Joy Herhold

Joy has been creating 2-D art for more than 50 years. 23 of those years she was a weaver of tapestries, rugs, clothes, and blankets. Desiring more fluidity, she studied printmaking at Yavapai College under Steve Mason and found endless creative possibilities with monoprints and stencils. The printmaking paper is heavy sturdy cotton and so she experimented with machine sewing on this paper which works wonderfully. Joy developed the technique building on her experience as a weaver and printmaker. The satin stitches she uses works like textured brush strokes on the art. She feels that paper, threads, and ink work together naturally. Ink textures, in the boundaries of the stencils, have expressions of their own. In sewing, every stitch has a strong expression of itself, and Joy brings them all together to harmonize a song of their own. Joy is a member of Arts Prescott Gallery downtown on Whisky Row. (link) Joy is also Prescott Arts Journey’s Healing Arts Ambassador. Besides creating art, her passion is for our community to thrive and blossom with endless and powerful creativity. For this, she is excited to be a part of the Prescott Arts Journey.

There is an art to healing. And art-making can be a bridge. Both are tactile and humanizing processes of innovation. Through sound and imagery artworks can share the keys that unlock the body’s ability to heal itself. Each therapy is also unique and carries its own magic to unlock what is needed to heal. Each healing therapist finds their own key to unleashing their talent. When healing happens, an uplifting life realization exists. Inspiration opens, starting the next chapter in the healing journey. My goal is to celebrate our healing arts community. I look forward to celebrating with you. Let’s talk about it!

Artist Statement

With visual arts, the artist can affect the viewer with sublime uplifting inspiration, or by the rush of portraying frightening darkness. We share the spectrum of emotions and experience in our collective humanity. With this sharing, the viewer is affected, and the experience becomes their own through the process of mirroring. If we can feel it we can be it. In the healing arts, the body/mind/emotions are brought into balance and clarity through this process. An effective healer is an impeccable artist who strives for the highest experience of perfection. The one who is healed mirrors the healer and makes this their own. Such is the case with many powerful alternative healing modalities. I have studied with Jennifer Worble, of Angelic Earth Resonance, and learned to evoke light language in my visual art. Jennifer psychically sees the lights and auras of people. She utilizes light language and sounds to intersect with the layers of the body to restore their natural balance. Recently I wanted to share the power of dragon energy and spent a week looking for all of nature’s signs of this powerful energy. I saw it in the clouds, in the trees and heard it in the winds. When I went to transmit this energy into art, I blazed high energy strokes into the canvas. This canvas as it evolved, became Gaia who is burning on the surface but magical and resilient underneath. Much like us! We mirror what we believe in and what we are in contact with. Art should be beautiful in a home setting, but it is also so much more than this too.