September 17, 2025
By Frances Chamberlain
Photographs by Rana Faure
Joy Brown’s human-like sculptures are watching you, everywhere you go. Their benign faces are not blank, but whimsical, humorous even. The faces of the large oven-fired figures have deep-set eyes and small open mouths, and seem to watch as people walk around them.
“I work in clay because it makes me happy. Calm, grounded,” Brown says. “And I think when other people see them, they feel happy—and that in itself is a healing force in this old world.”
“When I saw my big pieces in New York City on Broadway, with everybody going about their business at crosswalks, and cars passing by, nobody paying any attention to the sculpture … The sculpture sat there quietly, watching all this going on. The sculptures are representative of that part of us that’s witnessing everything we do, our spirit self, watching, aware.”
Her work, Brown says, embodies a wholeness and presence. No doubt, a lot of her experience came from training with a traditional Japanese artist.
“At first, in Kyoto, in a very rigid medieval environment, I made sake cups. I helped in the studio, and then threw on the wheel. It was a kind of meditation, an intuitive connection.”
After Kyoto, she went to study with Shige Morioka in the mountains of Wakayama, Japan. “I gained a broad understanding of ceramics. It had a profound impact on my work.”
Brown had grown up in Japan, where her missionary father had started a hospital. After living in Osaka, she studied in the U.S. and then returned to focus on ceramics in Japan. After her apprenticeship she came to Wingdale, where she says she got over being shy because she had to sell her work.
After producing so many sake cups in Japan, her work evolved into small animals. “They were little spirit forms, not aware of age, gender, culture, or skin color,” she says. “They touched a human part of myself.”
She met Denny Cooper, her mentor, in 1993. “He made me see my spiritual way in a community.” They formed Still Mountain Center, a nonprofit, and opened the studio to busloads of schoolchildren. Teaching in front of groups of children through Still Mountain, she explains, brought another good skill.
“It’s healing for me, once a sculpture goes out,” she says, “and a healing thing when people see a sculpture. You put a clay cup to your lips, and it’s healing. Clay is what people have done for tens of thousands of years.”
At her studio, she uses a woodfired kiln to finish her work. “It’s a nine-day process, in a 30-foot-long tunnel, she says. “It starts like a campfire; after four days, we’re putting wood in every 15 to 20 minutes.” The front is bricked up and wood goes through vents.
“Firing is like asking the universe for what you need,” she says. “Working together is what brings people together.” She needs a lot of friends to help manage the firing for the nine days.
Her partner, Jimmy Griffin, doesn’t help with the firing but he’s essential in many other ways. “He’s a masterful, self-taught engineer, and can move sculptures that weigh from 1,200 to 1,800 pounds,” she says. “In his spare time, he likes to rebuild vintage Volvos.”
Brown is part of this year’s Clay Way Studio Tour, which will take place on October 18 and 19, from 10 am to 5 pm. She is also the subject of a documentary, The Art of Joy Brown, by Eduardo Monte-Bradley.
The film about Joy’s work, “The Art of Joy Brown” has been accepted at the Mystic film festival and it will screen Otober 4, 11:30 AM in Mystic.
