Voices from the Crucible: The Art and Alchemy of Joy Fox

In the fifty years of stewardship, resonance, and interpretation of change, geologic forms, and animal life, Joy Fox has become indigenous to Rancho Linda Vista: her home, studio, and community of the arts in Oracle, Arizona. Since 1968 the ranch has served as a sacred origin for her sculptures and her story, and continues to offer creative shelter to the many artists who live and work there. Fox’s hands have pulled the clay from the desert washes, her feet know the trails by heart and still take her to those small nemetons where her beloveds listened and painted.

Walking among the sculptures of Joy Fox one can almost hear the hum of ancestral voices. These works, more than mere sculptures, are beings, watchers, and witnesses of time and transformation. According to Tibetan mythology, magically conceived images and creations can become corporeal beings (tulpas) capable of straddling both the physical and spiritual world.


“Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be capable of playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother’s womb.” (1929) Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel

[The pieces] end up having a conversation amongst themselves [and] take on a life of their own. I don’t know which one I’ll use until after they’re fired because once it's fired, it takes on another life that is very different. It comes alive. (Joy Fox, personal conversation, 2013)

Each finished sculpture holds the presence of a uniquely conjured thought form, a “shamanic tulpa”, revealing external markings and scripted incantations scratched onto the surfaces and into the folds; sometimes understandable and poetic, sometimes indecipherable as a lost language suggesting conveyance from an ancient internal world. 
Joy Fox’s studio is luminous and airy, offering loose but protective shelter while Possibility and Providence assist her open and accepting nature in the kneading and folding of the clay. Filled with her large and small figures, every piece that surrounds her seems in the lineage of the earliest creators, each joining the continuum of her lifelong conversation with primordial elements and the Ancients. The stray parts of unconstructed totems that fill the crates and corners of the studio, though in a state of dismemberment, are complete works themselves and more like artifacts that were once part of a former, larger body. They now wait to coalesce into another in a new cycle of life and seem to want to have their say in how they are re-membered within the work.
 
There are times if I'm working a piece . . .and it's just not making any sense . . . I’ll start on something else, then look over at it and it will tell me what it needs. (Joy Fox, personal conversation, 2013)

    Historically, clay has been used by many cultures as a connective medium to the spirit world. It is believed that many of the oldest clay figures were used in magical and ritual ceremony as symbols of goddess or god and symbols of power over the natural world. Fox’s sculptures are recognizably (to those who are attuned) totems of power. Muse, gods, and goddesses frequently appear as images inscribed on the surfaces, or even personified in the constructed being, but Orpheus (sometimes referred to as the “patron saint” of poets, artists, musicians, and philosophers) shows up throughout her process as well to blandish all aspects of transformation and transmutation, while the clay becomes art. 

With clay gathered from varied locations, salvaged metal once serving machine is now summoned by Fox to contribute other movements, gestures, and catalysis through her divine artistic language. Combining the clay crystals of life with a substance that first showed itself to humankind by falling from the heavens on fire, charged with magical and divine power, and later known as the blood of the earth—iron, the work acquires a harmonic voice in her alchemical invocation. 

The invitation of the clay, as it is pliable and willing, is a call for Fox to re-remember in the most primal way; even now in late career, she is captured by the muse and cannot deny the invitation. Compelled to speak through clay as her native language, her process of handling, manipulating and sculpting clay, taps into primary modes of expression that may have evolved before verbal language. These modes of expression are linked to actual feeling and memories that were encoded through touch and movement. Her anomalous forms resonate to the creatures and elements of nature, gods, and time. Fox converses with the ancestors as she works the clay of life, her genetic material and that of the Ancients in crucible and by fire. Fire then assists in releasing, releasing Fox to the very same time and space of the first potters and all others in between. 

Orphism teaches that human souls are divine and eternal and yet fated to repeated cycles of grieving in order to evolve and advance. With each stage of development, there is a looking back at the unsaid, undone, or unresolved; a letting go and then a move forward. When art becomes a path of discovery, self-awakening, and spiritualization it moves within these transformative cycles. Jungian scholar Robert Romanyshyn characterized six Orphic Moments in transformative work and of these six the last two include Dismemberment and Individuation. These two Orphic stages aptly sum the character and creative space of Joy Fox’s call to transformation as a deep attentiveness to the life stirring within the inanimate. She sits in readiness for her own intimate conversation with the ancestral voice of clay, and the soul-full influence of fire to be present in “spiritualizing” the piece. For this to happen Fox must face dismemberment and follow the soul of the work. Reconstructing the bones that have returned from the dust of the earth, returned from the fire of the universe now require something of Joy Fox in order to be spiritualized, the moment of confronting dismemberment after the fire, after the bones have been conjured requires that Fox let go of the work and imagine it in a different way. 

The clay has now been worked, formed, carved, and fired into the heads, arms and trunks of the sculptures. Up until now the ancestors have held a subtle sway, up until now she has been “with child” and pregnant with a “being” she can’t see or know. Fox sets the fired pieces out and waits, letting go of her own involvement in the individual forms and surfaces knowing that they will now take on a different reality, the work like the tulpa will come into its own. There is a very subtle process of “re-contextualizing” and detaching, a moment of grief even, and then movement to the stage of individuation when the pieces become an individual. It would follow that once that happens, as Fox has indicated, she is completely done with the piece and wants it to leave the studio either to be shown or live elsewhere.

From this perspective, one can understand Fox’s entire process as a reversal of the process of death and a movement toward rebirth, with true sacrifice existing as it did for Orpheus, in mourning and grief. Dust, earth, and clay as the “forgotten” nourished by water submit to the energy of creator and voices of the continuum to form and resurrect the bones. When fire releases back from the world of the dead and the past, grief must be revisited and re-membered. Transformation and spiritualization comes from the process of remembering, and then moves to individuation bringing the work into being.

The earth and the iron of the clay have become absorbed into the skin of Fox’s hands and arms as she gathered the dust from the scatters of time to stand and witness again as sculptured sages. Their stories now can be known from their one or many faces, their scarred surfaces of mapped journey, and the animal parts that assist them. Broken pieces among the flowers and stones outside the studio remind us that the clay will return to earth eventually, back to source, as will we.

At the highest ground near Rancho Linda Vista a new grouping of Fox’s giant talismans have been placed; tiny lights illuminate the insides of these beings. They would light the hilltop in the lonely darkness of the desert. Are they now able to light back to the stars and the continuum? Fox’s wizardry, her masterful alchemy, and intuitive ability to converse with primordial elements in order to bring forth these mythic and magical metaphorms, create a living presence that is arresting and hallowing. In witnessing her magnificent artistry, we are simultaneously bowing to Mystery Herself.
​
Diane Lucille Meyer, PhD, Artist, Artist Researcher, Transpersonal Psychologist

​You have been the container that held my most cherished.
You’ve been a house, a garden, a battle field.
A time machine, a palette and the brush, you’ve been
the slow flowing river of immense joy, blood and tears.
 
I know my heart is connected to you.
I remember how my sorrows caused miscarriage and loss.
And I know that through you I felt my connection to mother,
grandmother, and all mothers going back.
I became versed in the languages of conception, gestation, and waiting.
And I learned release.
 
You talked to me in my dreams,
you showed me my baby’s face before he was born,
and you warned me about those who would not.
How many more talks did we have?
Too many to count.
On the night of my deepest sadness
you conceived and made a place for life to grow.
 
They will take you from me in a few hours
and I will walk the remaining days of my life without you.
For all the things you know, I acknowledge
and I say, “Thank you”.
Thank you for your endurance and your labor,
thank you for loving unconditionally
all that you were charged to love.
 
I will continue to create
and hold that space inside of me where you once lived.
I will fill that space with only love.
For you were the vehicle to forever
even when we were lonely lovers.

