Joanne Jolly-Kay

I am a Greater Boston visual artist who works with a variety of mixed media including 2 and 3 dimensional mosaics, stained glass, wood, and metal clays. I work out of the Porter Mill Building in Beverly, MA. I graduated from Mass College of Art with a BFA in sculpture in 1979 and from Tufts University with an MA in Occupational Therapy, (OT), in 1986. My husband, David Kay, and I were the founders of the Kingston Gallery in Boston in 1982, a cooperative art gallery which started in Boston’s Chinatown. I helped direct it until 1987 and it continues to flourish in the SOWA area of Boston on Harrison Avenue. I have continued to create art over the years and have shown my work in exhibits while bringing up my family and working as an Occupational Therapist over the last 38 years. In the past 15-20 years I have been able to devote much more time to my art resulting in a growing body of work. My work now is both personal and uniquely visually. It is sometimes about feelings toward life, places traveled to, or just color, lines, and playfulness. My focus for the last couple of years has been creating 3 dimensional weatherproof, mosaics with organic shapes in a variety of colors. I am getting a lot of joy out of creating unique shapes and using color when making these recent sculptural mosaics. I enjoy working with materials that involve a process of steps, and these 3D mosaics involve many steps including designing, building the armature out of rigid foam/metal/etc., coating it with a concrete mix, (currently using Pal Tiya), setting the mosaic tiles into thin-set over the concrete and then grouting. My plan is to continue this work and make larger outdoor sculptures with similar materials. My work as an OT has helped me become a good communicator and collaborator. I enjoy collaborating with customers to create art with special significance to them and occasionally run small group art classes out of my studio.