This article first appeared in the Independent Record on February 3, 2022. Written by Marga Lincoln.
Meet “Miss Wren” in her turquoise pinafore and bonnet,
“Lothar the Protector” a half-body soft sculpture of black cloth, and ” St. Veronica,” who reaches out from the canvas in joyous pinks and purples.
These are just some of the dream characters in a new exhibit, “Am I Dreaming It Or Is It Dreaming Me? – A Retrospective of Works by Sara Joyce.”
It’s open in the Holter Museum of Art Baucus Gallery and runs through April 18.
Joyce is considered one of Idaho’s “most original and inspired contemporary artists” by her fellow artists.
One could add, prolific.
She didn’t start painting until she was 36, but produced a large volume of work over six decades.
She created more than 3,000 entries in over 27 workbooks, sketchbooks, ledgers and handmade books, which inspired more than 370 major works.
Sara Joyce is considered one of Idaho’s “most original and inspired contemporary artists” by her fellow artists.
Her medium could be acrylic or oil paint, marker, charcoal, crayon, pencil, pen or sewing.
Looking at the sheer volume of her work, one could wrongly conclude, this woman never slept. But sleeping and dreaming were an integral part of Joyce’s creative process.
“Much of her development as an artist came through her daily practice of recording dream memories each morning in her elegant cursive, alongside sketches of dream images,” according to an article by the University of Idaho Prichard Art Gallery, which exhibited her work.
Some of the ideas became drawings, paintings, and fabric and clay sculptures.
A brilliant colorist, she often started a work just with color. Sometimes she would just add color to a canvas for days or weeks before a form began to take shape, preferring to mix her colors on the canvas, rather than on the palette.
Life and dreams inspired her art.
“It really was a traumatic childhood,” said her youngest son Bill Caccia, who helped install the show in early January.
Born in 1923 and growing up during the Great Depression, she traveled with her parents, looking for work in the Southwest. Her family was always on the move.
She recalled terrifying experiences meeting scorpions and Gila monsters and snakes when she was a child out on the desert.
At age 14, she became a live-in mother’s helper.
This proved a blessing, Caccia said. Joyce got to attend school and earn a high school diploma. And her employer taught her cooking, baking and sewing – skills she loved and incorporated throughout her artistic life.
“When I think about her art, it was a conscious quest based on unconscious experiences,” he said.
Even her name came from a traumatic childhood experience.
She was born Joyce Marjorie Allen. At age 10 she helped her father with the delivery of her twin sisters. One was stillborn. And in one of her journals, she writes of the body lying in a shoe box with a tissue covering it.
As an adult, she took her dead sister’s name and rearranged it, becoming Sara Josephine Joyce. She believed that “Souls that die at birth live on in someone else,” Caccia said.
“Although she wasn’t formally schooled, she was highly self-educated.”
As an adult, Joyce studied anthropology, archeology, studio art, art history, astronomy, literature, linguistics and prehistoric arts and cultures. She was particularly drawn to Jungian psychology and the exploration of dreams, mythology, symbols and archetypes.
“Carl Jung was a huge influence on her,” Caccia said.
“Her awareness was global,” said her friend Pocatello, Idaho artist Margo Proksa in an article by the Prichard Gallery. “She was scanning the planet for inspiration and education.”
Caccia recalled his mother was a voracious reader, subscribing to 17 magazines on everything from architecture to anthropology to science.
“She could talk with just about anyone,” he said, because they could always find a common interest.
But that was just part of her life.
She made her income by renovating Victorian houses.
She also baked beautiful, artistic breads daily, did yoga, took walks, gardened and raised goats and hens.
She also raised three children, sewed her own clothes and typically had several different art studios going – keeping a separate studio for each medium.
“She worked constantly. Her work was her art,” said Caccia. “Art was her life.”
During the night or in the morning, she drew and wrote in her dream journals, which provided the inspiration for her art. Copies of her journals are available in the gallery to read and explore. Among them, one will find some of her reflections.
She wrote down quotes that inspired her, such as Pablo Picasso’s “Art creativity needs daring, imagination and playfulness.”
And she wrote her own thoughts.
“In art and other worthy endeavors there is always the ‘despair’ factor before the way comes – from formless to form.”
And, “a special feeling fear and fearlessness, dread and desire, they meet in every significant event.”
Caccia recalled she kept her art private – even from her children. She didn’t invite them back into her studio to see works in progress. Showing her work didn’t have meaning for her, he said. She considered it imperfect and declined to sell it in galleries. She didn’t allow her work to be shown until a few years before her death, which was in 2011.
“People tried to put her in a category,” Caccia said. In the 1990s she was called “an outside artist,” a label that offended her.
She called herself “an art sophisticate,” adding “I’m highly educated about art in my own way and my own processes.”
She felt lucky that in creating art, she answered to no one. “She could just create as she wished.”
“Sara said every thought has a molecule which goes with it,” said Caccia. ” Sara thought all objects had an aura. She tried to capture that.” He believes that Joyce would have hoped that “when people view her art that it invokes a response.”
Bill Caccia will give a public talk about his mother’s work 6 p.m. April 14.
The Holter is at 12 E. Lawrence St., www.holtermuseum.org, 406-442-6400.