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Stacia Joy

@stacia.joy

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🦴🌿 ⛰️ Natural history and speculative fiction. Writer, illustrator, noter of small things, “did you know”. Artist behind @beastieandbone (my dayjob)

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Glimpses of trees, a tableful of skulls and all the stories they hold, scent of cedar and chamomile, roadside treasure aka the reason to always carry a pocketknife.

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Today I went into the Old City to drop off linocut prints at my stockists, foraged plants in a parking lot, and rested my achy bones in a coffee shop while I thought over all I learned at a very special visit to an osteology collection I was invited to view. I didn’t do a lot of sketched but I did so much observing. There’s a lot stewing in my own cranial cavity right now, and I’m going to do some art about it.

#creativelife #artist #lookingforlight #inspiration by @stacia.joy

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a day ago

My final event as a printmaker. 🥲 Linocut is such a physical, tactile medium and the edges, lines, and shape language created by it, as well as the creative process of working subtractively rather than *adding* lines, has been a huge influence on all of my other work (my final “linework” for all of my @beastieandbone art is actually created with subtractive drawing).

But printmaking has always been exhausting for me, and painful to certain degrees. While I’ve made adjustments and slowed my releases and production, I’m coming to terms with the fact that continuing to have this medium in my creative and professional roster is costing me the ability to make other art, or even function.

So, no more printmaking for me. At least not for a while. At least not as a regular thing.

I have so many things I’ve wanted to create in non-printmaking form, however, so saying goodbye to this is a big hello to those things! Here’s to finally checking some things off my art wishlist.

#printmaking #linocut #creativelife #spoonie #chronicpain taken in The Emporium Center by @stacia.joy

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5 days ago

When your friend sends you a pose reference because it made them think of your characters, you have to draw the characters. That’s the rule.

Thank you @thefolkencryptid, because I needed to draw something cozy and cute as much as Alec and Nissa needed a moment to be cozy and cute. They don’t get a lot of downtime between all the black market shenanigans, arson, highwaymen, secret labs, and side effects of bio electricity-based superpowers.

Alec and Nissa are from Conductive (two books; CALLSIGN ANVIL and PROJECT PEREGRINE), my story of superheroes-meets-folk heroes in a futuristic eco-dystopian United States inspired by the Second Industrial Revolution and Westward Expansion, with themes of chronic illness, found family, the use and abuse of bodies in desperate times, and discovering where you draw power from and who and what you’re willing to give it to.

#ocart #characterart #illustration #bookstagram #writergram by @stacia.joy

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11 days ago

Fall means we are one step closer to true peak season: WINTER. But I will accept all the orange (my favorite color) and toasty colors. by @stacia.joy

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11 days ago

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14 days ago

Big day for me — first meeting attended for the Southern Highlands Craft Guild (@craftguild) as a new member, after going through the mentorship program last year and applying via jury over the last few months!

Community has been hard for me to come by as someone chronically ill, working in an unusual medium (dimensional cut paper) and not a lot of experience in the fine art world. So this membership means a LOT to me, and I’m really excited to see how my work can grow with it and how I can contribute (many of their members live hours away from the SHCG base camp in Asheville, NC, so a lot is virtual in addition to the many shows, markets, and other events)!

The handmade, human, and nature-inspired aspect of my work as an artist (not an illustrator, as you may know me on this account) has always been crucial to me as someone whose art career would not exist without the good influence of my grandparents, who were a farmer/carpenter/taxidermist/science teacher and a pharmacist/artist/weaver/self-taught naturalist. Really excited to be part of the Guild now and contribute to collective good through beautiful things made with intention.

#paperart #appalachianart #blueridgeparkway #creativelife taken in Folk Art Center by @stacia.joy

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14 days ago

Four loners with bioelectrical powers in a futuristic ecodystopian American west with a resource crisis. What could go wrong?

(A lot. But also — found family.)

