Joy
Motisi |
For some, the desire to be an artist is
almost inborn. They recall drawing at an early age, and almost
always say they were encouraged to pursue their interests
through high school and beyond by enthusiastic parents and
supportive teachers.
Others learn how to draw, and practice on
their own, with little support or encouragement from family or
friends, until they achieve a level of perfection that
satisfies them. They’re just driven to be artists from as
far back as they can remember, and their drive leads them to
their eventual goal.
And then there are those whose interest blooms
late, who have neither encouragement nor acquired talent,
whose lives are occupied with other demands and who have
little time to pursue anything as luxurious |
as their own artistic interests. For these, the seduction
is more sublime: the interest is always present, but not
pursued until much later in life. For them, the awakening is the
grandest surprise of all.
Cape artist and stained glass designer and
constructor, Joy Motisi, is in the latter category. Art came late and
was a secondary interest in her life, awakened not in pursuit of a
goal to be an artist but by chance.
Having put aside her pre-med education at
Marymount College in New York, and her dreams of one day becoming a
doctor, Motisi married, instead, and concentrated on raising a
family. To the extent she thought about art at all, it was usually
others’ art. The mother of five, she had a family to raise.
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"Owl
on Branch", stained glass, 20" x 15", © by Joy
Motisi
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Her
first venture painting was a home project -- a painted mural
on the wall behind her sofa. “I don’t know where I got the
ability,” she says, having no formal schooling in arts up to
that point in her life, other than some silk screening
training in high school. Nonetheless, she purchased a “How
to” paint book and for the sheer pleasure, “started
fooling around with it,” soon discovering that she had a
natural talent for composition and an eye for detail.
"I loved Dogwoods” she says, and decided to
paint a branch. “Just one branch with flowers. No symbolism
or anything. If it didn’t come out right I’d just paint
over it.” But painting over things, as she discovered, was
not something she had to do often. One of her neighbors
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saw
her work and asked if she’d paint a mural on the wall of her
living room. Reluctant at first, she found it “a little
scary” working for others. You could paint over your own errors on your own walls, she
says, but a neighbor’s wall, that was something altogether
different.
Her work was apparently good enough, because for
three years she earned extra income on commissions gained by word of
mouth – one neighbor at a time.
While she enjoyed painting in oil, however, she
felt limited. “I stopped doing oils because without formal study, I
felt I wasn’t going to get better.” She even sketched in pencil for a while, designing monuments
and landscaped settings for a monument company in New York. “It
gave me a little extra money.” But that, too, didn’t hold her
interest.
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"Meteor",
stained glass, 16.5" x 22" © by Joy
Motisi
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In
1971 with the kids a little older, she went back to school, Dominican
College in New York, to study for a BA in teaching. But before
receiving her teaching degree a job opportunity for a pre-school
“person” presented itself. “The
ad didn’t say ‘teacher’ and I didn’t have my degree at that
point, so I applied for it and apparently I was the most qualified. I
started the program literally with a box of paper and two
boxes
of crayons and ended up being its Director.” When she |
retired in
1990, after nineteen years, the program had grown to 250 students,
supervised by forty employees.
During this period, 1985 to 1990, Motisi, having
put aside painting in oil as a hobby, acquired an interest in stained
glass, a fascination she nurtured while admiring the works of Tiffany
at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. “I did a lot of
decoupage and enjoyed it and then I saw some of Louis C. Tiffany’s
work and fell in love with stained glass.”
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"Mardi Gras", stained glass,
27.5" x 23.25", © by Joy
Motisi
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The
opportunity to pursue her interest as a stained glass artist was
almost serendipitous. It came not from an art source, as one
might expect, but rather from her job as a school administrator.
“There was a gentleman who was teaching stained glass to
senior citizens and I was asked to visit one of his classes and
evaluate him as a teacher. His name was Angelo Zucano, a retired
radiologist.” Motisi was so impressed with his work that she
asked if he’d be willing to give her private classes. He
agreed, and over the next year she studied at his studio. She
quickly acquired the happy talent for working with stained
glass, a hobby she says, that resulted in “a lot of cuts and
burns,” at first but “a great deal of satisfaction” in the
end. |
When
her instructor unexpectedly passed away, Motisi said she
made the decision to continue on her own. “The bug bit and
it bit strongly,” she says. What started as a hobby
quickly developed when she retired. “The more I learned,
the more intrigued I became. When I learned how to design,
that was like an epiphany. Now I could really design and do
my own patterns.”
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"Candle
Glow", stained glass votive, 8" x
6.25", © by Joy
Motisi
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Working
with the tools of the trade: glass cutter, glass plyers,
grinders, copper foil, grinders and soldering iron, and
individualized glass that she selects for each piece, Motisi
uses glass as a sculptor would use linden wood or copper.
Each piece is intricately designed, glass is cut, copper
foil applied, then soldered, patina applied and the finished
piece is polished. She became so proficient that in 1989,
one year before retirement, she combined
both professions – education and art – and accepted a
teaching position evenings as an instructor with the Adult
Education Division of the |
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"Lazy
Iris", stained glass, 19" x 17.25", © by Joy
Motisi
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town
of Clarkstown, New York. While there she says she “enjoyed sharing the fine
art of stain glass with beginning artists.” It also gave her the opportunity
to refine her own talents.
By
the time Motisi and her husband moved to the Cape in 1994, her stained glass
work was selling, commissions were routine, and larger pieces adorned public
buildings: a school in Rockland County, New York, and the Nyack Firehouse, a
commission comprised of a logo of the Canadian Goose – not bad for someone
who came late to the profession.
Working from her home studio in Brewster,
Motisi’s reputation as a stained glass professional and imaginative designer
grew quickly. She was asked to exhibit at a juried show at the Cape
Cod
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Museum of Natural History,
in Brewster after her work was noticed by the museum’s art
director; her commission work is steady; and now can add “fine arts
gallery artist” to her list of accomplishments as she shows at one
of the Cape’s premiere fine art galleries, Winstanley-Roark Fine
Arts.
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"The
Great Heron", stained glass, 23" x 19". © by Joy
Motisi
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“I
don’t really know what makes my work unique,” she says with
genuine modesty of the work she produces, “I just love doing
it. I guess it’s the love of color and glass that helps
achieve some of the uniqueness and beauty.”
Spoken as a true artist.
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