        On December 9, 1999, I left my life of 23 years and moved to a very small inexpensive apartment in downtown Tucson. When I arrived at my new place, a yellow duplex with green trim, I spent the next 4 days in complete despair. As I unpacked what little I had, I decided to arrange my rock collection on the waist-high pony wall outside between my apartment and the neighbor’s.
         I placed the stones in a circle as a way of asking spirit to come in and help me. Then I left the circle alone and continued to find my way in my new life. A few days later, I noticed my stone circle, and someone (I later learned the person living next door) had taken a sunflower and laid petals between all the stones with the center of the flower in the center of the circle. This brought me to tears. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of love and comfort. At that, I decided to add a piece of blue yarn I had just untied from a bundle of papers and I wove it meandering in and out of the petals and stones in a way that felt like I was communicating our connectedness. The next day the woman next door had added some small sprigs of rosemary to the sequence.
          This went on for several days. Sometimes the wind or a cat disrupted it, but we continued. There would be times when we would not contribute much and then times when this conversation was very active. Ultimately it had a profound effect on my sense of not being alone and faith that my prayers have been heard. I never took photos of our conversations, but to this day I will reenact this exchange as a means of self-soothing, quieting my verbal thoughts, or simple prayer.
          The woman who lived next door was named Siu and she sensed my sadness through the walls that separated us. I only knew her first name and I have no idea what became of her. She was a true gift from Providence. She reached out without a verbal language to tell me she hears and that I still existed.
In my dissertation research collection of nonverbal data held my original objective of evoking creativity and a sense of “other” as my participant in order to engage in a creative conversation that was random and intuitive. Deciding how exactly to achieve this was the challenge. My personal experience within my own work, as well as the experience I had with my neighbor Siu utilizing found objects gave me information about what the exercise should contain, as well as what the exercise should not.
          It seemed essential that both my participant and I use a common language, if I used watercolor and she clay it could not work because clearly everything that involved her medium would feel like other to me and I would not be able to discern the third participant. Then, if we both used watercolor, there was no way to clearly assess that my participant has the same fluency that I do with the medium. Using found objects soon revealed that they still carried their basic context to the conversation; feather was feather and not a stroke of umber or a response of texture. There was also difficulty describing the task and the idea of responding to the evolving environment as objects were placed. I had planned to photograph the images to capture the engagement of both of us with other or what we agreed was creativity but without the participant’s understanding deep engagement (not just randomly placing objects) I was at a loss.
          Instead, I decided to work with my participants with no objects, no tools, devices, or implements. I decided we would merely use both our hands in intuitive movements and gestures over the paper, beginning and stopping when the moment felt right. We would ask Creativity to flow through us and guide our movements as its own brush strokes.
          The process I used was adapted from Deborah Koff-Chapin’s Touch Drawing therapeutic technique that evolved along the same exploratory path that I originally wanted to follow with this inquiry. She describes how the process came to her:

• Within several weeks the seed that had been germinating in my being burst forth in the form of Touch Drawing. On the last day of my last year in school, I was helping a friend clean an inked glass plate in the print shop. Before wiping the ink off the plate with a paper towel, I playfully moved my hands over the towel, and lifting it, saw lines which had been transferred to the underside of the towel by my touch. Lines coming directly from my fingertips! I laughed hysterically with this discovery and crawled around on the floor, gathering up more discarded paper towels. In a state of ecstatic revelation, flowing lines poured from my hands. Like the willow in the sand, they were a natural extension of my being onto the page, a record of each moment as it passed. Within minutes, I was drawing faces with both hands. My ever-changing soul was being reflected before me, childlike and primitive, honest and direct.

• ​Although this experience had the appearance of simply being play, under the surface was something profound and powerful. It was as if I was receiving a gift from outside of time, from an invisible knowing presence. (Koff-Chapin, n.d., para. 9)

 
            The idea that neither my participant nor I could see what we were creating was intriguing. We could not base a movement on anything aesthetic in the work, we moved without judgment or a sense of what our finished work would look like. I did not set a rule to start and stop within any amount of time, we worked fairly quickly, and we could work solo or together simultaneously as we wished. This was a process as free from rules of art, free as I could arrange. I explained to my participant that the finished product would contain what I might call our creative DNA in that it was something from our artistic instinct and of us, but outside of our evolved system of responding in images.
            Water-soluble oil paint was rolled out on to a piece of Plexiglas and I chose to use 140 lb. watercolor paper as the barrier between the image and us. The paper was laid over the paint and we moved with our hands, arms, elbows, rhythmically over the paper.
My questions for this exercise were, as we see the marks and movements of both of us, did we feel a sense or a presence of other in this co-creation? If so, where or how? And, what thoughts or images came to mind while we engaged in this event? These are the images that evolved from our engagements (see below).
 
          It is important to note that even though the participants and I were amused by the images we could pull out of these works (such as a dancing woman or a bird) we refrained from labeling them so as not to ultimately limit their gifts.
          While this process of presentation unfolded, I was haunted by a dreamlike image that would recur as a cage containing a yellow finch. At times, the image was in full focus and other times hazy and vague but this cage represented my method and though horrified by the thought of method being so restrictive, I pressed further to try and understand what the image was trying to tell me.
            Cages are meant to trap or contain, but they also are meant to keep tender fragile beings safe, they can provide safety to the outsiders as well. As this cage and bird became a stronger metaphor for my research I asked, “What is it I am attempting to capture? What am I protecting within this research? What am I avoiding or considering as dangerous?” and “Is this cage even necessary?” Meditating on the cage, I made sure the cage door always remained open. Sometimes the finch would be inside singing, and sometimes he would not be in sight but I could still hear his song in the distance.
            The journal entries, reflective and embodied writing, and poetry expose moments of clarity, crisis, growth, and transformation that give voice to the work that assists me even now. Yet presenting the data as an intuitive researcher, I found the beats of the presentation very closely related to my dance as a painter. I begin with the most familiar and meander outward to the more abstract and intangible. This intuitively leaves open avenues for finding meanings and connections, where that finch is free to do as he/she pleases.

​Koff-Chapin, D. (n.d.). Discovery of touch drawing. Retrieved from http://www.touchdrawing.com/touchdrawing/discovery
 

​Trickling, tinkling, swirling, splash,
 
Heat moves me to seek water.
 
The river now beckons me,
she calls and every cell of my body
reaches
toward the water.
 
A lazy leaf floats by
in lifted expectation.
 
I am the buoyant leaf
I am also fluid, contained.
 
I find a small pool with slower water
and allow myself
to float in the glistening, listening.
 
And as my native water meets river
the dialogue begins
until I’ve greeted shore to shore.
 
Swallowed by reverie,
I become river.

(Diane Meyer, personal journal entry, November 22, 2012)

       There were two very important things I learned from Bruce McGrew, and out of all my ancestors I believe McGrew will continue to teach and communicate with me. We both have been so fluent with watercolor, knowing water as the ultimate communicator, and the method of corresponding with spirit and matter; it seems natural to consider Bruce ever-present, even though he died in 1999. The first thing McGrew taught me was how to mix the perfect grey that will make anything white have dimension and from there how to make atmosphere with those very same colors. For the very light transparent part of clouds the colors: use cobalt blue, Indian red, and yellow ochre. Then for the heavy bottom: always use ultramarine blue, Indian red, and yellow ochre. The trick and the magic worked within the combination and to remember that cobalt has magnetic qualities and repels the other particles of color. He was the high magician sharing his magic, and I had to wait a long time, I had to try every color combination and fail an awful lot before he gave that recipe up to me. In essence this combination in itself is a conversation and very prayerful, very subtle in its metaphor, and so very beautiful.

            The second thing I learned from McGrew was redemption. McGrew gave me the tools and the courage to go back and retrieve myself within the watercolor and then rescue my muddy splatterings when they had gone completely to the dark side. He taught me how one finds light in the murky bottom of a lake (or water can), and from these experiences I gained the resiliency I needed to keep painting until spirit latched on, and the distant shore revealed itself.

          Through Bruce’s influence and introduction there have been many ancestors who showed up to help carry me across the vastness of the white blank page, among them were Paul Cezanne, John Singer Sargent, Henry Miller, and Berthe Morisot. Bruce himself must have relied on their echoes and in turn made sure to leave his own as inspiration or guiding lights within our struggles as artists. Most likely he muttered these same words to himself while he worked. Those of us, who were so fortunate to have heard, will never forget.

Quotes from Bruce McGrew, accumulated from class notes and personal conversations between 1975-1983:

• No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his
  
  appreciation is the appreciation of his relationship to the dead poets and artists.

 

• Things can be laid in flat, but the relationships are what make them move.

 

• If you put the energy in the stroke, you will do the bamboo rather than paint the
  
  bamboo.

 

• Can you find a way to get the brushstroke to be its own movement rather than
  
  fulfilling an idea?

 

• You make shapes of what the water does, you don’t duplicate the water.

 

• Light should move independently of the object.

 

• There’s a time when you just have to walk away.

 

• Contemplate the mystery and paint it.

 

• The miracle is the invention that fits the experience: that is you.

 

• Sit until you can be a part of it; look until you see.

 

• The painting you start out to do is the painting you find.

 

• Create a window of light, a tempest of movement, a way out!

 

• It takes no less than everything.