If you’re new around here, these are the four MCs of my current speculative fiction work, CALLSIGN ANVIL. They are:

Bulky one with the head injury: Rykel
Sweetheart with vitiligo and vision problems: Millie
Tall anxious one with failing joints: Alec
Unintended arsonist with progressively less hair: Nissa

Bonus: Ivan, older brother of Alec, grade A unsettling

#characterart #illustration #speculativefiction #booktok #amreading by @stacia.joy

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24 days ago

The way books are both objects and concepts at the same time still blows my mind. Been almost exclusively an audiobook girlie for almost a year, now, due to how busy my schedule has been, but I’m dipping my toes back into it along with the brackish water of the Southern Reach with Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, and reading it in slow spurts adds to the sense of warped time, I think.

#amreading #ecologicalhorror #tbr #bookstagram #bookworm by @stacia.joy

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a month ago

“You’re glowing” - words that have been shared with me enough over this summer of experiencing the first bout or true art block I’ve run up against in my life for them to stop me in my tracks. Commented. Messaged. Cheered. Whispered. And always whenever I have slowed down to think “if I did manage to create something right now: art, community, any intentional act, what would it be?” and instinctually followed where my mind sensed a kind of glimmer.

Something wonderful happened, with each and every one of these scattered instances. The creativity and a font of energy to share it with came easily. Then, despite exhaustion, despite illness, despite time constraints and shifting algorithms, what I created took off in ways I didn’t expect. Became bigger than what I planned, more joyful, more meaningful. In the midst of that rush of connection, forgetting myself, forgetting settings, forgetting I was even working, those words would come: you’re glowing.

“Follow the glow” is my new sense of direction. There is a divine spark in creativity that I have lost my sensitivity to in the crunch of a lifetime of deadlines and ignoring the creatures I’m responsible for: my brain, soul, and body. That’s where this depletion of my creativity stems. The art is not gone. I have just been chasing reflections. But now I know better.

Like a moth rising in a bid for love by moon, a bird pulled by swing of stars, a deer moving early for good feeding at predawn, I am learning to follow the glow, again. Whether you swing more toward scripture or you side more with science (personally I love to dance between both), what we can all agree on is this:

In all good things that were and are and will be created, the light came first.

#inspiration #creative #creativelife #hopecore #seekinglight by @stacia.joy

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a month ago

I didn’t realize I had never heard a song without a sexualized or demonized redhead woman in it until Pre-Raphaelite. Thank you, truly, @parispaloma, your musical alchemy heals. #preraphaelite #parispaloma #redheadlife #selflove by @stacia.joy

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2 months ago

His hands were dark with blood but it didn’t fully hide the rings on each of his fingers, singing out clear in Millie’s senses as silver, or the thick weave of scar tissue on his knuckles and twisting up his arms, just within her senses at the borders of the detonation-bright energy pounding in his chest. Millie narrowed her eyes.
“Who are you?”
He laughed again, or a hollow sound near laughter. “I don’t fucking know!”

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Millie and Rykel’s meeting is one of my personal favorite scenes! That morning haziness was hard to get done on this illustration for CALLSIGN ANVIL, though, which is why it took me so long to finish this one.

CALLSIGN ANVIL is a character-driven story of superheroes meets folk heroes, pain becoming power, and the price to be paid for connection. It will appeal to fans of down-to-earth dystopian science fiction, genre-blending worlds, and chosen family such as are found in X-Men’s LOGAN or FIREFLY.

CALLSIGN ANVIL is projected to be a completed novel at 150k words, with a sequel, PROJECT PEREGRINE, also in the works.

#characterart #illustration #speculativefiction #amreading by @stacia.joy

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2 months ago

Been slowing down and enjoying little things more after the rush of releasing my first book with Page Street Publishing earlier this week, and finding small ways to care for my body as I recover from all the work and mentally reset. Reordered my favorite scent from @forstrangewomen (currently it’s Fireside Story). Have been wearing this corset from @corsetsisland almost daily for the compression (and the vibes). And finally, am giving my nails a break for a bit by going natural, but not bare, with the Fossil (yes, real fossils made the pigment) polish from @deathvalleynails.

#darknature #darkforest #darkacademia #aesthetic #ecogoth taken in Knoxville, Tennessee by @stacia.joy

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2 months ago