(Lander, WY) – In the basement of her home in Lander, Joy Woods’ workshop feels part craft studio and part Santa’s workshop. It is a cluttered but impressive maze of clay figures at every stage of creation. Finished ornaments hang along the walls. Snowmen and small animals sit in rows waiting for various pieces. Drawers filled with wires, beads, string, fabric, and tiny tools line each side of the room. Everything seems to have a place as Joy creates reality out of dreams.
Her craft started when her son was a baby and Woods was trying to bring in a little extra money.
“I wanted to help with putting bread and butter on the table,” she said. She had always liked salt dough ornaments and her mother-in-law suggested she try making some. “We made our first ornaments, and I still have mine and hers,” Joy said. Woods remembered those first early attempts clearly. “She made a little tiny bird and I made an ugly moose, and we painted them with model airplane paint.”
Salt and dough didn’t agree with her, though.
“I developed high blood pressure from the salts absorbing into my system,” she said.
Joy stopped for a year and thought she might be done with making ornaments entirely. But a separate artist encouraged her to continue using a different kind of clay. The texture and finish were a bit different, but she was able to resume her craft without the health issues.
“Everything usually starts out in a ball, and then I roll it like this to get a cone so that I have my sock monkey cone body,” she explained as she shaped a figurine in her hand.
The work has evolved significantly since those early salt-dough days. On a shelf in the corner of the workshop sit examples from every era of her process. She pulled out a pair of some of her oldest ornaments.
“This is how they looked when I first started,” she said. The details and shapes look like an early version of the style she’s now come to perfect.
Woods moved to Lander from Colorado in the fifth grade. “I would call this home by now,” she laughed.
Natural and cultural themes from Wyoming have played a role in her inspiration for the pieces she makes and the customers who seek out her work. Locals have found her at shows, or by word of mouth over the years.
Ideas for new pieces come to her from anywhere.
“If I’m watching TV, or looking at a birthday card, or a picture in a magazine, I’ll say to myself ‘I think I can make that out of clay,’” she said. She described a moment when her daughter decided she wanted a hippopotamus for Christmas. Woods listened and then made her one out of clay.
Other ideas come from scenes familiar to Wyoming. Cowboys are one of her most popular pieces.
“These guys are so popular,” she said, holding up a clay cowboy with a large belt buckle and cowboy hat. “We are in Wyoming,” she said with a grin on her face. She keeps an old reference board showing each small part that goes into making a cowboy ornament. On the display are tiny arms, legs, a hat, boots, and accessories individually arranged almost like an anatomical diagram found in a biology textbook.
Her workshop layout reflects the variety of work she’s able to create, with many different accessories in different shapes, sizes, and colors. There’s a space for creating, with a workbench lamp loaded with a bright 200-watt bulb. Adjacent to the workbench is the oven where her pieces are baked for 30 minutes to harden into their permanent form.
One tool in the workshop that stands out is a pasta machine placed on the edge of her worktable. Woods explained the use while she worked a piece of clay through it. “This one doesn’t see too much pasta, but it works perfectly for clay,” she chuckled.
Through the years, Woods has made ornaments for holidays, for local fundraisers, and for families. She keeps the first piece of every new design and drops it in a bucket.
“I always keep the first and give it to my mom,” she said. Her mother, Joyce Nolde, is 94 and still assists Woods with her work.
“She ties the strings, makes noses out of toothpicks, and sometimes paints them,” said Woods. Other family members join occasionally for small tasks, too. “I call my granddaughters and my daughter, or my husband to come help out every now and then.”
While Joy bakes her creations in the oven, she opts to leave them unglazed. “I did some glazing, but I like the way they look without it better,” she said. She prefers the matte finish of the plain clay she uses.
Some of her ornaments are harder to let go of. Woods keeps a few pieces around that she never tries to sell because she liked the way they turned out enough to keep them for herself. “These were too cute to part with,” she said as she showed off a set of snowmen in a tub off to the side of her workbench.
Woods has created many themed pieces over the years, including a pair that ended up with Josh Allen and his family this year. She explained that, as a fan of the University of Wyoming Quarterback, she wanted to give an ornament to his parents, and through a series of connections with friends, she was able to send one along. She made two Wyoming-themed pieces, one for Allen and one for his parents, and gave them to a friend who delivered them through a contact in the Cowboy Club in Laramie.
While most of her sales have been local, Woods is preparing to take a new step into the world of online sales as she plans on listing her ornaments on Etsy, allowing her to open up her customer base far beyond Fremont County.
After 42 years, Woods sees no reason to stop. The workshop is filled to the brim with creations that have yet to take shape. When asked if she plans to do this for the rest of her life, she replied, “Yes, of course. I’ll do it until I can’t anymore.”