 

“It seems one can pick up the art of a village through one’s bodily participation in its ceremonies” (May, 1985, p. 15). This quote speaks to the holistic and multimodal nature of culture as it connects to psychology and religion in that the experiences within these cultural frameworks are “socially shared illusions” (Belzen, 2010, p. 50). I would take this one step further and say that the experience in an artistic cultural framework is the same. Matsumoto (2001) contends that within the cultural psychological perspective, mind emerges in the joint mediated activity of people co-constructed and then passed on by the culture (p. 19). Culture emerges from individuals interacting with their natural and human environment. This is reflected in the art, music, architecture and literature as byproducts of this emergence.

A work of art carries the distinction of the artist’s internal culture. The artist’s internal environment is comprised of systems and beliefs developed and acquired through personal crises, and with that at play becomes the primary motivation to most creative endeavors.

Internal Cultures

With the understanding that mind and culture are in constant dialogue, the illusive and ever changing nature of culture comes to light. Culture is continuously developing in context and meaning as we advance as humans, and within each individual culture there exists constant change and evolution. It is in this movement toward individual culture that an artist evolves. In other words, within larger and colliding cultures individuals sculpt their own deeply personal internal cultures.

John Stuart Mill (Goldstone, 2006) believed that the ‘internal culture of the individual’ was ‘among the prime necessitate of human well-being’ (p. 1). Mill was a British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator. He is considered the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the 1800’s. His writings are considered among the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and of a liberal political view of society and culture. His father, also a philosopher, who kept him home and isolated from other children, rigidly raised Mill. Emotion was regarded with contempt; Mill was confined to an environment of extreme detachment.

• I thus grew up in the absence of love and the presence of fear: and many & indelible are the effects of this bringing up, in the stunting of my moral growth (Mill in Stillinger 1961, as cited in Goldstone, 2006, p. 2).

 
In Mill’s childhood there was no room for emotion. The immediate culture in which he lived was difficult, he grew to understand the value of developing his own internal culture, to turn his attention inward toward the cultivation of character. In doing this he recounted:

• I found the fabric of my old and taught opinions giving way in many fresh places, and I never allowed it to fall to pieces, but was incessantly occupied in weaving it anew. I never, in the course of my transition, was content to remain, for ever so short a time, confused and unsettled. When I had taken in any new ideas, I could not rest till I had adjusted its relation to my old opinions, and ascertained exactly how far its effect ought to extend in modifying or superseding them. (Goldstone, 2006, p. 5)

 
Mill’s account of his process of creating a new and deeply personal internal culture perfectly illustrates this experience as it would happen for an artist.

Konner, (Kitayama & Cohen, 2007, p. 77) reminds us that no human child can develop without culture. Culture seems to be intimately connected to the life force on the planet. As life force being creative force, we then understand that creativity and art are the life force of culture.

Matthew Fox (2005) makes the point that creativity existed before humans, “[it] is not a human invention or a human power isolated from the other powers of the universe” (p. 30). Creativity is the universal energy that is activated by the provoking and prodding of life.  When we are confronted with sorrows and joys, as “deep heart” experiences (p. 45) we are broken open and made available creatively.

In viewing culture as an ethos of an organism, an outcome of process, dialogue, and emotion it is easy to see how these dialogues flow and evolve outward into the art and symbols that are reflected within the indigenous environment. Returning to the concept of a socially shared illusion, a vision of visions (Belzen, 2010, p. 50), and emerging from history and narrative, I am tempted to envision the comparative analogy of a painting environment. Each stroke of paint, containing color, weight, emotion builds up the surface until a culture, in a sense, is compiled. Within that environment a dialogue takes place, stroke responding to stroke, artist to image and memories, and emotion to human spirit.

It is the dialogue between culture and emotion that is the essence of our artistic inquiry, and externally expressed to create further dialogue. Within these dialogues we examine nature of beauty and the essence of the human spirit, Maja Rode (2000) offers that “it is our willingness to continue asking, to continue inquiring that provides the fertile ground for these repeated, deepening insights” (p. 70). Our concept of beauty evolves with culture and human emotion through our willingness.

Art is reaching out to touch the hearts of those who experience it, (to humanity), but it is also a reaching through of culture to the heart of the artist. Jacques Maritain (Monti, 2003) shares this sentiment when he writes, “the artist whether he knows it or not, is consulting God when he looks at things” (p. 129). Said practically, the artist consults his inner culture and his external culture, history, beliefs, and individual and shared emotions when he finds beauty.
If we view art as a reflection of culture, immediate and universally (as well as historically), then as a reflection of the smallest internal cultures of an individual encompassing emotion and all sense data, it becomes possible to view art as a vehicle of spirit and what Einstein refers to as non-logical, non-inferential movements of intuitive apprehension (Monti, 2003, p. 18). Einstein viewed these movements, sense data as “free creations” (p. 18) natural associations between our ideas and reality.

Monti (2003) maintains that there is much more to this “leap” from ideas to reality, as spirit to matter. He supports Polanyi’s summation that “we know more than we can tell” (Polanyi, 1966, p. 4). Polanyi (as cited in Monti, 2003, p. 18) describes two types of awareness, focal awareness and subsidiary awareness. Focal awareness being the awareness of the obvious facts and knowledge of a thing or experience, the subsidiary awareness includes the “tacit dimension” (Polanyi, 1966), the unspecifiable knowing. In Polanyi’s mind the two types always function together but are mutually exclusive.

This tacit dimension is well clarified by Thomas Torrance (1984):

• It is an implicit apprehension that takes shape in our understanding under the imprint of the internal structure of that into which we inquire, and develops within the structural kinship that arises between our knowing and what we know as we make ourselves dwell in it and gain access to its meaning … [It] is an intuitive anticipation of hitherto unknown pattern, or a novel order in things, which arises compellingly in our minds under the surprising disclosure and intrinsic claim of the subject-matter. It is an authentically heuristic act in which the understanding leaps across a logical gap in the attainment of a new conception, and then guided by an intuitive surmise evoked by that conception probes through deepening coherences to lay bare the structure of the reality being investigated. (p. 114)

 
As Monti (2003) observes by the term, to “dwell in” refers to the way we derive meaning through implicit, indefinable, subsidiary awareness, concluding that some things can only be known through indwelling. As an artist, this indwelling refers to that individual internal culture that evolves as a result of our own sense data. On some level we choose the lens through which we view the data, be it the rules of the many or rules of the few. For artists, they most often choose the rules of their private internal culture.

The creative break

• People scream and gasp at horror movies, cheer when the underdog clobbers the evil power, cry when the lady dies bravely. If you ask people whether what is happening on the screen is really happening, most of them will look at you askance and say, “Of course not!” (The intellectuals will ask what you mean by “real.”) Cognitively, they “know” that no one was hurt, that the monster was just a special effect, yet their emotions seem real. Their own well-being as never at stake; they do not need to cope with the perils before them; they are sitting in chairs in a comfortable environment surrounded by other people sitting in chairs. How can they be experiencing emotion if they lack the essential cognitive appraisals? (Ellsworth, 1984, p. 192)

 
 Phoebe Ellsworth (1984) presents an interesting phenomenon when she discusses the emotional responses we experience when we view films or listen to music. Ellsworth views emotion as a process that begins with a distraction or a change, registered at the point of entry into the body (i.e. listening, seeing, physical sensation, or smell). She refers to this as the “state of preparedness,” “alert attention,” or the beginning of emotion (p. 193). Once the change is recognized and named (culturally or contextually) the feeling is changed. Ellsworth maintains that emotion begins at the precognitive level and is a process that takes place over time. So by this we are led to suppose that emotion originates in a pre-rational, suspended state only to be sorted out by cultural explanations, expectations, and experiences:

• One’s answer to the question of minimal cognitive prerequisites depends on one’s definition of cognition and on one’s definition of emotion. . . If sensory information processing is considered cognitive, then most if not all emotions will show some “cognitive” contribution. If one defines cognition as involving conscious propositional analysis, then a larger proportion of emotional experiences will be defined as noncognitive, at least at their onset. (Ellsworth, 1984, p. 193)

 
Some would argue that emotions are based on appraisals, or cognitive associations and values instilled in an individual through cultures, environmental factors, memories; Ellsworth presents that there is also evidence against the proposition that there are any cognitive prerequisites to emotion. Although I believe both are true, for the artist and one experiencing art of any medium, emotion begins at a level where one agrees to suspend their cognitive prerequisites, agrees to accept the “distraction or change” in an open and minimally systemized pre-rational state, in other words, a cognitive process to suspend cognitive rules or patterns. At that point, the work of art sets the “cultural rules” the allowable appraisals evoking emotion through the artistic environment. We can then participate using the cognitive processes we use in “real” situations.

