(Photo credit: Tony Smith)
Joyce Owens is a versatile artist who started as a painter, though she has worked in a wide range of mediums; she creates free standing sculptural works, assemblages/masks/constructions as well as painting and drawing on canvas, wood and paper. She earned an (MFA in painting) degree from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and BFA in painting from Howard University in Wash., D.C.
Her work has been exhibited on four continents, most recently in Turin, Italy, and across the country in museums, art galleries and art centers. She is in the Paul R. Jones Collection at the University of Alabama, and in these: Ed Gordon, The Madeline Murphy Rabb, Patric McCoy, Columbia College Chicago, and Mt. Sinai Clinic, Chicago and more. Owens is one of the invited artists to design an art work for “Visions of Our 44th President” that premiered at the Wright Museum in Detroit in 2012 and most recently was exhibited during Miami Basel.
Owens left her position as curator and associate professor of painting and drawing at Chicago State University in 2015 after about 20 years to pursue a full-time art career.
Owens has been sought out to jury fine art exhibitions and art fairs including the DuSable Museum of African American History, Woman Made Gallery, Old Town and Wells Street art fairs, Black Creativity at the Museum of Science and Industry, Women’s Caucus for Art, The New East Side Art Fair, to name a few. She has been a curator for many successful exhibitions at venues including The Reva and David Logan Center at the University of Chicago, ARC Gallery, The Art Center in Highland Park, The Noyes Cultural Center in Evanston, IL, Elmhurst College, Concordia College, The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, and others.
Owens is an arts facilitator/consultant putting together artists with events. Owens is a knowledgeable arts panelist who has also developed discussion topics for galleries at Columbia College in Chicago, The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, The School of the Art Institute, The Carver Museum in Austin, Texas, Nicole Gallery in Chicago (now closed) and the South Side Community Art Center, among others.
Owens has taught studio painting and drawing classes at Chicago State University since 1996 while also maintaining an active exhibition career. She has been sitting on the Advisory Committee for the Department of Cultural Affair’s Chicago Artists Month between 2002-2012. She consults with the Chicago Artists Coalition, and is on the Advisory Board of Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. Owens has been an associate editor for The Journal of African American History and has had her art and writing published in books and journals.
