Art & Faith
In September, 2013, we held a Reception to welcome an Icon of St. Michael the Archangel to St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, for whom we commissioned the piece from artist Peggy Shopen. With a feast and music and a few words about St. Michael and Icons and the place of the Artist in Community, we marked the occasion of the Blessing of this beautiful icon.
From 2009 to 2017, the Catholic Creatives Salon invited participants to conversation at the intersection of art and faith. We shall return…
JOY sponsors Sursum Corda, a Renaissance polyphony ensemble bringing beautiful music to surprising places. For example, the conductor’s score for the fall Durufle Requiem cost $200! This is the kind of mini-grant help JOY can give our projects. See SursumCordaPolyphony.org for more info.
We help local Catholic artists. JOY helped Catholic composer Brian Nelson get to a festival in Europe to showcase his work. JOY helped Catholic artist Peggy Shopen with entrance fees and display rental fees for the Lawrence Art In the Park event. JOY helped Catholic photographer Barb Gruber with entrance fees to sell her work at the Maple Leaf Festival.
JOY co-sponsored an art class: Learning to See By Drawing, in which artist Peggy Shopen taught John Ruskin’s approach to drawing.
JOY has provided scholarships for an iconography workshop, Catholic writers workshops, Gregorian Chant classes, and Portrait Sculpture classes for Catholic students who could not otherwise have afforded to go.
Enchanted Education
JOY sponsored the creation of a Stratford Caldecott wiki and cross-referenced Bibliography.
JOY contributed funds for the development of the G.K. Chesterton online archive, being built by the American Chesterton Society.
JOY sponsored the development and testing of the Holy Geometry! series to help parents and children understand the riches of sacred geometry in art, science, literature, etc… .
JOY financed an informational Open House by the Lawrence Catholic Home Educators for any Catholic parents interested in the independent education option, or in the materials available for Catholic education.
JOY has sponsored classes for Catholic high-school students and adults: “Drama – A Christian Approach” and “Aristotle’s Rhetoric for Modern Catholics”.
50 Million Names Project
50 Million Names is still active. We created a way to memorialize aborted babies. People give names in honor of one or more of these children. Each name is accompanied by a concrete gesture by which the Namer promises to honor the child. It might be an act of service, a donation to a humanitarian organization, the creation of something beautiful, or any gesture the Namer chooses. We have over 10,000 names already!
In this way, we hope to contribute to a legacy of love for the children – a rippling of effects from the beautiful reality of their lives. Yes, they’ve been killed, but they are real and unique and unrepeatable, and we want to rejoice in the fact that God said YES to the being of each of these people! By giving them names, we link ourselves to their lives, and pray with them for their relatives and even for their abortionists. The bottom line? Violence is not the end of the story!
This project launched December 12, 2013 after a Mass celebrated by Fr. Matthew Habiger.
Community & Catholic Culture
JOY often provides assistance to the Society of Timeless Pursuits and the Regency Guild as they seek to bring the English Country Dance experience and other civilizing activities to the local area for Catholics and non-Catholics.
JOY has sponsored several Joyful Moms events for Catholic moms: a nutrition workshop, a Montessori education workshop, and a grocery card to help moms help new moms with meals. ,
Motherheart Press works are offered on a freewill donation basis, and at low cost, to support Catholic families, Catholic artists, and Catholic educators. Go to MotherheartPress.com for How to Have a Great Catholic Event, B is for Brick, Get Out of the Box!, Avoid the Box!, Explode the Box!, and 25 Ways to Help an Artist. We ask that you refer others to MotherheartPress.com, for more copies of any publications you download or buy. Your referral is one more way to support JOY!
JOY underwrote the printing costs for resources given to Heart of a Woman workshop participants in Kansas City.
JOY contributed to the IHP Memorial Project – a beautiful stone-and-bronze memorial to the professors who created the Pearson Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas.
Dreams & Visions
What About Gaudi? – a traveling exhibit:
Bright City – an online idea playground for Catholic creatives (email for more info if this interests you!)
Contributions to Joy Foundation are gratefully accepted:
Joy Foundation * 18240 Northwind * Lawrence, KS 66044
And God bless you for helping, by the way!
Specify any JOY Project to have 100% of your donation used for that particular project.
Charlotte Ostermann, JOY’s Director, welcomes you to receive, participate, donate, and respond…FREELY!