Where appraisal theorists have difficulty is in coordinating passages in music with particular emotions (Ellsworth, 1984, p. 195). We know people experience emotions from listening to music such as “sad,” “fearful, “ “triumphant,” and “happy”. Ellsworth suggests that these responses would not be accounted for by appraisals of the music, that stimulus appraisals do not cause the emotions, but become part of the emotion. She suggests that eventually there may be a way to find cross-cultural commonalities in emotion by looking at pre-appraisal responses.

As one who experiences art, we can validate the influence of deliberately employed appraisals, but as one who is making art this presents a greater mystery. I believe artists seek to suspend certain appraisals when they engage in the making of art, but what leads them to this in the first place? Why the desire to maneuver the appraisals of others? Why the need to engage in the new culture of the work of art, or the redesign of the artist’s native culture through the process of art? I do not have absolute answers to these questions for this essay, but I have some theories from my own experience, and from my own reading of other artists.

To suspend one’s appraisal system is to suspend one’s inhibitions, and in order to create and truly create, a certain portion of inhibition must be kept outside of the creative site, or overcome completely. Actors speak of stage fright and then in order to “become” their character the restrictions of their own personality become the inhibitions that they must silence. For a painter he or she must silence that inner critic, the voices of “better artists”, or doubt and worry about the finished product.

Inhibitions and fault lines
            Robert Solomon (1988) discussed emotions as judgments, but not as opinions. They are complex in that they seem to be interconnecting mini-cognitions that relate and lead in a string and they are not unique to humans. “The effort needs to be made to spell out the system of judgments that constitute a single emotion” (p. 187). This string of judgments can evolve over time, minutes, years, and generations and speaks to the potential uniqueness of emotional experiences that support the notion of cultural variances contributing to internal culture development.

            In viewing emotions as a system of judgments or appraisals, in such a tangible way it becomes easy to find the “fault lines” as Beck illustrates (Beck, 1979). These fault lines as he describes are “the vulnerabilities along which stresses accumulate and may set off tremors or eruptions” (p. 76). But also these fault lines are the spaces and pauses between the judgments. Here is that edge where the artist experiences crisis and finds solace in the internal culture he or she has created. This crisis begins as a vague mood, an objectless emotion as Lamb (1987) describes. When we are unaccountably consumed by an objectless emotion, the “fault lines” have been faded or eroded and the emotion becomes a state of being, a “seeming”. The emotion takes up a greater psychic space and has an affect on other appraisal chains. The state of being, then a cultural space for the artist can set the tone for creativity and be reflected in the art for the duration of the creation of the individual piece or series, it can even account for a “period” in an artist’s life.

Pablo Picasso is one example:

• At 9 o’clock on the night of February 17, 1901, in the back room of a Paris wine shop, Picasso’s friend Carles Casagemas shot himself in the right temple. The suicide stunned Picasso. Dogged by poverty and failure himself, he sank into a deep despair. Somehow, he continued to work. And, reflecting his mood, he began to paint in melancholic, cold tones, predominantly blue. . . . Abruptly, in 1904, Picasso’s life changed and his art changed too. He fell deeply in love for the first time, and as his mood brightened he adopted a warmer palette, painting tranquil pictures in delicate roseate tones. (Wertenbaker, 1967, p. 40)

 
            Objectless emotions (Lamb, 1987) become clarified when addressed through art, but set the environment for the internal culture where the artist lives, works, and interprets the world. Fears too become strong agents to internal changes and crises and can be fatal to the creative process or bring in a dominant “objectless mood” that disengages the artist from his or her abilities to create.

The audience is a critical element in any artist’s internal culture and the primary consideration when discussing inhibitions. Audience provides mirroring to the artist, validation of his or her reflections and communications, appreciation or disapproval. The audience supports the artist financially and plays a major role in the artist’s egoistic development. Matthew Fox (2005) suggests that an artist needs this period of egoistic development as a “build up of heart” where the artist gathers the courage and faith in his or her vision and inner resources to move forward from external transformation to internal transformation (p. 72). Consideration of audience is projection, and where projection is active, the becoming or growing at home with one’s Self and one’s truth is rendered inactive. In a good sense birthing is prohibited, creation and connection to one’s inner culture denied. What the audience provides in as artists’ private culture are the expectation equivalents of society in the larger cultural cosmos.

• In my own experience I began my development as an artist in the theater. My father and family of origin supported this career path; they loved the idea that I would be an actress someday. But my need for the arts had to do with my need to develop a world that was secure for me; one I could grow freely in, trust clear boundaries, and not have to withstand abuse or humiliation. Standing on the stage held none of those benefits. Exposure to an audience reduced me and stifled my creativity, only added to my sense of violation and humiliation. The crisis came with this realization and I turned to the visual arts, painting where I could make my art privately and deal with exposure outside of my creative process. My family strongly disapproved of this move. Now looking back the crisis leading to the change in artistic venue represents my saying “no” to violations on all levels. Those who were most abusive to me as a child protested my path change the most. Later in my career, peak experiences such as museum purchases and exhibitions, my achievements were met with their disregard, disinterest, and dismissal.

The influence of audience plays such a heavy role in the artist’s ability to move through blocks and difficulties. Fear that lies masked or hidden can be paralyzing.

• . . . wanting to be understood is a basic need—an affirmation of the humanity you share with everyone around you. The risk is fearsome: in making your real work you hand the audience the power to deny the understanding you seek; you hand them the power to say, “you’re not like us; you’re weird; you’re crazy” .(Bayles & Orland, 1993, p. 39)

 
Karen Wilson Scott (2002) in her study, of adults over 50 and their commitment to challenging life pursuits suggests that in late career the artist can set aside the inhibitions of the audience to move toward fulfillment, satisfaction, and self-actualization. She refers to Carl Rogers for an illustration of that departure from egocentricity to authenticity.

• The individual moves toward being, knowingly and acceptingly, the process which he inwardly and actually is. He moves away from being what he is not, from being a façade . . . He is increasingly listening to the deepest recesses of his physiological and emotional being, and finds himself increasingly willing to be, with greater accuracy and depth, that self which he most truly is. (Rogers, as cited in Scott, 2002, p. 262)

 
Those who continue to paint but set aside their ego, desires for adulation, and fame cross a threshold into a spiritual maturity that has not often described in the history books (Ryken, 2006). Though I believe this transformation has always been part of the artist’s experience, artists and society have only recently had the language and freedom to articulate this phenomena of how and where the artist progresses.

Transmutation and transformation
Transformation begins when a work of art emerges from nothing to something (Bayles & Orland, 1993, p. 106). Transformations experienced thousands of times by the artist in his work, flat to space, raw color to intricately related color, or a mere gesture evolving into a richly rendered painting, eventually penetrate the surface tension of that experience to include the artist himself. At some point the work-process becomes the living-process, there is lift, and the journey leaves the ego behind. The artist experiences chaos, disorientation and a sudden awareness of something more (Dunn, 2004, p. 49), a new language and conversation with what can only be described as divine. The artist created the private culture, and the private culture welcomed the artist home.

The trade-off in the transformation far surpasses the actualizing of one’s own potential. Yes, once an artist gets beyond the ego they acquire the courage to take greater risks in the work itself (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997), and the more sustaining gift is in the experiencing of what some might call divine joy, but feels ideal as a loving with no conditions. According to Patrick Sherry (1992), the artist benefits in two ways, first he or she experiences the “noetic fruits” of mystical states, spiritual development, emotional and psychological development, secondly as a presence and source outside of his or her self being experienced as the culture that is nurturing and home-like.

            Though no manuals exist, no legends, or art “sages”, artists by means all their own arrive at the transformative site and know in the experience that they have passed through a one-way door and can never return, nor can they stop or neglect the process set in motion. In a sense they have become their own art, it is in their skin, their hair, and their bones. They paint as they eat, work, or attend to every-day tasks when the physicality of “product-making” may not ever materialize. Transformation therefore is the juncture that shifts from external reasons for creating to internal and soulful reasons. It was crisis that brought the artist home. The artist continues because there is a two-way exchange between self and internal culture that now has become a vital piece to living and sustenance.

            John Welwood (1985) gives an interesting perspective to the mechanism of transformation when he discusses transmutation, as approaching emotion as a vehicle for self-illumination. He offers that transmutation implies converting something “seemingly worthless into something extremely valuable, like lead to gold” (Welwood, 1985, p. 85). It is this sense that an artist takes his or her culture of origin and converts it to a priceless diamond, a world that allows for the flow of creative energy and connection to spirit.

Rollo May (1975) offers that creativity is part of our true nature and a function of our psyche toward actualization (p. 40).  Most of the great religions regard the creative process as a connection to God within, a divine source. They teach that we cannot help but behave as God the creator because we were made in His image and likeness. It may truly be that this endeavor to build our own world and live as artists is the effort to return to a pre-birth divine source. Who knows? From my own experience I know I have experienced divine conversation, transformation, and a transmutation of crisis and pain into peace and beauty.

