Vivian Maier of Assemblages

Today I met a completely unknown but phenomenal artist named Joy Murton who makes massive and ebullient assemblages out of wire, wood, beads, ribbon, fabric, glass, dolls, and other treasures. She has about a hundred finished pieces which she has been working on for many years in a small apartment she shares with her cat. Most of her pieces are about four feet by five feet and weigh fifty to a hundred pounds; a few are as small as a square yard/metre and perhaps as little as fifteen pounds. Until now, she has never shown her work to anyone but selected friends and her son, and she has never sold a piece. 

This week she is turning 62, and she has decided to let people see the work and try to put it into the world for sale. Her apartment is so crowded that it’s difficult for her to go on working. If she can sell some of the work, she can get more materials and have more space in order to make more pieces. Someone told her I take photographs for people who can’t afford to pay a photographer, so she contacted me, and although the light in her small apartment is dim, I was able to take a few pictures she felt are satisfactory. 

She told me to go ahead and Blip it, put it on Facebook, show it to people. A set of pictures of some of the pieces is here. It has taken her a lifetime to make these pieces, and she has a process that only she understands, so there seems no danger that anyone will “steal” her idea or try to do what she does. Maybe someone has an idea about how she can find an agent.

This is a real watershed moment for Joy, and it has taken her enormous courage to reach out in this way. She would appreciate your encouragement and responses. Even if you don’t have suggestions about how she can get her work into the world, if you have comments on the work, she would love to hear from you. She doesn’t use a computer herself, but I will copy and print any comments you’d like to leave for her.