Sculptor Joy Kees tames earthen materials into heavenly creations
Joy Kees in her Marble Falls art studio with a work in progress she’s calling 'A Mother’s Heart.' When fired, the white clay will turn terracotta red. Staff photo by Suzanne Freeman
What Joy Kees likes best about sculpting is taking a lump of “dirt” (clay) and working it with her hands, firing it, and making it into something meaningful.
“I like for my work to touch someone emotionally or make somebody think about something when they see it,” said the 72-year-old Marble Falls artist. “I love the idea of creating something that didn’t exist before. If people can enjoy it, that’s a bonus.”
Kees is known for her clay angels, which are big sellers, but her prize-winners are her metal works. Her brag wall is hung with Best of Show and first-place ribbons from a variety of shows in Central Texas for the full range of her art.
Her work is also included in the Highland Art Guild’s twice-a-year show at the Marble Falls Public Library as well as on display at the guild’s gallery, 318 Main St. in Marble Falls, and the Llano Fine Arts Gallery, 503 Bessemer Ave.
Since beginning her art journey in the early 1980s, Kees has shaped her sculpting techniques through trial and error and many art classes. As her growing family moved around the country for husband Larry’s job, she took sculpting classes at community colleges wherever they lived. Those courses included metalwork.
“I really enjoyed that, but the clay is more accessible,” she said. “I can do that from my home, and it doesn’t need a lot of other equipment.”
With clay, Kees needs only half of the two-car garage in the couple’s Gregg Ranch home for an art studio. One wall is lined with storage bins and shelves for materials and tools. In the center is a table for rolling out slabs of clay. Up front, near the automatic garage door, is the kiln.
She also has a potter’s wheel but not for throwing pots. She uses it as a Lazy Susan to slowly turn her figures front to back as she shapes them.
After forming a slab of clay around an armature shaped like a dunce’s cap (she has several different sizes), Kees begins to add body parts: arms, shoulders, neck, head, and often wings.
“I enjoy doing (angels). I enjoy seeing how I can make each one different,” Kees said.
Recently, she began pressing leaves and crochet doilies into the clay to create patterns. As the clay forms beneath her fingers, she comes up with a name for each piece.
“I like words. Some of my pieces are inspired by something I read, or a song I heard, or scripture, or a poem,” Kees said. “Something will either come to me based on the way the figure is working out, or, sometimes, I have something to begin with.”
One recently sold piece is titled “Be Still and Know” (Psalms 46:10). Another is named after a line in the Talmud, a collection of Jewish rabbinical writings: “Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’”
For “Whispering, Grow,” Kees pressed salvia leaves picked from her backyard into the terracotta clay and fired the piece with an iron oxide stain to bring out the shadows and indents.
Another terracotta figure, which can be seen in the Llano art gallery, sports a fancy dress and hat imprinted with crochet patterns.
“She’s all dolled up,” Kees said. “I named that one ‘This is the Day.’ Could be, this is the day of the wedding, or this is the day I’m looking special, or this is the day the Lord has made” (Psalm 118:24).
A regular churchgoer, Kees identifies as a spiritual person and Christian but doesn’t think Christianity is the only way to a spiritual life.
“I acknowledge other faiths, other religions,” she said. “I think angels speak to a lot of people, whether they are of any particular faith or not.”
Not all of her creations are angels, including “This is the Day.” One figure currently under construction is holding what looks like a bouquet of flowers. On closer inspection, it is an anatomically correct heart that has been ripped out of her chest; thus the name “A Mother’s Heart.” Kees was still deciding whether to add color to the piece. All of her work is fired, but few pieces are glazed.
“I prefer to just see the clay,” she said. “I like how it transforms in the firing. The red clay, or terracotta clay, looks a dull gray when you’re first working with it.”
A chemical reaction in the firing process turns the material red.
“I like the idea of that process, that it just changes as opposed to covering up with a glaze,” she said. “I don’t want to cover up the clay.”
The end results are tactile and solid but also transcendental. Whether shaped with wings or without, Kees’ pieces blend the elements of earth, sky, and heart.