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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

I've been playing around with painting plants on my pieces. This one is deep blue morning glories, one of my favorite flowers.

Small pottery bowl with deep blue morning glories and vines painted on a white background. This photo shows the bottom of the bow.

Small pottery bowl with deep blue morning glories and vines painted on a white background. This photo shows the side and inside of the bowl.

Small pottery bowl with deep blue morning glories and vines painted on a white background. This photo also shows the side and inside of the bowl.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I've done a lot of experimenting with overlapping two or three different glazes on bowls, to see how they interact with each other. I have three bowls here - two bowls in the comments due to photo limits on posts. Details in the alt text.

Small wheel-thrown pottery bowl (soup sized!) glazed with three overlapping colors. The bowl was dipped into three glazes in succession, each time covering about a third of the bowl. There's a spot on the side of the bowl with only one glaze, and spots on the sides where two glazes overlap. In the middle of the bottom is a triangle (roughly!) where all three glazes overlap. The three glazes are a deep glossy blue, a medium matte slightly greyish green, and a light aqua (we call it "celery" in the pottery studio). The celery glaze seems to turn into tiny spots when combined with the glossy deep blue, which is lovely!

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Last summer I got interested in using relief to decorate pottery. The first pieces I did were these flat ones - that seemed easier than decorating mugs or bowls with relief. See the ALT text for details on each.

The first piece is a tile-like piece, about 6" x 6", with relief depiction of a European avocet fishing in a marsh. The bird is mostly white with a black wing, reddish neck, and long black beak. He's leaning over into the marsh to pluck out a tasty morsel. The neck should have been much redder - yes, you really do need three layers of glaze when you are brushing it on! I do like the way the water came out sort of green-ish, and the way the reeds in the marsh have texture because they are in relief as well.

The second piece isn't any particular species. It started out square, but I broke it, so all that's left is a piece with one right angle (lower right) and a bird's head rising above the water. I really liked this bird, though, so I fired and glazed it anyway. The bird is blue-ish gray with a small hole in the clay for an eye. The water is a darker blue-ish gray with lines incised in it for ripples. Behind the bird'shead the sky is white. I think of putting it in a square frame and filling in the missing clay in much fainter colors, the way ancient pottery is repaired for display in a museum. Chances are I'll never do that, though!

The third piece is a great blue heron, also standing in a marsh. His body came out kind of black - a lot darker than a heron really is! The marsh plants are rough and tangly, splotched with many different colors of glaze. Great blue herons are a quite common bird in places where I paddle or row. They are huge elegant birds with a truly horrible, raucous call!

The last one was carved out of the clay rather than built up in relief, and it's not any particular species. Most of the tile is white. The bird has lines all along him, incised in the clay, with dark blue glaze that only sits on the top of the incised lines, not in the "valleys." He has a very glossy, beady black eye that I really like. This is the only one of these pieces that I could actually use as a trivet, though I haven't done so yet. I think I'm afraid of breaking it, I do like this bird! So he sits on my dining room table and I admire him from time to time.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

Recently I decided I wanted to make animals in clay, and thought I'd start with a red fox. I watched some videos on youtube and got to work. Foxy is still a work in process, but it's an interesting process! See the ALT text for lots of details.

Foxy is a clay sculpture of a red fox, pretty much life sized. I started work him by bunching up newspaper and wrapping rolled-out clay around it to create his body. The first day I added his front legs - flat clay rolled around a dowel, which I then shaped a lot to make them look like legs instead of tubes. I added clay to create his shoulder blades and neck, and then to create his big fox ears. I kept his neck propped up on blocks of wood, because his front legs were soft and wouldn't have been able to hold the weight of his neck.

Separately, I used some flattened clay to create a head. At the end of the day I wrapped his body and his head in plastic separately, and left them till I could return a few days later. The first day I worked on him for around six hours. This photo shows him at the end of the day, sitting on his haunches, with big perky ears and a gaping hole where his head should be.

When I came in a few days later, I attached his head to his body. I was hesitant about this, because once he had a head I couldn't reach inside to adjust the clay within his hollow body. I left open holes in his ears. He has to be hollow, so he will dry evenly and won't be horribly heavy - but he has to have holes so he doesn't explode when he's fired.

Then I created a tail. I had thought about having it hang down from his body, but then I realized how impractical this would be to fire. Plus where would I even put him once he was done, if his tail was hanging down? So his tail wraps around the right side of his body.

