Joyce Ryan shares a life-long love of her favorite art form.
As a first grader growing up near New York, Joyce Ryan, was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Her prompt reply: An artist. Asked again in sixth grade, she had the same answer. But a trip to the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows brought a teen-aged Ryan up close to Michelangelo’s Pieta, and her desire shifted. “It really moved me; I cried,” says the Sandy Springs resident, who began taking sculpting classes at age 15. Here, she fills us in on her work that’s now become high-tech.
Tell us about your background.
I started taking classes with a New York sculptor before I went to the Rhode Island School of Design and then Washington University in St. Louis for my master’s. I worked as an exhibit designer for a natural history museum but really wanted to be a stone carver of traditional sculpture.
But that didn’t happen?
No. I wound up doing special effects. I had a computer graphics program that I got very involved with and worked for a while selling a graphics card so you could see color on your computer. Eventually, I was doing sculpture for an animation studio in California and started doing 3D modeling. And that’s how I do a lot of my sculpture now, with a program.
How did you get to Atlanta?
My husband, John, is an artist, and we had an animation business in St. Louis. A competing company bought us out and moved us here in 1990. We started with a great apartment in Buckhead. Then John submitted a design for Izzy, the 1996 Olympic mascot, and it was accepted. We realized we’d be in Atlanta for the next few years, so we bought a house. Now we both teach at the Chastain Arts Center.
How does 3D sculpting work?
I’m 74 now and getting a little arthritic, and handling a big, heavy sculpture is starting to get beyond me. But sculpting on the computer will extend my working life. It’s a different way of thinking of things. I have a very large tablet with a lot of pressure sensitivity, and with a stylus, it looks like you’re sculpting clay on the screen. Then you print it out in 3D. People can’t believe it when they see it.
And you use the program for jewelry, too?
Yes, I started doing that in 2005. As a sculptor, you don’t really deal with color; it’s all about form. I find metalsmithing and bead and embroidery very meditative and soothing, and that’s how I teach them at Chastain. Beads are fun to play with, and I always try to have people make something right away. I’m all about getting people addicted as soon as I can.
What are your sculpture classes like?
They’re very hands-on. Everyone starts with a skull, and then we learn how to sculpt the muscles and look at how they affect expression. It’s not an easy class, but it’s very rewarding. I’ve been a sculptor since I was 16, and getting to share that is just delicious.
Do you and your husband share your art?
Oh, yes. John has taken my sculpture class, and I’ve taken his watercolor class. We’re out two nights a week now teaching and sharing everything we’ve learned. We’ve been married 54 years, and it’s fun and interesting to try each other’s classes.
@joycen.ryan
PHOTO: Joann Vitelli
