Southport Magazine

It’s not hard for me to express how much I admire Joyce Grazetti. Not only is she an amazing artist, but she is also a good friend and someone I have often looked to for advice. 

Her artwork stands on its own as it is always fresh, intricately detailed and yet sometimes wonderfully abstract. She has mastered the art of both clay sculpting and painting, winning several awards over the years.  When we both took classes at Orange Street Pottery, I watched Joyce take ordinary clay and manipulate it into amazing pieces of work right before my eyes. Nothing seemed too big or hard for her to accomplish. I have very fond memories of helping our teacher Don Johns take a kiln apart just so we could get Joyce’s three foot tall gargoyle sculpture in it to fire. We lifted the huge beast onto a dolly and rolled it carefully down the hall to the kiln room in true parade fashion. 

“I create forms to express a feeling, make a statement and I achieve satisfaction when that goal is accomplished in a well-designed piece,” explains Joyce. “I start out with an idea of what I want to make but it sometimes ends up quite different when finished. “There are no mistakes, simply opportunities to communicate with the clay.” 

Joyce credits a great deal of her sculpture and pottery success to Don Johns. “I did pottery and some painting when I first moved here, I did mostly textured hand building. I was lucky to find Don Johns, an amazing artist who taught pottery at Orange Street Pottery in Wilmington. He was an amazing person, an artist and an instructor. He would demonstrate many useful class projects or you could do your own thing. If I was working on a project of my own, he would say, ‘You know there is an easier way to do that’. Don has since passed away, but whenever I am having a problem, I ask myself ‘How would Don do this?’” 

Joyce and her husband planned for years to live here in their retirement. “When I asked my students what they wanted to do when they grew up, they asked me what I wanted to do after I moved. I said I wanted to do art and be a beach bum. I am doing art but I find I do not have time for the beach bum part,” she said. “I became a full-time artist after retiring from teaching in Pennsylvania and moving to Oak Island, NC in 1992,” said Joyce. “I had 2 years of college level art before switching to education. When we first visited Oak Island, we found that it would be a good fishing place for my husband. While he was fishing on Oak Island I went to Southport. I found Franklin Square Gallery and the decision was made. We bought a house and rented it for 2 years. We retired and moved here in 1992.” 

Joyce is now focusing mostly on 2D art. “My arthritis got worse and my hands hurt more. I still do a little pottery but I am now doing more 2D work. I like to do abstracts with texture. I like the freedom to do whatever. With acrylics I can water the paint down like watercolor or put it on thick with a palette knife,”she said. “A failed realistic painting makes a good start for a collage. Dying tissue paper to use in a collage is a technique all its own. You need to do this where there is room. It is fun to do it with a group,” she said. “I like working in different media. If it looks like fun, I will try it. Rules for design apply to any art work you do. I took many workshops in both painting and pottery. I never went to a workshop that I didn’t find at least 1 or 2 things to apply to my work.”

All artwork produces some challenges, but the challenges are usually followed by great rewards. “The most challenging aspect of my 2D work is to know when it is done,” Joyce explained. “Sometimes it is just a small dab of paint in the right place. Other times it is getting rid of a section of the painting that you really like but it does not go with the rest of the piece,” she said. “Sometimes I line up all the paintings that are almost done in the living room and look at them until the right one comes along. When my husband asks me ‘How long is that going to be in here?’  It goes under the guest bed for another time.”

Like most creative people, Joyce is driven to create. “I just have to do art,” said Grazetti. “I recently started doing pouring’s which is taught by Paula Cline at  the Oak Island Senior Center. It is just a lot of fun. You do not have much control. They make good backgrounds for some of my paintings,”she said. “My daughter and I are planning on doing glass stepping stones as soon as the weather gets a little cooler. When I am going to be immobile for any length of time, I get materials ready to do a project that be done sitting or lying down. Sometimes it is Christmas ornaments, jewelry, or cards.”

If you have ever been at Franklin Square Gallery and rode the elevator, you can thank Joyce for all her efforts and raising money to build it. The Associated Artists of Southport even named it 

‘The Grazetti’ to honor her in all the work she did in raising money to install it. Her work can be seen at Franklin square Gallery or at the Oak Island Recreation Center. You can reach her by email at 
artslave92@gmail.com.