A friend was working at the same table as me, and I asked her why his tail looked wrong - because it did. It was quite long, extending past his front feet, and it had a big thick end. She looked at a few photos of red foxes and quickly pointed out that their tails are pointy, not round, and a good bit shorter. Oops! So I pulled off a lot of clay and made the end pointy. Whew, much better!

Then my friend and I tried to figure out how to texture his tail. Fox tails are basically skeletons with a lot of fluff - a LOT of fluff! (in capital letters!) How to create that in clay??? We poked and scratched in different ways, rubbed it out, tried other things. Finally I figured out something that I liked, whew!

A few days later I came back and continued working on Foxy's details - the texture of his fur, the shape of his face. Another friend was working at the same table, and we teamed up on figuring out why his face looked wrong. We both pulled up photos of red fox faces on our phones and found more and more details of what was wrong - the nose was too short, it should curve up more, he needed heavy brow ridges so his eye sockets were deeper, his upper lips have lots of fluffy fur on them and should be much wider than his lower jaw. Each time I fixed something, we'd say "oh, yeah, MUCH better!" But then it would wrong again, and I'd have to figure out more details to fix.

This photo shows him at the end of that afternoon, just before I wrapped him up and planned to leave him to dry slowly over the holidays. His neck is still propped up on a block of wood, because I didn't want to take a risk of it sagging as he dried.

Two days after I had left him to dry, I was looking at this photo, a portrait of his face. And I realized that his right eye was all rough and scratchy on one side, when eyeballs should be as smooth as glass! Fortunately the studio hadn't shut down yet for the holidays, so I dashed over (I live nearby, luckily), carefully took him down from his high shelf, unwrapped all the layers of plastic I had wrapped him in, and with a little wooden tool I smoothed out his eye. That actual repair only took a moment - all the unwrapping and wrapping took much longer!

Now he's back on his shelf, wrapped in plastic, hopefully drying slowly without cracking or sagging or anything else. Once he is fully dry, maybe when I get back to the studio in early January, he will be bisque fired. That's the first step in firing clay. It changes the structure of the clay, so that it becomes ceramic and is no longer water soluble. It is done at what's called "cone 5 or 6," which means at medium temperatures of (I think) around 1000 Celsius.

After he is bisque fired, I will consider how to glaze him. Or whether to glaze him. His fur is rough, and he will come out of the bisque firing quite scratchy in texture. I don't want to lose that. But I do want to give him a bit of color - a black nose, glossy amber-colored eyes. I think I'm going to brush just a little bit of glaze on him, so you see strands of color in his fur, but he doesn't lose his scratchy matte finish.

But that's all a long ways away! Maybe he'll be done by the end of January?

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

I used the tape-masking stripe technique to make a couple of brightly colored mugs. Neither is perfect - the red, yellow, and blue one has two cracks and the blue and black one has spots in the black glaze on the handle. But they are all experiments, so it's okay!

Hand thrown stoneware mug, the interior and handle black and the exterior with four stripes in different shades of blue and blue-green alternating with unglazed stripes.

Hand thrown stoneware mug, mostly in deep glossy blue, with a red stripe and a yellow stripe on the outside, and stripes of unglazed clay. This mug has two cracks that I didn't know how to repair before I glazed it. But I learned from the experience of glazing the stripes, and I still use it from time to time!

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

This small pitcher was made by putting 1/4 inch tape on the bisqued piece in the pattern you see, dipping it into white and blue gray glazes, and then peeling off the tape to reveal the bare clay. This works best with matte glazes that don't run much, and with horizontal lines.

Small pottery pitcher with horizontal lines of alternating glaze and bare clay. This was made by putting 1/4 inch strips of tape on the bisqued clay, then dipping it into two different matte glazes and peeling off the tape to leave bare clay stripes. It works best with matte glazes and horizontal stripesl

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

This mug was hand built, which is how it can be square on the bottom but round on top. Those who know my work might recognize the coast of Newfoundland, which is on a lot of my work. Scroll through the photos to see the tree on the handle, the seagulls inside, and the tree on the bottom.

Hand made coffee mug, square on the bottom and round at the top. All around the outside is a black line drawing of the coast of Newfoundland, full of small islands and rocky ciffs and seagulls flying overhead. The background is a light blue and gray glossy glaze. This photo shows one side of the mug.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

I've been doing a lot of pottery in the past few months, in several different styles. I figured it's time to share some of it. These are hawthorn berries. I didn't pick them for the season, but they do seem rather appropriate! So happy Chanukah, everyone!

Photo of a small pottery bowl. White background with hand-painted hawthorn leaves and berries on it. Photo from the side showing the inside of the bowl.

