There is, of course, something obsessive in an artist’s desire to fill a space with her imagery. But this obsessive quality and Joyce’s attention to the articulation of form and, especially, color are among the many things that distinguish her art from decoration, even in the work she refers to as “decorative art.” The tiles around her Cincinnati Fireplace, 1980, are in only two shapes, a star and a hexagon, which are repeated in the same pattern row after row. Examined closely, however, each tile proves to be a world apart from its neighbors either by virtue of contrasting color or because of images she painted into them. The repetition of the tiles and pattern is almost hypnotic, but the variations cause us to look at individual tiles as well as the over-all effect and to perceive shapes made up of clusters of tiles that transgress their linear arrangement. Joyce’s 1984 Wilmington Train Station entrance is based on a similar interplay of repetition and difference, this time creating an immersive environment in three dimensions. At first, the tiles on the walls seem to be arranged in horizontal bands distinguished by the size and shape of the tiles and by palette. Looking more closely, however, one starts to see variations within the bands that give individual tiles identities that syncopate the overall rhythms. When my eye moves around these fabulously decorated spaces, I feel transported to a kind of postmodern version of Topkapi Palace: there are new palettes and a different sense of rhythm here, but the place has been imbued with similar opulence and the same sense of pleasure of the place. 

Like her work in tile, JEEZ, the giant painting Joyce was working on in her studio involves cultural appropriation. It is based on the Ebstorf Map, a circular medieval map of the world from 13th century Germany twelve feet across painted on thirty goatskins sewn together. Joyce has made her work the same size as the original. At the top of the original map is the head of Christ. Joyce is reworking this image, including rivers and oceans, which she paints in a luminous light ultramarine blue. In the original, a circular image of the world is inscribed in a square and surrounded by columns of text describing the creation of the world. Joyce is replacing the text with multiple images of Jesus drawn from a vast array of art historical sources. There are baby Jesuses and adult Jesues; thin Jesuses and fat Jesuses; black Jesuses and white Jesuses; medieval, Renaissance, African, European Jesuses—even a Jesus that looks like the famous red poster of Che Guevara. There are a total of  a hundred and twenty-five Jesuses in the painting.