Joy has been making pottery for the past 24 years. After a childhood full of creativity, music lessons on the piano and flute, and always exploring the natural world while growing up in eastern Tennessee, Joy redirected her creative focus when she discovered how mesmerized she was with making pottery in the art department in college. In 2004 she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Then she pursued various Resident Artist programs at the Odyssey Center for the Ceramic Arts in Asheville, NC, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, and the EnergyXChange in Burnsville, NC. In 2007 Joy established her own clay studio near Penland School of Craft in Bakersville, North Carolina. Immersing herself in the beautiful mountains has greatly inspired her work and her life. Reflections of detail and pattern are a distinctive element within Joy’s pottery, and she enjoys getting deep into the creative process with such a responsive material as clay. Her home studio, Wood Song Pottery is in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains in Bakersville, NC. She teaches pottery workshops, exhibits her work in regional and national galleries, participates in a biannual studio tour with Toe River Arts, the local arts council, and is involved with the Spruce Pine Potters Market, an annual pottery show featuring many of the local potters in the region where she lives.