Photo of a small pottery bowl. White background with hand-painted hawthorn leaves and berries on it. Photo looking down into the bowl.

Photo of a small pottery bowl. White background with hand-painted hawthorn leaves and berries on it. Photo of the bottom of the bowl.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

If you're not doing everything you can to push back against the Trump administration, you are part of the problem. It doesn't matter if you are discouraged, burned out, or whatever. YOU MUST FIGHT BACK. Suggestions in the comments.

Image showing the words "silence = complicity" in white on black, with a red (MAGA-type) cap with a black raised fist on it.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

I've been focusing my artwork on political graphics lately. What else can we do? WE CAN PROTEST! April 5, protests nationwide. To find one near you, go to www.mobilize.us/handsoff/map/ In New York, meet at Bryant Park and march to Madison Park, 1:00 to 3:00. Be there!

Protest graphic saying "silence = complicity" with a red MAGA-like hat with a clenched fist on it.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

I've been learning pottery since the fall, for no good reason. After six months the majority of my pieces at least are worth keeping! (The rest go to the thrift shop. 😂) I wish the studio had more warm-colored glazes! #art #pottery #glaze #ceramic #newyorkartist #clay #bowls #dishes

Three pottery bowls, two shiny ones in shades of green and blue, and the other matte and in shades of dull orange. The orange one is actually the largest, though you can't tell it from the photo - and it only holds about 9 ounces. The one in front is the smallest.

Three pottery bowls, all in shades of green. These were made with speckled clay, and the speckles show through. It doesn't look it, but the one in back is the largest and the one in front the smallest.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

I'm intrigued with weaving, but don't have a loom. So for a while I was weaving paper. I kind of like the results, though at times the process was a nuisance! See alt text for details. #weaving #paper #paperart #art #newyorkartist #scissors #handmade #analog

Artwork made of woven paper with triangular color patterns. The final piece was coated with mod podge, which gives it a shiny finish and made the colors run a bit. Colors are red, yellow dark blue, pink, purple, green, light blue, orange, and probably others that I can't pick out.

Weaving project in process. The piece was created in several steps:

1. Draw colored equilateral triangles onto two white sheets of paper of the same size.
2. Cut one piece - the "warp" - into narrow strips around 1/4 inch wide, without cutting all the way to either edge, so the whole thing holds together in one piece.
3. Cut the second piece into strips of the same width, cutting down to one edge but not the other, so it doesn't all fall apart.
4. Cut off one strip at a time from the second sheet and weave it into the first sheet, using the ruler as a reed or batten to push the strip as far up as it will go. (I think that part of a loom is called the reed or batten!)

The image shows the partly completed woven piece with the ruler in place to use as a reed. On the right side of the image are the strips that will be woven into the "textile' as the weft.

Another image of the work in process. I am turning the ruler 90 degrees to separate the warp strips of paper so I can easily slide the weft strip of paper between them.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Spring's not that far away! A collage from a while back, but it's always nice to remember spring when they're predicting more snow. #collage #flowers #newyorkartist #art #USK #urbansketch #brooklynbotanicalgarden #flower #spring #pansies #paper #

Paper collage done in the Bronx Botanical Garden, showing four pansy plants with purple flowers. Done at a New York Urban Sketchers gathering a while back.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I was looking for something else on my computer and found this photo from last winter, the view out my window. Black & white photos can be so much more interesting than color. #photography #NewYork #newyorkartist #Manhattan #black&white #art #bluesky.art #snow #citylife #view

Black and white photograph of New York City, looking out a window at 107th Street and Broadway in the winter. There is snow on the ground but it has melted on the streets, and they are black.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Just finished! Paper #collage of the #coast - could be #Maine, #Newfoundland, or elsewhere. See alt text for more info. #art #paperart #artist #@bsky.art #Canada #oceanart #coastal #collageart

Paper collage of a rocky coastline with a bit of beach and a stormy sky. There are birds silhouetted against the clouds, seagulls. My collages are made of all kinds of found paper, sometimes first painted with watercolor. Swipe to the other images to see some details of how this is actually made.

Detail of work in process on this collage. I use all different kinds of paper - I have folders full of bits and scraps, roughly sorted by color, and I pull them out to find materials for my collages. Sometimes I cut my pieces, sometimes I tear them. So the clouds are torn, the ripples in the water are mostly torn. The hills are mostly cut, especially when you see sharp white lines in the rocks. I use a tiny very pointy scissors for cutting, and glue sticks (yes, they ARE archival!) to attach tings. I use a pointy spike to move around tiny bits of paper - one of the corks in the image is attached to the end of that spike, the other cork gets stuck to the pointy end so I can toss it in a bag when I'm carrying my tools to work on site. (But this collage was, uh, done at my dining room table, not on site!)

