Conversations with joy tirade

Today we’d like to introduce you to joy tirade.

Hi joy, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I was raised in the American South by my gentle, working-class grandparents. We were all transplants from the north. My grandmother cooked, and my grandfather built things out of wood and repaired engines in propane trucks as a mechanic. They taught me to work hard and to make beautiful things by hand.

My practice investigates embodiment, displacement, language, and longing, often using the body or the absence of the body to articulate a yearning for a future yet to be imagined or expressed. My work addresses personal and collective memory and questions about time and being by engaging with art history, pop culture, speculative fiction, and emerging technologies. I hope to provide pathways for connection in our disconnected time through phenomenological inquiry.

My first significant introduction to Fine Art was in Houston. It was 2001, and I visited a friend’s family for the holidays. I went to the Museum of Fine Arts and encountered the James Turrell piece, The Light Inside. I stood inside the installation for ages, watching the light ebb from magenta, to violet, to blue. It seemed to match my heartbeat and my breath. I became obsessed with art after that moment. It was like falling in love for the first time. I taught myself to paint that year. I had friends in art school, so I spent a lot of time with them, listening to them and discussing art techniques and theories. We had art nights at my big house in Boulder, I was a radio DJ at the time, and all of us made work of some kind. I wouldn’t enter art school for a few more years. First, I went to San Francisco, where I met an incredible group of artists and an artist collective. Meeting these artists made a deep impression on me. Eventually, I left San Francisco to attend school in Virginia and completed a degree in Art and Art History from the University of Virginia. A few years later, I was awarded my MFA from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Currently, I work in the Bay Area as an Artist in Residence at KALA Arts in Berkeley, CA.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t think the artist’s path will ever be smooth. Like all artists, I struggle with self-doubt, searching for funding, trying to build community, and still making time to be a productive artist. My superpower is my time management skill; I have found a way to balance it all – this feels precarious at times – but I have a working system.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Right now, I am most proud of my solo show, “The Hurrying Light,” which will open in January 2023 in Atlanta at this hip gallery, Day & Night Projects.

I am showing some work that premiered in Raleigh, NC, at LUMP Projects and The Ackland Museum in Chapel Hill. I have not shown this work for a while as covid slowed down the art world. But I am excited to share this immersive video work. For more information, follow me on Instagram @joytirade or check out Day & Night Projects https://www.daynightprojects.art.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I love the Sunsama app for planning and work-life balance. It’s been great at helping me get everything done and telling me if I am planning too much. I also keep a bullet journal for longer-term planning and sketching. I have used bullet journals in some form or another for more than a decade to keep my projects moving.

Podcasts I love for creativity include “The Creative Pep Talk” by Andy J Pizza. This podcast has kept me company for years in my studio. I also love this new podcast, “Apples to Giraffes” by Francoise Vigneault and Jonas Madden-Connor. I have begun listening to “Art Problems” by Paddy Johnson. She’s so helpful and to the point. Every artist should listen to her podcast.

I love audiobooks too, and right now, I am listening to The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://joytirade.com/home.html
• Instagram: @joytirade

Image Credits
Image Credits: Film Stills from “Story of An Hour,” 2016-17, a multi-channel immersive HD video and sound piece which will be part of my show in Atlanta, GA opening January 2023.