Joy Fire is an artist and designer whose primary medium is metal. From large scale commissions to intimate objects, her work emphasizes and celebrates the physicality of everyday existence. Each hand forged piece offers the opportunity of physical experience through personal interaction.
Joy has been forging and fabricating functional and fine art metalwork for over a decade. She runs her own boutique studio, Joy Fire Studio, where she works on commissioned pieces and forges objects of her own design.
A meticulous investigation of an aesthetic is evident in each object she makes. Joy hopes her work serves as a reminder of your own existence through the physical sensations of space, form, and material.
In addition to her studio work, Joy teaches welding and blacksmithing at Orange Coast College and serves on the Governance Committee of the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths, providing opportunities for those who have historically been marginalized in this field to pursue blacksmithing.
I am an artist, blacksmith, designer, teacher, mother, welder, partner, sister, daughter, and friend. Not necessarily in that order. Thank you for your interest in my work!
I live and work in Orange County California, land that has been lived on and tended by various peoples throughout the history of humanity This includes the Kizh, or Tongva (Gabrieleno), and Acjachemen (Juaneño). These peoples spoke the Kizh language.
As stated by Native Land Digital, the source for this information, “Most maps represent Indigenous peoples through broad groupings (tribes) and fixed boundaries. This approach cannot capture the specificity of how knowledge is held. In many contexts, knowledge exists at the level of smaller family or community groups, with detailed relationships to particular rivers, coastlines, and ecosystems. Language is the primary way this knowledge is maintained and shared. Centering Indigenous language allows us to engage with ecological biomes.
By Emilio Ashford