Closer up detail of work in process. You can see the way I cut apart individual scraps of paper to create the lines in the rocks. The piece on top that's already glued down is newspaper that I colored with diluted ink - it had some kind of diagram on it, that's the straight lines and small squares. The bottom piece was from a magazine advertisement (no, I DON'T buy things at Hermès in Paris!). I cut the bits apart and lay them out carefully, hoping I'll keep track of how to fit them together again as I glue them down. Invariably I move them by accident, or sneeze and they blow around, or drop something on them, and they get unaligned, and then I go mad trying to figure out how to arrange them again. That little drawing and the letters made this pretty easy, but sometimes it's nightmarish!

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

I'm intrigued by the circular mosaics in some Venice church floors, and started playing with creating the same patterns in cut paper, and then using the result as a stencil to paint the patterns. See alt text for lots more details! #art #mosaic #cutpaper #stencil #blueart #mosaicmonday

Cut paper pattern inspired by ancient mosaic floors in which triangular pieces are arranged to form complex and dazzling circles. I cut triangles out of paper in circles to form a set of concentric circles. Then I used it as a stencil, painting the whole thing in shades of blue and green with another sheet of white paper behind it. The next image is the result.

Cutting triangles out of paper in this pattern, I quickly realized that if I cut full triangles, the remaining bits of triangular paper wouldn't have anything to attach to. So I had to leave a bit of paper at all the points so it wouldn't fall apart. I used bits of scotch tape to reattach a few triangles, too. Learning by doing!

Watercolor in blues and greens, created by using the stencil that I posted in the first image. The triangles themselves came through pretty clearly, but in lots of places the paint also ran under the stencil, so there's also less intense blue and green color around many of the triangles. To me that gives it a feeling of an ancient piece that has degraded a little bit and looks less precise and more interesting as a result.

Photo of the floor of a church in Venice, showing the actual mosaics t hat inspired this work. Unfortunately, I don't know which church this is from. I found the image on pinterest, simply labeled "Venetian church floors" or some such thing. These patterns were also used in ancient mosaic floors,but I didn't find an image taken "head on" to really show the patterns well. This image isn't also directly taken head on, but the circle in the middle does show pretty clearly the way the triangles combine to form petal-like forms.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

Five years ago, when I was living in Newfoundland, there was a massive blizzard. We were all snowed in, driving was impossible, stores were shut. So I made a collage of the view out my window because what else to do? See alt text for details. #collage #art #Newfoundland #snow #snowart #stjohn's

This collage shows the view out my upstairs window a few days after Snowmageddon hit St. John's, Newfoundland. We had a meter or so of snow in 24 hours. The city shut down, all the plows went to clear emergency routes to the hospitals and stuff. So we all poured outside and shoveled and shoveled and shoveled. The bronze car with the roof racks was mine (no longer have it, since I've moved back to NYC), the red one was my up-the-hill neighbor's. The two of us are there, talking next to her car, shovels in hand. I'm the one in the blue jacket - my hair was long then. In front of my car is Danny, who lives in the next house down the hill. The pickup across the street belongs to Mary, who lives in the house with the yellow door - that's her, walking behind her car. The red car belonged to a woman in the green house. She's a nurse and had to get to the hospital to work, but her car was completely buried in snow, so we all helped her dig it out. It was a good time. Crazy events like that bring out the best in all of us.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

I intended these monoprints to show sun and storm clouds over the ocean, but others saw them as the LA fires. Art is what you see in it, not what I had in mind. Check alt text for more thoughts. #printing #printmaking #monoprint #Californiawildfires #smoke #fire #ocean #LAfires

Monoprint - black on bottom, dark blues on top, orange in the middle. I was aiming to depict the sun over the ocean with storm clouds, but people have seen the four prints posted here and seen the LA wildfires. So they are fires, as well.

Second monoprint. The bottom is dotted black ink with some swirling patterns in it. The top is streaky black ink. In the middle are streaks of yellow and goldenrod and orange, with a few strong blobs. Perhaps this is fire and smoke? Or perhaps, as I originally intended, the ocean with a sunset and storm clouds.

