This story is part of Wisconsin Right Now’s effort to champion small businesses and entrepreneurship. If you have an idea for a story, please contact [email protected]. Cool Joyce Studio is a WRN-recommended business.
Joyce Foy insists that she doesn’t have a “motif” for her artwork. She focuses on one thing for a while before tiring of it, she says, such as the little green-eyed tree frogs that festooned her pottery for a time, and then she moves onto something else. But when you walk into her art studio in downtown Okauchee, it becomes immediately clear that she does have a motif.
Her motif is a certain, uniquely Joyce Foy-style of creativity. In fact, maybe we’re onto something here. Georgia O’Keefe is known for her flowers, Frank Lloyd Wright is known for his homes, but here, on a street in Wisconsin, is the Joyce Foy style of life and art. Sure that’s hyperbolic.
But there’s nothing like it anywhere in the world, guaranteed, because Joyce is a true Wisconsin original.
Her artwork – and Joyce herself – are impossible to peg and impossible to replicate. Whether it’s the socks made by a friend on a 100-year-old machine or the hand-poured candles that look like apple pies or the intricate pottery with the complicated designs of whatever popped into Joyce’s favor at that moment, there’s nothing in Foy’s studio that looks exactly like anything you’ve seen before.
That’s probably because she is like no one you have ever met before – fiercely loyal, stubbornly outspoken, and ferociously creative. Joyce is an artistic warrior who loves her friends and husband and who says exactly what she thinks and believes. Let’s put it this way, if you’re Joyce’s friend, she will have your back like no other, always. She will cross swords with your enemies and engage in your dramas. If you cross her friends or husband, though, watch out. Especially her husband, Pat. Joyce probably doesn’t go more than three sentences before the words “Pat” and “Anya” slip into the conversation. More on Anya in a minute.
In a world of throwaway sameness, Foy’s work has detail and meaning. It is handcrafted. Thus, it’s not surprising that Cool Joyce Studio has earned a devoted following of people who will drive for miles just to buy a bowl. She used to work out of a cubby-hole-sized studio next to Roots, a popular coffee shop in downtown Oconomowoc. It used to be a paddleboard store.
“Her shop is well worth going to no matter how far you have to drive,” says a customer named Julie Vale. “She’s an independent, she supports veterans. She’s just a hoot. She’s a little eclectic and a lot of fun. But it’s serious craft. The craftmanship is quality. And she doesn’t take garbage from anyone.”
“It’s a no judgment zone.”
Pottery Kiln in the Laundry Room
Foy started creating art in her Waukesha County home in 2013. She would meet people at Roots about projects they were interested in. One day, a customer showed up at her home on Christmas Day morning to get a mug, and her husband, the legendary Pat Foy, said, “If you’re going to do this art stuff, you’re going to have a store. You don’t want people to come at Christmas.” It probably didn’t help that her pottery wheel was in her home greenhouse, the kiln was in the laundry room, and she was working 12-hour days, either.
Pat said, enough. But in typical Pat way, his solution was to lift his wife up. Which in a world of negative headlines, is really cool to see.
And that’s how “Cool Joyce Studio” was born. The space at Roots opened up in 2018. Foy quickly developed a following there, and her dog, the equally legendary Anya, became a local icon. Joyce would dress Anya up in tutus, and local children would stop by just to see the pet, now nicknamed “Princess Anya.” It’s impossible to mention Joyce without mentioning Anya. When the dog died, a friend left a metal artwork of a dog at Joyce’s front door. Anya’s spirit is alive in Joyce’s new studio too, present in photos, her logo, and a kid’s framed childlike scrawls.
One day, Joyce’s husband, perhaps tired of kilns being in their laundry room but really just a constant and devoted supporter of his wife and her dreams, pointed out an abandoned building in downtown Okauchee, which had been empty since the 1990s.
Anya had passed away, which left an enormous hole in Foy’s heart because Anya came to work with her every day and “more people would stop to visit Anya than shop at the store.” The store at Roots reminded her of Anya. “She was such a big part of my business,” Foy says. “When she died, it was awful.” People would stop in looking for Anya, keeping the grief constantly fresh.
Joyce broke down one night in tears, telling her husband she couldn’t do it anymore, so he said, in typical Pat Foy fashion, “Let’s go to Okauchee and go look at that building I told you about.” When they pulled up, a man was hanging a sign on the building. “I’m a big believer in signs. Everything happens for a reason,” Joyce says. “It was abandoned since the 1990s.”
There isn’t much retail in downtown Okauchee, although it’s a hotspot of bars and wonderful restaurants. The amazing German bakery had just burned down. Sometimes it takes one business to lead to another…
But it wasn’t easy. The building was abandoned for a reason. The floor looked like it was dirt, and birds had flown in. “The floor was littered with dead birds,” Joyce recalls.
But the owner had a vision. They would put giant glass doors in the front for Joyce. The whole front of the building would be all glass. Joyce and Pat decided, “Let’s give it a try,” and Cool Joyce Studio was reborn.
‘If It’s Not Made By Me, It’s Made By Friends’
“I make about 85% of the things in the store,” Joyce says. “If it’s not made by me, it’s made by friends.”
She makes ceramic pieces, watercolor paintings, mugs, bowls, and generally “funky things you won’t find at a normal craft fair.” She’s done watercolors but focuses on more functional pieces. Her pop-ups at Mayfair mall have had lines waiting for them.
Joyce is building the business in stages and has started offering classes. They sell out immediately. She has visions of a big bank of lockers and sturdy tables, studio memberships, and less retail. Her website is developing as we speak, but you can find her store on Facebook. Her husband Pat is director of marketing and customer service at Bruno.
“I find something that I think is cool, and I’ll make X amount and then I’m done,” Joyce says. “If you think there’s something you like, you better grab it because I might be done with it next week.”
She calls her store “mid-century modern.” It’s a place to stop in and chat, so Joyce created a “gorgeous sitting area” complete with fireplace and orange sofa set and most customers “gravitate toward that, and we catch up there.”
With Amazon, she says, “The whole shopping thing isn’t personal anymore,” but she does the opposite. Everything is personal with Joyce.
Joyce was born in Milwaukee but moved to Hartford at age 8. She grew up in Hartford, then moved to Pewaukee and ended up in Stone Bank since 1990.
“I’ve always been artistic ever since I was a little kid,” she says, speaking in an unvarnished fashion about her “abusive home life” growing up.
As a result of her childhood traumas, she focused on pottery in high school. She had a “wonderful art teacher” who asked if she wanted to go to a town hall meeting, and she went but it was because “I just didn’t want to go home.”
Eventually, she asked to stay after school and earn extra credit to make pottery. She would mop the floors and load the kilns and “I learned more about pottery because I didn’t want to go home.” But then she fell in love with it. And the rest is history.
After she finally opened a store in 2018, Joyce found her art teacher on Facebook and said, “I actually did grow up and do pottery for a living.”
And the teacher said, “You were always so helpful.”
You can find Joyce today, still mopping the floors and loading the kiln in a very special corner of Okauchee called Cool Joyce Studio. Stop in!
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