As part of my senior capstone project for Gender, Race, and Sexuality Studies at Pacific Lutheran University, I asked my fellow community members and students to help me imagine a future where sensory self-care and joy are guiding practices in our lives.
A Letter from the Curator
Click to read
The prompt was to create an individual self portrait of oneself doing/practicing/being near/creating things that bring them joy, especially joy that comes from sensory self-care. I asked folks to think about the difference between joy and happiness, between mainstream self-care and sensory self-care. Then I asked them to translate those thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories into a visual or linguistic representation and to write a short artist statement to share some of their thoughts about their piece, their intentions, and process.
Some of us did this work together at the event for JOY: A Collective Art Project that was held in the DJS lounge at PLU on Friday May 2nd, and some of us did this work individually. Whether completed in community or individually, all of our pieces come together here in this digital showcase as a collective portrait of joy.
This resulted in a big collective imagining of how our environments, our relationships, our emotions, and our spaces would be different is intended to inspire the viewer to engage with our imagining as a participant. We are inviting you in to imagine with us, and to feel your own joy alongside us feeling ours.
The purpose of framing these pieces together as a collective portrait is to draw attention to the synergistic power that comes about when these pieces are brought together. When we come together to practice imagination in community we effectively create spaces of resistance that deconstruct and subvert oppressive power structures. Community spaces like this one have the potential to create positive social, emotional, affective, and environmental change through the spreading of joy. This is an attempt to engage with what theorist Anna Hickey-Moody calls “an ecology of sensation” where each being in an ecology is an “affective switch point of bodily capacity,” or, an embodied space that can hold and share emotions, experiences, sensations, and other non-linguistic, non-conscious experiences that are both brought alive by and can bring others to life through connections and relations to other beings.
Community is an essential part of practicing joy. By engaging with these pieces you, reader, become a part of our community. My hope is that you feel a sense of being enveloped in others’ joy, which hopefully inspires your own feelings of pleasure and satisfaction, and reminds you of your own sources of joy.
In feeling with us, you become one of the “switch points of bodily capacity” and have the potential to bring people, places, and things alive by practicing your joy.
I hope that by spreading these feelings and extending space for the practice of joy that slowly we can move towards making our collective joy a regular reality.
If you are feeling inspired to create your own portrait in joy, see submission info below!
Individual JOY Portraits
Each portrait is a detailed and carefully created portrait of the artist in their joy. Each person chose to represnt themselves and their joy differently, using the medium they felt best captured the affect of their experiences. Each piece is accompanied by the artist’s information and artist’s statement.
Bre Judge, (She/Her), 34, Teacher, Real Estate Investor. Portrait Credit: Alisha Komisarenko.
“Waves of Joy“
Layered Collage and Watercolor on Paper
“Gravitating towards the things that bring me sensory joy continue to center me and bring me peace emotionally, physically, and mentally. Solitude, reading, music and connecting to nature, more specifically the ocean, are all ways that deepen my appreciation for the world around me and help give me purpose. For me, joy feels like the breeze, sounds like birds chirping and waves crashing, smells like salt and fresh cut grass, and looks like warm colors brought from the sun.”
Jeff Bryant (They/Them)
“Jump Charleston”
Digital Photography
“Dance brings me joy, and sets me free from heteronormative or ableist rules about how I move my body. In partner dance I love to break the traditional gender norms. I can lead, follow, or switch fluidly between roles. As a neurodivergent person, dance allows me to stim openly, and not face shame for it.”
Madalyn Standley, older.
“Getting to the Cozy”
Layered Collage and Watercolor on Paper
“This self portrait shows my joy for life. There is an insurmountable weight of joy that is created within me when I spend time in nature. It revitalizes me from the inside out. It calms me, grounds me, and makes me feel small so I can process big feelings back into manageable chunks.”
S.T.
“ Summer Joy”
Acrylic and Collage on Cardboard
“Summer gives me many moments of joy. The life that comes from the garden in every bloom I see. The ocean in its ability to make me feel renewed and refreshed. How the sun feels on my skin and makes me feel like I have a healthy glow. Summer travel to beaches and cozy movie nights.”
