Meet Our Creative Team
Joy Joshua
Founder & Creative Director | Artist & Community Facilitator
Joy Joshua is a Chicago-based mixed media artist, artisan, and creative director whose work lives at the intersection of art, history, and community. Her creative journey began with drawing, painting, and jewelry design—hands-on practices that taught her how materials carry memory and how making can become a language of connection. Those early foundations grew into a lifelong commitment to creating with intention, curiosity, and care.
Inspired by her mother—a seamstress, knitter, and lifelong maker—Joy learned early how fabric, thread, metal, and found objects could be transformed into something meaningful. That sensibility continues to shape her practice today. Working across jewelry, sculpture, assemblage, and mixed media, Joy gathers materials, stories, and archival research to create work that honors history, lived experience, and collective imagination.
As the Founder and Creative Director of Journey & Thingz, Joy leads a growing artisan-led mobile creative platform rooted in Chicago. What began as jewelry-making workshops has expanded into multidisciplinary art experiences, archival-based programming, exhibitions, and large-scale community collaborations. Joy is known for curating creative spaces that meet people where they are—whether in libraries, community centers, corporate activities and events, classrooms, or cultural institutions—and for designing experiences that align deeply with each organization’s mission.
Joy’s work is grounded in facilitation, but her practice is evolving toward the creation and presentation of original mixed media artwork and exhibitions. Through projects that blend archival research, storytelling, and material exploration, she is building a body of work that bridges past and present while opening space for new narratives to emerge. As Journey & Thingz continues to grow, Joy remains committed to expanding her artisan team, mentoring creatives, and producing work that reflects the depth, complexity, and beauty of the communities she serves.
Pirecua Duarte
Pirecua Duarte, known artistically as Pirekua, is an interdisciplinary artist and designer raised in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood and Zamora, Michoacán, Mexico. Born to a muralist father and a journalist mother, Pirekua recognizes the importance of art as activism, community healing, and freedom of expression.
Pirekua loves to experiment with many art-forms such as dance & roller skating, digital collaging, video editing, and painting; but they feel most powerful when working with Copper wire and its endless possibilities of adorning the body. Pirekua's designs intentionally avoid fitting into an aesthetic trend; their jewelry is uniquely made to converse with the wearer and be a protective tool for healing and spiritual growth.
To check out Pirekua works visit: artbypirekua.com