Concluding remarks
            Those of us who engage in the artistic process stand on the very edge of our limitations and ask the question, only to then leap out into the vast space to begin the "free-fall" of conjuring an answer. There are no guarantees, but we can never know or learn if we are not willing to risk, suspend our inhibitions, and learn from our observations of that very fall. My efforts here are to catch one “thermal” and understand the cultural conditions (or interpretations) that would ignite an artist or motivate one to become an artist. My efforts are to try and understand the emotions that train and form the artist toward the process of developing their private world, as a “counter member” of a larger culture, a medium or responder to the larger culture, and most certainly a healer of the larger culture.
​
References:
 
Bayles, D. B. & Orland, T. O. (2001). Art & fear, observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking. Santa Cruz, CA: Image Continuum Press.
 
Beck, A. (1979). Cognitive contents of emotional disorders. New York, NY: National American Library.
 
Belzen, J. A. (2010). Towards cultural psychology of religion: principles, approaches, applications, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3491-5_3, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
 
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: the psychology of engagement with every day life. New York, NY: Basic Books.
 
Dunn, D. M. (2004). Conversations with a universal consciousness: using creative flow to reach our unacknowledged selves. Unpublished manuscript, Prescott College, Prescott, AZ.
 
Ellsworth, P. (1984). Levels of thought and levels of emotions. In Ekman and Davidson (1994). The nature of emotions. New York, NY: Oxford, pp. 192-196.
 
Fox, M. F. (2005). Creativity. New York, NY: J P Tarcher.
 
Goldstone, A. (2006). A new light for On Liberty: John Stuart Mill and the ‘internal culture of the individual’. Refereed paper presented to the Australian Political Studies Association Conference. University of Newcastle, September 25-27.
 
Kitayama, S., Cohen, D. (2007). Handbook of cultural psychology. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
 
Lamb, R. (1987. Objectless emotions. Philosophy and phenomenological research, 48, pp. 107-117.
 
Matsumoto, David, (Ed.). (2001). The handbook of culture and psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
May, R. (1985). My quest for beauty. Dallas, TX: Saybrook.
 
May, R. (1975). The courage to create. New York, NY: Norton.
 
Monti, A. (2003). A natural theology of the arts: imprint of the spirit. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Polanyi, M., (1966). The tacit dimension. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
 
Rode, M.A. (2000). What is beauty? A living inquiry for the mind and heart. (Doctoral dissertation). Available from Proquest. (9969181).
 
Ryken, P. G. R. (2006). Art for god's sake, a call to recover the arts. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed.
 
Scott, K.W. (2002). High self-efficacy and perseverance in adults committed to new challenging life pursuits after age 50: a grounded theory study (Doctoral dissertation).  Available from Proquest. (3050223).
 
Solomon, R. (1988). On emotions as judgments. American philosophical quarterly, pp. 183-191.
 
Sherry, P. (1992). Spirit and beauty: an intro to theological aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
 
Torrance, T.F. (1984). Transformation and convergence in the frame of knowledge: explorations in the interrelations of scientific and theological enterprise. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
 
Welwood, J. (1985). Awakening the heart: East/West approaches to psychotherapy and the healing relationship. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
 
Wertenbaker, L. & Editors. (1967). The world of Picasso 1881-. New York, NY: Time-Life Books.

            Images of Joy Fox’s sculptures seem more like portraits than photos. Her work has a way of looking back at the viewer. Figure 5 offers two of these mystical totems. There was an unavoidable chatter in her studio, chatter between the ceramic beings, as well as chatter among the ancestors and beloved spirits.

            There will always be a feeling of coming home when I go to the ranch. Perhaps it is Joy Fox’s welcoming spirit; her warmth or it might also be the way she offers her art to others. I met Joy Fox through her late husband Bruce McGrew and she has always treated me as if we have grown old together many times.

            Other than the development of new homes across from Rancho Linda Vista the ranch looks the same as it did 40 years ago when I first visited. Joy Fox’s large totem sculptures rise out of the landscape and greet, they are composed of clay and stand as part animal, part human, muse or goddess, representations of spirit in nature. Pictures, words, and pieces of poetry etch the surfaces on many of the forms and they project an ancient and primitive wisdom.

            I have owned one of Fox’s totem sculptures for 10 years now and I can see on the folds and wings the hint of conversation between her and the others, the shapes mimic many of the negative shapes in Bruce McGrew’s paintings and seem to drift between dream world and waking realities in their representation. She uses many kinds of clay from many locations, each offering their unique character to the fire and although clay is the oldest medium man has used to express form I am still in awe that taking earth and adding water and fire can produce so much of what we need, even today.
​
            Joy Fox’s studio door was open when I first arrived, as it was each time I returned. She is an open person, very loving and accepting as if all the years of kneading and folding the clay have made her flexible and finely adaptive. The studio was filled with her large and small figures watching her as guardians. In every piece, she reminds us of our earliest human art works, each a continuum of her lifelong conversation with the goddess. She carries the wisdom of the ages and the ancients; every piece holds sacredness even the stray parts of unconstructed totems held the presence of devotion. Joy Fox morphs with life and the work as clay cures. Broken pieces of her sculptures among the flowers and stones tell me she knows the clay will return to the earth eventually, back to the goddess as will she.

The dialogue with Joy Fox.

Diane: I just wondered if art has been at all therapeutic. Have you experienced art as a therapeutic agent?
 
Joy Fox: Well I think I have. I mean, especially when Bruce died. I mean, if I didn't have my work, I think I would have really been at a loss. That's when I got into yoga much heavier, much more, and you know just working through that, that difficult time.
 
Diane: Did you find it hard to work after he died?
 
Joy Fox: Well fortunately we had a group show lined up, I mean the two of us at the Davis Dominguez Gallery. I had tons of work of Bruce's that we put up. I decided I just wanted to go ahead and do that even so soon after his death. I think it was a lifesaver in a lot of ways because, what are you going to do?
            Bruce was just wonderful through the whole thing [his dying process]. He just took it so well, it was really awesome. He was very sharp. I think if it wasn't for the work, and because that was so much a part of our life together it got us both through. It was just our main connection. And the yoga, it just helped a lot, helped me get through a lot of that. But the art we shared was the blessing.
 
Diane: I see so many similarities in your work and his; you really can see your connection. Just the way the images speak to each other. I have that big sculpture of yours. You put scratched images into the clay. I see that the images link to your life with Bruce. I see a sun, there's a sun in one of the sides. It was your piece, “La Mariposa”.
 
Joy Fox: I remember the piece, yeah.
 
Diane: I love that sculpture so much. I see the way there was this conversation between your images and his that is very interesting, and very unique.
 
Joy Fox: Well there were a lot of things that I really learned from him. I wrote a couple of the things down . . .first of all we did a lot of travel, a lot of art pilgrimages. He was always working. He was either painting or teaching, even when we traveled. And his discipline was so incredible. I learned a lot about that, and dedication, from him. We really liked each other's work. We always had conversations going on. We'd visit each other's studios almost every day after we worked and things. I was always saying, "Oh do you like it better this way or do you like this way or should I try this?" You know with sculpture, you can just pick things up in pieces and assemble them. And I’d say, "Do you like this better than this or should this go with this space." And he’d say, "Well ask the artist." He would always end up saying, "Well ask the artist.” And so since he died I would just start having conversation with myself. I started that a long time ago, and now, I mean there's really no one to ask. But there's really not anybody I have in my life who is like Bruce when he would come in, and we'd talk about work.
 
Diane: I see you include the muse in a lot of your pieces. Those conversations you refer to, is that where the muse comes in?
 
Joy Fox: I think so. That was something that was real important to him. He did a whole series about the muse. He was always using that as a subject. And I did too. I did a whole series of pieces of the Greek muses.
            Who knows where that all comes from, but it comes from our conversations. It's just funny though that moment of knowing when your work is finished; I would just completely overwork things. Like I said, it was harder in the past to have a clear sense of when it was finished. But it got to a point where I have had to have an inner conversation going on. I'm sure I even talk to myself. With these, these were all figures pretty much, so they ended up having a conversation amongst themselves. They do take on a life on their own. For me, when I'm putting a piece together I pick up one part and try . . .this piece for instance, I'm just building it right now but it's going to be an animal kind of figure that's going to have about three different figures. A figure on top of a figure, on an animal. A figure on the top of an animal is sort of the idea. So I thought about three or four different figures, and I don't know which one I'll use until after they're fired. Because sometimes once it's fired, it takes on another life that is very different, it comes alive. It looks pretty dead right now. But then once it's fired different changes happen.
 
