themselves being in a …..out of this world experience. Futurism/Outer Space Vibes.

“Out of this world experience “is really the key for me here. I’m proud of the fact that I can just make things intuitively and understand the knowledge of it later and I hope people just like what they hear/see.

The joy of creation.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Yes of course! I wouldn’t be alive without creating. Creating is really the only thing keeping me going at this point. I don’t really create to achieve a certain status, I create because I want to make things that younger me never really experienced. I want to share my gift with the world and maybe inspire others to create for themselves as well, or just create an experience where people have a good time.

At some point in my life, I do want my creativeness to fund my life style. That would be so amazing. My 9-5 would be me being an artist? For myself?
That’s my goal.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think the world needs to realize that a lot of materialistic things, are made because of artists. Your TV? They had to draw that first. Your newspaper, someone had to create that and edit it. Your shoes? Someone had to build that, 3d design it. Anything you can think of, it had to be drawn/created one way or another. I feel like people forget that, and artists are kind of just left on the side with no care.
I currently work as a graphic designer for a company and I recently found out that the artists are not getting paid the same as other people, even though we are the foundation of the creation of their ideas.
During the pandemic, people were relying on shows and music to keep themselves from boredom. That show, had to be drawn out through a story board. That music had to be thought about and edited. If we didn’t have that, music and/or art, how boring do you think the world would be?
Other ways is being honest with one another and wanting to help each other build the community up. Not just your friends but other people who are part of the same scene. It’s a little bit of an interesting topic I’ve had with friends but my perspective on this is supporting other artists through shares, or speaking about them in public in a good light, inviting them to shows or to perform if you like their stuff, giving honest feedback and criticism when it comes to their art that they’re sharing (if they consent to it) etc etc. I’m part of a DJ collective in Ottawa called Pass the Vibes where we focus on giving Black youth a space to learn Djing, to make mistakes, and to provide them opportunities to perform in public. We created a community where people can be creative and help each other in the art world. When you do that from a place of love, it can help a lot.

We need artists in this world and they really do deserve more respect and kindness, understanding and compassion. It may not be a major job like a Lawyer, or a Doctor, but it still has a huge importance in our society.

Contact Info:

• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@juicyfruiit8
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/juicyfruiit
• Other: https://instagram.com/juicyfruiit_

Image Credits

Jannai Down
Rakeem Bien-Aimé