“The Witnesses” by Joy Redstone

*please contact 3csartcollective@gmail.com to confirm availability before purchase

Assemblage

8" x 13" x 6"

Boulder, CO

worksofjoy.net

IG: @joyredstone

More about the artist: 

I do not have any formal training in art but when I experienced a sudden bereavement 8 years ago, I began to create. Time slowed and a profound intrapersonal transformation followed, sharpening my vision and influencing how I interacted with material objects. 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. My art recognizes and highlights a tension in the disparate value our collective places on broken, mundane, and discarded objects. My art can be described as process art, as each piece speaks to a memory or an emotional experience. The fragmented objects make a whole, speak as a testament to healing, and offer an opportunity for the viewer to reflect on their own intrinsic wholeness.

I am a licensed clinical social worker and addiction counselor. I received my MSW from Boston College in 1995 and completed post graduate certificates in addiction counseling and clinical supervision. My clinical work has focused on the intersection of mental health struggles, addiction, and oppression and has been characterized by a commitment to advocacy and social justice.

I look for objects in our daily world that we have cast aside and deemed worthless, such as broken glass, old toys, old jewelry and I invite you to see their intrinsic beauty. Just as we might call some hard experiences “worthless”, their worth is arbitrarily determined culturally. If you hold a bullet casing in the hand, it is small, harmless and glittering. One way to reclaim meaning from hard events is to examine them closely and from a far distance. I invite you to do both.

I use natural objects because I find so much solace walking and I use what I see to tether me to the here and now. I invite you to the patterns within the patterns. I found my way, and I’ve called the widely scattered pieces of my soul back to me, and they’ve done as commanded, skittering and keening, rushing and leaping, to return my heart to me. I tuck them into these pieces of art.