For more information, contact Steve Dudek, 620-792-9260.

March 11, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Story by: Linda Jerke

The new exhibit in the Fine Arts display cases at Barton Community College is a lesson in spontaneity. One Friday evening at the Great Bend Coffee Company, local artist Robert Joy asked fellow artist Rose Dudek to “draw Alice.”

The hypothetical “Alice” was just an idea that came to him as a way of drawing out another artist’s creativity. “Rose is one of my favorite artists,” Joy said. She drew her idea of “Alice” and he spun off from there.

Joy started creating his own versions of “Alice” and responded to an invitation from Rose’s husband, Barton art instructor Steve Dudek, to show his work at the college. Now Joy has 32 colored pencil drawings, each portraying a different “Alice,” exhibited in the display cases located in Barton’s Fine Arts Building hallway. The exhibit is aptly titled “Under the Influence of Alice.”

Some of the drawings include brief narratives drawn in comic-strip-like “bubbles.” Also included in the display are various items of women’s clothing to “dress up” the exhibit. Helping give the exhibit a feminine touch to go along with the “Alice” theme are a girl’s “can can” petticoat, a red plaid skirt, a scarf, an item of ladies’ underwear and an umbrella.

In his art, “everything just happens,” Joy said. “I draw all the time, every day. My drawing doesn’t change, but the subject matter does.” He calls each subject “just one moment in art.”

Many of his art projects are ideas like the “Alice” theme that just come to him at random. The results reflect an unusual form of creativity. “I look up in the clouds and see something and put it on paper. I don’t have pictures in my head; it’s all on paper,” he said.

Joy earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from Fort Hays State University and he taught art at Roosevelt Junior High School in Great Bend for nine years. He then went to work as pressman for Golden Belt Printing and retired after 23 years there. He now enjoys a part-time job at Diane’s Diner and continues his artistic interests in varied ways.

Over the years, Joy also has taken several courses and workshops from Dudek and other instructors at the college. He has created several murals in downtown Great Bend. One of his most recent projects was the mural that wraps around the corner of the Great Bend Coffee Company, 2015 Lakin, illustrating the origin of coffee. Joy also was persuaded to design and paint the Barton County Arts Council sign for the art center located at Forest and Main.

When Joy is not creating his unusual visual art, he enjoys writing poetry and plays, in which he also performs.