In this monoprint the bottom is wavy black marks, which look more like ocean to me than some of the other prints. The top is blobs and streaks of black with an area of orange and red blobs and streaks over the water and reflected in the water. Sunset over the ocean? Fire and smoke? Whatever you want it to be, that's what it is.

Fourth monoprint - if you are seeing this, you may have noticed that this is the first one rotated 90 degrees. I initially conceived of it in portrait mode, but after it was finished and dry I thought perhaps it worked better in landscape mode. It's (even) more abstract this way - blue-gray and black streaks on the left, black streaks on the right, orange and red in the middle. It is what you want it to be. It can go in any orientation that feels right to you. Though I did sign and date it in landscape mode.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

I've been making prints for a year now. This one is of a perky wading bird I watched for a long time at a marsh at Cape May Point State Park in Cape May, NJ. Check the alt text on each photo for lots of details! #printmaking #art #birdart #waterfowl #capemay

This is the basic print, no chine collé, just black ink showing this spunky little bird marching through the marsh in Cape May, New Jersey. I love how much character she has! She makes me happy.

This the linoleum plate I used to make the prints, after I'd just printed a bird but before I cleaned it. The smudges on the right around the tail are where a bit of ink got in the wrong place, and I rubbed it off before printing. I often forget that my prints will be a mirror image of the plate, but unless there's text, that's fine!

I'm using washable oil-based inks, and they take FOREVER to dry! I live in a very small Manhattan apartment, so there's no place to spread things out at all. But I discovered that my apartment door is metal, so I can attach things with magnets, and that's where I hang my prints to dry. You can see four of the yellowlegs on the door, plus three monoprints of night scenes that I made using up the leftover ink. Plus a few postcards of beautiful paintings I saw in a nearby museum, my bike handlebar, and my cane (I was having knee problems at the time, and took the cane to go outside). The bear on the left wall is a woodcut by #Newfoundland artist Graham Blair, who doesn't seem to have joined Blue Sky yet. He's an inspiration to all printmakers!

And this is a photo of the yellowlegs herself, picking her way delicately through the marsh. These birds are just so much fun to watch, and she came very close to where I was standing on an overlook. Those wide toes let them stand on the grasses and mud without sinking in, I guess. And the long pointy beak lets them grab little crustaceans and fish for breakfast. Or lunch or dinner, of course!

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

In the course of my work (as an economist), I've spent time in Beirut, a fascinating city where I made this collage. I'm active in the Lebanon urban sketchers (@usk-lebanon.bsky.social) - follow them if you have ties to Lebanon! #collage #lebanon #urbansketchers #coastal #paperart #artist

Paper collage showing the Beirut corniche and the Mediterranean Sea with the mountains in the background. I made it out the windows of the business school at the American University in Beirut, where a friend teaches. This collage was made before the terrible explosion of 2020 - the white building on the shore in the background is the building that exploded, though.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

I lived in Newfoundland for 12 years, and many of my pieces, like this one, channel its rocky coastline, swirling ocean, and spinning seagulls. #collage #Newfoundland #artist @bsky.art #canada #ocean #oceanart #coastal #paperart

Paper collage showing a rocky coastline, swirling ocean, and gulls spinning over the waves. Could be in Newfoundland (Canada), or it could be in a few other places that look similar.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

New York is my home town, so that's my second post. This is Morningside Park and E. 116th Street, looking east. For more detail, swipe through the photos and check the alt text. #NewYorkCity #collageart #paperart #art #newyorkart #morningsidepark

I grew up in New York City, and it is the subject of many of my collages. This one shows 116th Street from Morningside Drive, overlooking Morningside Park. I think New York is a totally beautiful place, and this collage captures what I love about it - the texture of buildings, the rooflines and water tanks, the patterns of light and shadow, the mix of shapes and colors, the contrast of blocky buildings and soft leafy trees.

I began this on site, with my papers and tools spread out on a park bench and my notebook propped on the back of the bench and the railing. But it got too hot outside, so I had to finish it at home with the A/C on.

This image shows the same text you could read in the "alt text" option.

Photo of my collage papers and tools spread out on a park bench, and the collage in process in a notebook propped up on the back of the bench.

Photograph of the view itself - trees in the bottom, brightly lit buildings in the middle, and a kind of stormy sky above them.

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Joy Hecht Arts @joyhechtarts.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

For my first post on Blue Sky, I'm sharing the collage that I use as my profile photo, done on site in the 13th Arrondissement in Paris in fall 2016. My style has evolved a lot since then, but it's one of my favorites, so it seemed right to begin here. #collageart #paris #art #paperart

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