Molly
“Untitled”
Collage on Paper
“This piece illustrates joy for me because it shows the excitement of adventure, the beauty of nature, and the joy of learning new things.”
Rylan Y., First-year student.
“Joy and Connection”
Watercolor on Paper
“To me what brings me joy on all levels is love and connection. It might sound weird at first, but the idea of love brings me joy in my heart. Seeing others have fun and not having a care in the world puts a smile on my face. Joy for things that I enjoy doing in life. In my art piece, my heart is filled with joy. Connecting to symbols, music in the air, passing the time, hearing/listening to stories, and being at peace all bring me joy. The piece also includes different colors around the page, I mainly did it without thinking why it was important. But the different colors around the page sorta represents the randomness in our lives. Having something that brings us joy can help form connections between our reactions to that activity and morality. Overall, joy can help form connections to ourselves and to others physically and emotionally.”
Michael Muench
“Artificial Zone”
Collage on Paper
“For me, joy feels like total involvement in the process of creation. It comes from physical exhilaration. And sometimes it crops up in novelty. What brings me joy is various and is more closely related to my relationship to the thing – real or imaginary – than the thing itself. Here are some things that bring me joy: reading abstract novels, people’s faces, places that have been abandoned and reclaimed by nature, highly instagrammable food, painting miniature space marines, music that sounds like rain on metal, and being confused.”
Eden S. (They/Them)
“Pleasure is Our Revolution”
Layered Collage on Paper
“In short: it is my body and returning to it that is my joy. I am autistic and for me, joy is multidimensional and multisensory which is why I’ve chosen to have images in multiples and include images and symbols that evoke multiple senses including, vision, smell, touch, taste, sound, and emotion. Lately, I feel that I have been living into my joy more fully than ever. I have been taking time to slow down, explore my senses, the bends and folds of my body, my sexuality, my capacity to feel and care, my capacity for leaving and returning to my body through sensory regulation and self care, the boundaries between me and others, physically and affectively. Practicing sensory self care has brought joy and pleasure that invigorates me, that helps to feel what Audre Lorde talks about when she speaks of “erotic aliveness.” The composition of my piece was partially inspired by Andy Warhol’s series of Doubles and Renaissance naked/nude portraits that discuss themes of desire, sensuality, gaze, looking, empowerment, and embodied identity.”
Collective JOY Portrait
Want to contribute your own portrait in Joy?
JOY is an ongoing project of imagining and continues to welcome new work to display in this online gallery. See prompt and submission details below!
Prompt
Think beyond surface level experiences of brief happiness. Think about things that give you pleasure and bring you back to yourself, even, and especially, during hardship. Think about the practices, places, things, people, relationships, activities that restore, revitalize, and enliven you. This will look different for each person. Some examples might be: dancing, journaling, wearing specific clothing, a specific movie, a specific book, knitting, collage, painting, gaming, making or listening to music, playing with a pet, being in nature, or taking your time.
No source of joy, or moment of joy is too small to be shared. I encourage you to get weird with this and think outside of traditional self-care practices. If you feel stuck, try to uncover what brings you radical joy and document/share part of your process, even if you don’t feel like you’ve succeeded.
Your portrait can be done in any visual medium including: a selfie, traditional photography, collage, paint, ink, sculpture (a photograph of the scuplture will be needed), or digital visual mediums. Your portrait should be 11 x 14 Inches in size or about 3300×4200 pixels.
Please also consider if the thing that brings you joy causes harm to others. For example, while the sexual has a lot of potential to bring joy, there is a difference between the erotic and the pornographic, with the pornographic having the potential of causing others harm.
You are encouraged to embrace the erotic in the creation of your portrait. If you have questions on whether your piece borders the pornographic please email at the address given below.
Please offer a short description of your piece and your experience in your artist statement. This could include:
-What it is that brings you joy
-What you feel (sensory experience) in your body when you experience this joy,
-And anything else you want to share about your experience/practice/activity/object of joy.
Please email eden.standley@plu.edu to submit your image file!
Please also note that I reserve the right to exclude or request revisions to portraits that may cause harm.
Thank you for your response. ✨
The Art of Autistic Joy 