MAPLE ST. CONSTRUCT
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      • No Road Most Traveled
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FOUNDATION DRAWINGS
Steve Joy, 2019
Fiberglass and beeswax on paper


"Omaha you've been weighing heavy on my mind
I guess I never really left at all
I'm turning all those roads I've walked around the other way
And coming back to you, Omaha"
- Waylon Jennings, "Omaha."  Honky Tonk Heroes, Billy Joe Shaver, Hillman Hall (Nashville, TN: RCA Victor Studios, 1973) track 5.


Steve rides in and he rides out, he rides in carrying mythical stories and leave us with a breeze of memories.  His conversations are mixed with history and laughter, heroic journeys of European castles and tales of “flights and broken bones.”  For a man of such mystique, a painting would be quite fitting to tell that story...but would it?  What if the drawing told more?  A lifetime of stories, a worldview of painting, only to be defined through drawing.  The man who rides away to paint and rides away to paint again, finally returns to draw.  For Steve Joy, the painting was never an ending for those stories, it was just the beginning for his drawings.

Troubadour
churches buried
asymmetry
Greek to Byzantium
Beuys and Kounellis echo
paper paintings
source and inspiration

​
Show Sponsor:
Lucky Bucket Brewing Co.
​
Photos Courtesy of Dan Schwalm

About the Artist:
Steve Joy was born in Plymouth, England, in 1952, Joy served in the Royal Air Force from 1968 to 1975 and visited museums and cultural sights during his furloughs. In 1975, he enrolled at Cardiff College of Art in Cardiff, Wales, to pursue his passion for art. In 1979, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Exeter College of Art, Devon, England, and in 1980, he graduated from Chelsea College of Arts in London with a Master of Fine Art in Painting. Joy has worked and taught in a number of locations throughout Europe and Japan, and he moved to Omaha in 1999 as the curator of the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

Joy’s work is featured in the collections of many Nebraska and Iowa homes, corporations and institutions, as well as in international museums, including the British Council Arts in London, the Japan Foundation in Tokyo, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in Barcelona, and the New York Public Library in New York City.
www.stevejoyart.com
© 2017-2025 Maple St. Construct
Website Design by Ross Miller
  • ABOUT
    • BOARD OF DIRECTORS
    • THE SPACE
  • EXHIBITIONS
    • SEASON 8 (2025) >
      • PICTURES OF NOTHING
    • SEASON 7 (2024) >
      • THE SILENCE OF LIGHT
      • SEASONS
      • HOME ON THE RANGE
      • DE STIJL TRANS AM
      • SITE WORK
      • FOR RICHER, FOR POORER
      • MATTER SHIFTING SHAPE
    • SEASON 6 (2023) >
      • OPEN STUDIO V
      • NEBRASKAFLAT
      • WORDS HAVE GONE TO SLEEP INSIDE...
      • EN SILENCIO
      • SHOW AND GO
      • OPEN STUDIO IV
      • POST FACADE
      • GANDZASAR AT HIGHLAND
    • SEASON 5 (2022) >
      • WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPEN
      • VENTURING MIDWEST
      • OPEN STUDIO III
      • BROKE EVEN WHEN I BET THE FIELD
      • HARMONY AND DISSONANCE
      • OPEN STUDIO II
      • THE FADE
      • SPIRALING SOLITUDE
      • IMPROVISE
      • OPEN STUDIO
    • SEASON 4 (2021) >
      • Automatic Composition
      • This Will Get Us Somewhere
      • CRUISE CONTROL
      • Off Alondra and Hickory
      • DIG
      • Unfamiliar Appearing
      • Floral Rodeo
      • Shiny Side Up
      • Expecting Snow
      • FORWARD
    • SEASON 3 (2020) >
      • EMPTY SPACES
      • Winter Saturdays are for Spring
      • A High Disregard
      • Between the Void
      • 12:38
      • Precarious as Obtained by Entreaty or Prayer
      • A Morning in Little Italy
      • Past Grounded in Nature
      • Silence and Intimacy
      • Highway Hypnosis
      • Between Nonchalant and Relaxed
      • The Fickle Crowd
      • High Peak Monocacy
      • 251,000 Trees
      • Textured Sound
      • The Room and The Landscape
      • VERNACULAR
      • MOVEMENTS
    • SEASON 2 (2019) >
      • FOUNDATION DRAWINGS
      • DANIEL IN OMAHA
      • SHED
      • Little Italy Abstracts
      • CHARRETTE
      • The Hand and The Arm
      • A Surfer's Time
      • Los Angeles Sunsets and Quiet Landscapes
      • Perspective BLUE
      • No Road Most Traveled
      • POST-NOVIS
      • Pairings
    • SEASON 1 (2017-2018) >
      • KATHY
      • Above The Silos
      • THE BLUES
      • To Be Pigeon Holed
      • The Fool's Journey
      • Wall Assembly
      • The Map and its Porcelain Goat
      • Loose Landing
      • Long Ago, Far Away
      • Victories Over The Sun & Campus Stories
      • Perspective Flood
      • Falling Vertical
      • Textured Blue
      • FLOOD
  • LECTURES
    • 2025
    • 2024
    • 2023
  • SUPPORT
  • PRESS
  • SHOP
    • MERCHANDISE
    • PUBLICATIONS
    • PICTURES OF NOTHING ARTWORKS
    • THE SILENCE OF LIGHT ARTWORKS
    • 2025 MSC Design Lecture Series Sponsorship
  • CONTACT