Diane: Oh that's beautiful.
 
Joy Fox: And that's from the fire. You know that's not from anything I did. I mean, I painted the figure, it’s got a top to it, and head.
 
Diane: That's interesting though that the fire plays a part in the actual creating.
 
Joy Fox: Yes, that's the magic.
 
Diane: You could be finished, but the fire really helps
 
Joy Fox: It's so different. Look how different they look.
 
Diane: So this will turn into a different color?
 
Joy Fox: Well this has some blue on it, this has some color. This doesn't, this has red iron, and the clay is white. It's the same thing this clay is a reddish clay, and this clay is a white clay. So that makes a little difference too. But the iron in the clay that gives it the red. Then the smoke will affect it, and the heat, the fire even gives it kind of a halo. So that's magic. That's like magic entering into the whole. Bruce always talked about magic too. He believed it came from the people that are, the continuum.
 
Diane: The ancestors I guess. And this looks old as if its been worn and weathered.
 
Joy Fox: Right. Well I love it when this kind of thing happens when you get these sorts of flashes from the fire.
 
Diane: As if it’s set, it’s been thrown into the fire after being used.
 
Joy Fox: And it’s because of its relationship to the other pieces. That happens too because I sometimes use different methods of firing like putting a little burnable piece of something, actually art news magazines are great because they have that shiny ink surface. And if you take a little bit of it, put it in between and you stack them like that, and put something in between here that smokes, that burns out you get different tones, darkened areas on the surface.
 
Diane: That's how you got that burnt mark on the surface?
 
Joy Fox: Well that could be, yeah, there was probably something there. But it's always a surprise; you never really know how it's going to come out. That's the magic in the part of it that I really love.
 
Diane: Now, that one is not fired.
 
Joy Fox: This is fired once. It’s reddish clay, I built this piece, and then it's going to be up on wheels, I’m using a lot of metal now. I put this pinkish under glaze on it, and then I carved through into the red clay. And now I'm going to fire it again, and put a little clear glaze over it, so that, these marks will come through and then the clear glaze will be shiny, shinier, darker too.
 
Diane: And then you take the tape off?
 
Joy Fox: I'll take it off before I fire it. I usually take it off right after I put clear glaze on.
 
Diane: I guess you want to pull the tape off to get the negative shapes?
 
Joy Fox: You don't have to, it will burn out. But sometimes the glaze sticks to the tape.
 
Diane: Well I want you to think about when you're getting ready to begin a piece. You know that moment, almost that moment before conception I guess it is.
 
Joy Fox: One of the things is, that I usually have more than one piece going on. I was thinking about that because for instance, if you're in a painting studio and you have the wall. I have a friend who's studio is absolutely clear of everything except for a chair, a podium where he has his dictionary, and a piece of black canvas on the wall. He doesn't have any paintings stored in there or anything. That's his studio. That's totally different from mine. I have all these things that give me ideas. For instance, I'm using a lot of metal now. And then I have things that I've started that I haven't finished. So you know when I come in here, there's so much already going on. It's not like I come into an empty place.
 
Diane: So the art kind of begins from art? It begets more art.
 
Joy Fox: Yeah, exactly. There are times if I'm working a piece, reworking it, and reworking it, and it's just not making any sense, I have to set it aside. I’ll start on something else, then look over at it and it will tell me what it needs, “Oh yeah, that's what I need to do to that piece.” And I might be working on something totally different, but suddenly know how to finish it.
 
Diane: Do you ever make a piece, such as a shape like that one, and not really know how you'll ever use it, but it just looks like such an interesting thing?
 
Joy Fox: Well that's why I have this one. This was going to be another figure. It's going to have kind of a little dress. I'll be working on a piece later, and I'll say, "Oh that figure, that's what this needed." So it's, it is a sort of conversation going on all the time between the pieces.
 
Diane: There seems to be a timelessness where they're all happening simultaneously like all the work, and pieces are of future works being done now, but they're intended for work next year perhaps. Works that you've taken apart, and reworked. But it's always this ongoing conversation between all of the work that you’ve done from the very beginning of your career on into the future. Even those finished works over there.
 
Joy Fox: Now those, once I feel they are finished, I want them out of my life or I don't want to work on them anymore. I very seldom go back, and change those.
 
Diane: They are like beings. They have a presence in the room.
 
Joy Fox: Yeah, I have finished work over here, and over there it's all pieces and bits.
It's like that conversation going on.
 
Diane: That's exactly what happens within the painting itself after you kind of lay down the environment with paint, it's like you create a visual culture. But in your case, it has to do with all of these shapes, and the clay, and how the clay is going to contribute to the conversation, how it's going to end up the color that it comes out of the fire.
 
Joy Fox: And I never know how the color's going to happen. Sometimes it's very boring, and I'm not too happy with it, and I'll re-fire it a couple of times before I get where I like it. Each piece, I want ideally to make sense. I mean, I want it to go together even though it's made out of a lot of pieces. That is kind of complicated. A lot of times, it goes together differently than what I planned. But then as I take each piece and work on it, for instance this piece here that I drew on. When I'm working each small part, I really like it as an individual work of art. You know I like the idea of handling it, and working on it, and carving into it. I'll probably, after this is fired add more glaze.
 
Diane: So your words that you add, I see lots of words.
 
Joy Fox: I've been doing that more and more, and more. Poetry and just things that come to mind.
 
Diane: Are they thoughts that sort of surface in the moment?
 
Joy Fox: Most of them. For the most part, it's just things that come up or it's bits out of conversations.
 
Diane: Like this, "Crybaby cry, no baby, no cry."
 
Joy Fox: Yeah, that's from a song.
 
Diane: I love it.
 
Joy Fox: “Sing, sing, sing. Why it makes me laugh out loud.” Bruce was so good with the brush, you know with the watercolor brush, and the calligraphy of the brush, and all that. That affected me a lot. I like carving, and making the marks. It's very important to me. These words, these things that have turned into words, they started as patterns maybe, and then function as calligraphy and hieroglyphics.
 
Diane: They just come out of you intuitively.
 
Joy Fox: Sometimes it does, sometimes it's not worthy at all. It depends if it's flowing. Sometimes it's not flowing at all. You probably feel the same way in painting because you think, "Oh my God, what is wrong with this day or what's going on?" 
 
Diane: Yes . . .sometimes you'll be painting, and you won't even know where your ideas and gestures comes from, and you'll suddenly find them in the painting. You need a certain color or another shape or you suddenly need to paint a bug in it or extra things. And you don't really know where it all came from, but it seems essential to the work. When I wanted to interview you, part the reason was because your work just feels so intuitive.
 
Joy Fox: You know the really ultimate place to be is when your mind is empty. That's what all the yoga, and meditation is all about it's just like emptying your mind. That’s what happens I think eventually once you get your mojo going. I love all these terms from songs and things because they're always descriptive. Descriptive, and simplified or something. That's what happens, you get your mojo working, and something happens, something clicks.
 
Diane: Have you ever lost track of time?
 
Joy Fox: Oh yeah. Lots of times.
 
Diane: It is something we've been trained into I guess. Have you had areas in any of these pieces where you felt like there was a big struggle or a struggle with either the elements or the medium or just. . .
 
Joy Fox: Well for sure. Things sometimes just don't go too well. I just usually work through it. Sometimes I have to leave it alone, go to something else. Sometimes I have to go sit in my chair, and look at images or I do a lot of visualization. Sometimes I just go over there, sit there, and look out the window, and think. I guess you'd call it visualizing.
            If I can't, then I do drawings too, I have a book that I do a lot of little drawings of things. Ordinary things don't come out exactly like those drawings they go through big changes. And but it gives me a starting point, with the drawings. But you know the struggle, there's always a struggle. I think I've maybe learned how to go onto something else, not get too stuck. Like knowing when something's finished, you say, "I don't like this, I don't like this, I don't like this." And then all of a sudden maybe you just leave it alone, come back to it, and you know what to do.
 
Diane: So have you had periods in your life where you've felt like it was hard to come back to the studio?
 
Joy Fox: After a show it's always a little hard after everything is cleared out. I come out, and everything's gone and that can be difficult. A lot of times that's when maybe I'd take a trip or something.
 
Diane: To get re-inspired?
 
Joy Fox: Yeah, to get recharged. That’s one of the main reasons I travel is to get to look at art, look at nature. I do a lot of birding, I love plants, and so it's not too hard out here either because you just take a hike, and you just never get bored. There's always some surprise that's just around the corner.
 
Diane: You're such a positive person. I don't imagine you've ever really thought seriously about giving this up.
 
