When artist Joy Bell’s children, Rosie and Alec, grew up and left their home in the countryside west of Warkworth, this empty nest had the luxury of time to reconsider her future. Why not stay home and work on creative ideas that have been put off for a long time? And maybe finish the house too. Raising a family with an artist’s often uncertain income has meant that she parks unfinished tasks while concentrating on new commissions.
Joy began as a teenage epigraphist, chiselling tombstones. Art school was not for her, so she stopped working as a graphic artist. In 1983, she opened an art gallery on Auckland’s Ponsonby Rd, which developed into an antique shop, with Joy teaching herself how to restore anything and everything.
Jane Ussher / NZ Home and Garden
What was once a draft porch is now a colorful glass creation.
Business was fast, but after 12 years she wanted a change of city life. Selling her collection of antique teddy bears has a funky house on a plot of land about an hour north of Auckland bankroll. Built as a country school in 1886, it became a church, when a private cottage and Joy fell in love at first sight.
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Remaining true to her Victorian origins – an era she adores – she began restoring rather than modernizing, painting walls in heritage “railway colors” of dark green and rich red with decoupage on black walls in the dining room. Some call it a dollhouse, and it’s small, but it helps that Joy is not tall. And that she likes every weird corner.
After the children arrived, it became a necessity to work from home “and I started selling art at markets, shows and galleries … including gilded inverted decoupage vases, assemblages of found objects and mosaics “.
She co-authored the book Mosaics with Elizabeth Atkins-Hood, decorated her garden with wonderful examples of outdoor furniture and garden art, and public commissions began to pour in. The clock tower in Warkworth? Joy did it. a 23m shrine wall for the children’s shrine at Waikumete Cemetery? One of her proudest achievements.
As for the newer parts of this old house, you will not find anything really new; these are mostly refurbished garbage and treasures. “I am a very practical person and I hate rubbish. I have always been frugal. ” Add her determination to DDIY (definitely do it yourself) and Joy’s handiwork is everywhere. “I very much prefer to be considered a tradition,” she says. “I despair of the pretensions of the art world.”
The once battered kitchen sofa top now has a granite mosaic top, with disc agate, built-in silver brooches and disco lighting. Joyfully eccentric, it’s also a nice place to have a cup.
Years ago, she sketched the outline of a peacock on the wall above her claw-foot enamel bath. It is now a dazzling two-dimensional mosaic tiled bird that is pulsating in color, its tail feathers hanging almost in the water. Here Joy falls on a stone-lined surface… the enamel has seen better days, she explains, then she grabs a box of stones from her work shed.
Elsewhere, light-hearted colors dominate, and then there’s her new staircase and glass room, both created since the house was first shown in 2012 in NZ House & Garden. The glass room was once a neglected veranda, exposed to prevailing westerly winds – now it is closed and sunny.
The idea arose when she rescued some industrial glass panels that fit perfectly between the new poles. Glass walls are nothing new, but Joy’s method is a breakthrough: she devised a way to use three-dimensional glass objects to make a weatherproof wall. And when the glass bead curtains are drawn, her beautifully lit, crystal palace / porch is cozy and warm.
Jane Ussher / NZ Home and Garden
The original entrance to the cottage, which was built as a school in 1886, was then also used as a church. Joy uses the former foyer as a library and houses her collection of antique and simply old books; her main entrance is now through the kitchen.
She can join her there through some of her waifs and strays: pet-lorikeet Dora the Explorer who likes to watch television or rescued mixed-race terriers Bella and Frankie. Then there is a former wild Kaimanawa horse Mustang Sally in the home field.
She even taught herself taxidermy so she could breathe new life into a freezer full of “sheep testicles, rabbits, incredible birds” as art objects.
Joy’s mantra: “I like to get an everyday object and glorify it, to turn something ordinary into extraordinary.”
Her art studio is reached via the new stone staircase, remarkable for its bustling menagerie. It’s a sculpture power tour, spurred on by her urge to cover the rough sawn wood with stone for a more English look.
Once in her studio she says: “I never feel the need for company or talk. I was able to lock the door and throw away the key. Sometimes I feel like life stands in the way of art. ” But when daughter Rosie comes to visit, they work together on Joy’s latest venture and record how-to workshops for YouTube. Joy calls it her legacy project.
It helps that she does not sleep much. “I wake up, eyes wide open and think ‘what is Joy going to do today?’ There are so many wonderful things to do. And there is no time like the present. ”
V&A with Joy Bell
Best thing about the renovation: People’s response … sincere pleasure.
Next thing to change: Absolutely nothing – after 26 years it is finally perfect. In the next 5-10 years: I would like to do exactly what I do now.
Favorite task: Wash my 160-string glass bead curtain and watch it sparkle.
Least favorite task: Any cleaning at all that disrupts my useful spiders.
Favorite local store: Julie’s Animal Refuge’s store on Kaipara Flats Rd (only open on Wednesday mornings) – the best shopping in town.
Favorite local eatery: The Puhoi Pub Hotel & Stables for lunch, cider and time travel to the past.