Joy Fox: Well I don't know. After the last show I had I didn't do anything for a couple of months. I just left it. I think, you know I'm getting towards the end of my life, and there are a lot of things I want to do that maybe aren't clay. Clay is so basic I want to get back into drawing more. I used to draw a lot more than I do now. I can't even seem to take the time out to do that. I don't know, there's just too much to do. I have way too much stuff going on in my life. I'm just surrounded by inspiration, kids art, children's art.
 
Diane: Yes, you draw a lot from children's art.
 
Joy Fox: I do. I always have. And now the kids are all getting older. And well Cezanne will someday have kids. There’s so much stuff I want to do. I want to go through all of Bruce's work, and get it more organized I have it all photographed and numbered and all that.
 
Diane: I don't work in clay but I feel a pull from it, and I wonder when you dream, do you dream in clay?
 
Joy Fox: No, but I do a lot of visualizing like say before I go to sleep, I think about figures or pieces or something I want to do. And sometimes when I wake up, I lay there and think about it. Bruce used to have these wild dreams. I mean, I'll have a wild dream once in a while, but his would always be visual.
 
Diane: Well these shapes that you have that come to you during waking consciousness are so dream-like. When you're mediating, they just seem to come through to you whenever you're in the zone.
 
Joy Fox: And like I say, I do a lot of visualization and looking, just looking at animal forms, and human forms, and plant forms.
 
Diane: There's a lot about the relationship between animals and humans in your work.
 
Joy Fox: Yeah. Well I love working with the human figure. I love doing different heads, you know different head studies.
 
Diane: Once you get a piece resolved, and you've got it suddenly together, and it works, can you describe what that feels like?
 
Joy Fox: You know it's a good feeling even though those feelings are sort of fleeting. But that gives you impetus to go onto something else. I work pretty rapidly and I don't stew over too much.
 
Diane: So as soon as something's done, you're done.
 
Joy Fox: I'm ready to go on to something else. I'm ready to go try other things, and I always want to experiment with different clays. I do a lot of experimentation with just the clays I dig around here, and mixing clays together, and just trying different combinations.
            I've been working with paper clay, and then high fire clay, low fire clay; just all different kinds of glazed piece, some different kinds of glazes. Most of the glazes I just purchase, I don't really mix glazes too much. I just see a color I like, so I buy it and use it. But I don't use a lot of glaze, most of these colors are under glazes.
 
Diane: What is paper clay?
 
Joy Fox: That's this. This is this white clay and it's got paper in it. I just got a bunch of it recently. Most people don't want to mess with reconstituting it. You have to soak it, and mix it, and then wedge it back out. So what I end up doing is buying maybe a ton of a particular kind of clay. My favorite clay, one that's so great for the figures is a beige, kind of a beige-y clay, and it's groggy, it's real sculptural. It doesn't crack, and dry, and it's a really solid and easy to work with. So I buy that, and then you start with a scrap. I mix some together and they all work differently. Some of them are real fine. So I might want to do something with white fine clay where I want to do something small like a figure of something. This paper clay has got a lot of paper in it, and then it burns out, so it's lighter, and it's real easy to work with. You can just stick it together. You don't have to really work it together much. I've liked it; I've liked the feeling of it.
 
Diane: You were talking about reconstituting, and all this hard work. But I remember one time you were telling me that you enjoyed working with the clay because it made your back feel good. And all I could think of was that there was something of your energy that you put into the clay that was being released into the clay.
 
Joy Fox: That was true even when I first started at UCLA and I took my first clay experience, and even while I worked on little things as a kid. Do you see the coffee tea set over there? I was twelve I think when I did those.
 
Diane: Are they that old really?
 
Joy Fox: Yeah. Honest. Those little pitchers were the first things I threw on the wheel.
 
Diane: Oh how fascinating.
 
Joy Fox: My mother had all those. That's why I have those now; I got them back from her. I'm kind of glad that I'd given her so many things because I now have, things from every period of my life.
 
Diane: I think it's wonderful that you have your beginnings here with you. And then you have the ongoing and the future.
 
Joy Fox: It's all right here. These are from when I was studying with Paul Soldner. Some of the early pieces, there are four pots up there. And then my work became less functional, started getting more sculptural. I think it changed when I was in Mexico and started doing little figures. I have a couple of those left, but there's one up there, little figures where I was firing with cow manure down in Mexico.
            But about my back . . .so I started working on the wheel, I had polio when I was young and my back always bothered me. They had me do some traction to help me with the curvature, and so I started working on the wheel at that same time. And I mean, the pain went away, it just went away. I never had any more problems until I got old now. I have a little bit of arthritis, but the yoga's really been helping. I don't have to take anything for it.
            I haven't been working on the wheel much. I'm going to do some more because I like doing functional stuff once in a while. I like working on the light stoneware with the painting on the plates. I've got a whole bunch at the house. I can show you painting figures on white plates, and dishes, and I'm kind of out of all those. I usually do a couple of loads, and then I give them away for gifts, and use them myself. And now I'm out of all of them. So I’ve got to get back on the wheel now, and see how it affects my back.
 
Diane: I have one more question because I know I'm going to tire you out.
 
Joy Fox: Oh no, that's all right.
 
Diane: And you sort of did answer it when you were talking about how you would be working, and then you'd glance and another piece that would kind of catch your attention, and want your attention. But I really want to know if you've ever felt that you were responding to the voice of another. And some people call it spirit while they're in the work, and some will call it Providence, and some call it their higher selves. But is there, was there ever an awareness that you know, you really aren't alone in this work?
 
Joy Fox: Oh very much so. Especially I have these conversations with Bruce all the time. You know just sort of, I mean they're real.
 
Diane: They're real.
 
Joy Fox: Because I always think, "Well what would he say about this or that?" because he was always really good at verbalizing. I mean it's funny because he was good at verbalizing but he wasn't good at writing something down, and then presenting it, that kind of thing. He was just good at communicating between people one on one.
 
Diane: Yes, I do remember.
 
Joy Fox: And so definitely I feel that, and I feel that there is a conversation kind of within an inner conversation a lot. And so I don't know how to exactly describe it, and then I think the pieces speak. It's a way of saying. I think it's part of a continuum. This is the oldest art form in the planet.
 
Diane: That's right.
 
Joy Fox: I mean, you know they're still digging up the earliest pieces. They discovered how to fire clay pretty early on. It’s just very ancient and I feel a real connection to the others. Here's Nampeyo, she was always a heroine of mine, a Hopi potter. She died in 1942, this picture is from 1901. So that’s, her, she still has people in her ancestors making pots. Great granddaughters, and daughters, and these different periods. I think just even being there, and being with that art, and what those people were doing and saying. I think that comes through.
 
Diane: I do too.
 
Joy Fox: I don't know if you would call it a continuum. It's like a conversation going on since the millennium.
 
Diane: Like almost a channeling.
 
Joy Fox: Yeah.
 
Diane: Bruce Elwin McGrew.
 
Joy Fox: Yes, I made this. I never finished it and I’ve got to. Every once in a while, I think I'm going to do it. This is a poem. It was supposed to be a water figure. And this poem, this was right after he died W. S. Merwin wrote for his memorial. It says, "You left us the colors, sand, rocks, and the shapes of late summer." He wrote that after Bruce died and it has another couple lines to it. Anyway, so this was something I started, but I never finished it. And it's going to be some kind of water figure sometime.
 It will happen one of these days. It's only been 13 years, 12 years.
 
***************
            Sholtz and Gavron (2006) remind us that clay work; the process of handling, manipulating and sculpting clay, taps into primary modes of expression that may have evolved before verbal language and these modes of expression are linked to actual feeling and memories that were encoded through touch and movement. Joy Fox and I discussed how comforting it was for her to just hold a lump of clay. Simply to hold it, feel its coolness and plasticity means something to her in her most primary ways of giving and receiving. The clay invites her and continues to invite even now when she might prefer to draw.

            Historically, clay has been used by many cultures as a connective medium to the spirit world. It is believed that many of the oldest clay figures were used in magical and ritual ceremony as symbols of goddess or god and symbols of power over the natural world. Joy Fox’s sculptures are undeniably totems of power.

            From my perspective, when an artist chooses to create in most cases the act of creating occurs between artist and art in the imaginal realm where the work becomes spiritualized, where creativity begins to speak as the work itself. However some artists invite a change agent into the process that influences this conversation by its very presence and character. The artist must always remain humble and step aside in the act of allowing. To involve an element such as fire, invites an other of no mind. It is not an other that has propensity to create. Fire releases energy and converts substances in ways that demand respect. An artist who creates in partnership with fire must have an inner core that can withstand and that has known change in all venues through the continuum so as not to fear it.

            Fire is not patient like water is. Fire is willful where water is nurturing and familiar and knows us better than we know ourselves. I would not say Joy Fox has faith in the fire so much as she has faith in the willfulness or the language of releasing that belongs to fire. To make a form by muscling the fine silt of the earth, water assists and helps the form to evolve. The artist’s energy is pounded, folded, and kneaded into the clay. The creation of forms from clay comes from the deepest center of the soul. Fire then releases it, releasing Joy Fox to the very same time and space of the ancients the first potters and all others in between.

            The invitation of the clay is a call to the work for Joy Fox to re-remember in the most primal way, as the feel of the clay in her hands was the same feeling for all the ancestors. This medium has never changed and requires the movements; touch sensations, and wordless communication as the earliest humans experienced. She converses with the ancestors as she works, her images are tributes to the creatures and elements of nature, gods, and time. The ancestors return through her, through her work and her offerings to the fire.

          The question of where crisis appears for Joy Fox posed an interesting challenge of stepping back from the voices she has included in her choir of creation, or the council of elements and ancestors. The images of the tall sculptures rising out of the desert keep reappearing in my mind. I see them welcoming me to enter the gate to her home, I see them lined up along the front of her studio and surrounding the table where she works the clay. Large pieces sit covered in plastic to keep them moist, I see the parts and pieces laying in piles, groups, and arrangements. The surfaces of the pieces as individual works of art reveal symbols, landscapes, and poetry. I remember Joy Fox’s account of the turning point where her work became less and less utilitarian. Her first departure from objects of use were small human figures and it occurred to me that they may not have been small in a fetish-like way, but small as in the distance. They were muses in the distance, on the horizon and their arrival changed everything.

Artistic crisis requires something from a seasoned artist, it requires the nod of reassurance and faith; and so to find Joy Fox’s crises I looked for her faith.

"Things sometimes just don't go too well. I just usually work through it. Sometimes I have to leave it alone, go to something else. Sometimes I have to go sit in my chair, and look at images or I do a lot of visualization. Sometimes I just go over there, sit there, and look out the window, and think. I guess you'd call it visualizing." (Joy Fox, interview, August 2013)
 
          Dismemberment aptly sums the character and creative space of Joy Fox’s call to transformation. Not only do the works function as art in the dismembered state, but they seem to want to have their say in how they are “re-membered” within the work. I suspect now at the point of dismemberment the ancestral voice of clay and the willful voice of fire have finally quieted down. She sits waiting for her own intimate conversation with the work and the “spiritualizing” of the piece. For this to happen she must face dismemberment and follow the soul of the work, she must listen to that sacred language of no words.

            Reconstructing the bones that have returned from the dust of the earth, returned from the fire of the universe now require something of Joy Fox in order to be spiritualized, they require what Romanyshyn (2007) discusses as the Fifth Moment: dismemberment, mourning, transformation in the Six Orphic Moments. Orphism teaches that human souls are divine and eternal and destined to repeated cycles of grieving in order to evolve and advance. With each stage of development, there is a looking back at the unsaid, undone, or unresolved; a letting go and then a move forward. All of these stages involve a unique character of grief.

            Romanyshyn (2007) makes the analogy of these cycles to research and the search for self appropriately, and when art becomes a path of discovery, self awakening, spiritualization it too moves within the cycle. The Six Moments in the cycle are characterized by Romanyshyn (2007, p. 61) as: Being Claimed by the Work, Losing the Work/Mourning as Invitation, Descending into the Work/Mourning as Denial, Looking Back at the Work/Mourning as Separation, Dismembered by the Work/Mourning as Transformation, and The Eurydician Question: Mourning as Individuation.

          Each of these moments can be found in Fox’s process, but crisis enters the scene in the fifth moment, the moment of confronting dismemberment. In the fifth moment, the artist must let go of the work and imagine it in a different way. The clay has been worked, formed, carved, and fired into the heads, arms, and trunks of the sculptures. Until now, the ancestors have assisted Fox, up until now she has been with child and pregnant with a “being” she can’t see or know. She sets the fired pieces out and waits letting go of her own involvement in the individual forms and surfaces knowing that they will now take on a different reality, the work will come into its own. There is a very subtle process of re-contextualizing and detaching; a moment of grief, and then movement to the stage of individuation (sixth) when the pieces become an individual. It would follow that once that happens, as Fox indicated, she is done with the piece and wants it to leave the studio either to be shown or live elsewhere.

          If you look at Joy Fox’s work as the reversal of the process of death and the movement toward rebirth the true sacrifice exists as it did for Orpheus in mourning and in grief. Dust, earth, clay as the forgotten reconstructed by the water, nourishment. The energy of creator voices of the continuum form and resurrect the bones, fire releases from the world of the dead and the past, and now grief must be revisited and “re-membered”. Transformation and spiritualization comes from the process remembering and then moves to individuation bringing the work into being.
The earth, the iron of the clay have absorbed into the skin of Fox’s hands and arms as she gathered the dust from the scatters of time to stand and witness again as sages. Their stories now can be known from their one or many faces, their scarred surfaces of journey and the animal parts that assist them.

          I watched while at the highest place on Joy Fox’s property a new grouping of the giant talismans were placed and she was directing the instillation of lights for the interiors of these “beings”. They would light the hilltop in the lonely darkness of the desert. Weren’t they now able to send light back to the stars and the continuum? I believe so. To a great extent, I see Fox in her “sorcery of resurrecting”, having been granted ancient alchemical secrets, successfully returning home to The Beginning.

Romanyshyn, R. (2002). Ways of the heart: Essays toward an imaginal psychology. Pittsburgh, PA: Trivium.
 
Romanyshyn, R. (2007). The wounded researcher: Research with soul in mind. New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal.
 
 

     I skate along the edge of the cracks, following the fault lines; those places where pressure built and energy released. A frozen lake reflecting the beautiful sky, turquoise blue, yellow salmon pink, and white. Only from my mind, my seat of safety can I watch as the puzzle pieces sink lower under the water, some completely disappear while others just hold their place afloat. I asked spirit to bring back my view of the fault lines that helped me to move and become. Slowly some memories returned, some images of the art, but I knew I had to cut through the lush overgrowth to find myself in the strokes and weeds of the painting. So many pieces of the puzzle have sunken into the black water.
     The other day a blue heron landed on my back wall. This bird does not live in my part of the desert he clearly wanted me to see him. His neck was so long and his wingspan far and sheltering, this bird held a presence of power that I had not experienced all that many times. In my inquiry to discover the meaning of this sighting, I was led back to the center of the lake.
     The blue heron brings messages of self-determination and self-reliance. It affirms my desire and yearning to progress, and to evolve. As thin and fragile their legs appear, they hold up the heron’s body with great strength. This bird has endless faith and patience and is willing to wait for its rewards.
     From what I have gathered in my personal conversations with fellow “searchers,” the heron is believed to link two worlds: the waters of life—the unconscious, and the air—the realm of the conscious mind. He feeds on fishes, which symbolize the treasures of the unconscious mind: spiritual nourishment for the seeker. The heron’s long legs enable them to stand in the great deep waters of the unconscious. This bird brings me a message that there is treasure for me in my unconscious, dreaming, creative space.

     Last night while sitting alone in my kitchen I lit the last of a candle and carried on with the business of my reading and studying. Lost in thought I was jarred back to reality by a strange trickling sound and then realized the candle was spilling, drizzling wax out of its side and down to the tabletop. In the effort to correct the imbalance in the candle, I ran to my studio to find a piece of cardboard or something to put under the lower side. My rummaging led me from drawer to drawer in my flat file, when a large green book stuffed in the back caught my eye. Something from very long ago, late 1970s perhaps? Something that had somehow escaped my ruthless cleaning jaunts and remained intact at the back of my paper drawer, an old journal/sketchbook. Forgetting my original mission I opened the book and found it contained more forgotten things, writings, paintings, drawings, and memories nearly extinguished. The paper was yellowed and crumbly, I carefully paged through. There before me on the pages were studies of a great blue heron. There are one in pencil and two in watercolor. Now as I type, I realize they were the original studies for a painting on the wall in my office just to my right. There all along . . .that heron. I just had forgotten and stopped seeing.      The sound of the candle led me to a fault line, a treasure trove of fault lines by way of an unusual sound, an unplanned journey to a corner of my life I had not visited in a very long time.
     Exploring each vein, each crack that pushed me through art and images by way of luscious engagement with water, paint, paper, pigment, brush and self offers a vague understanding of how Providence, or creative spirit maneuvered us, as that candle led me to that open channel of knowing. A fitting place to begin my own journey back to many moments as an artist where life cracked and dislodged, and the fault lines made way for the waters.