Joyce Macrorie

Joyce T. Macrorie was born in Vicksburg, Michigan, in 1931. As a teenager, she traveled to and spent four years on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, attending high school at the Punaho School, where her father had been hired to direct the music program. Upon her return to Michigan, she attended and graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1954 and earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1955. She continued her education with a course of independent study in Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany from 1956-57 and took professional workshops in metalsmithing and printmaking throughout the 1960s. A professional artist whose career would span sixty years, she also taught at several colleges and universities, including Western Michigan University and Nazareth College. In 1970, while she and her husband, Ken Macrorie, were in Oaxaca, Mexico, on a year-long sabbatical, she plucked up the nerve to ask a respected local goldsmith to take her on as an apprentice in his downtown shop. He said yes, and, sharpening her Spanish-speaking skills every day, she spent the year learning to design and create fine gold jewelry, skills she took with her into the next four decades. As an artist, Joyce excelled in nearly any medium she turned her hand to, from painting and printmaking to jewelry, bronze casting, weaving, photography, and fiction writing. From 1972–1977, she served as an art critic for the Kalamazoo Gazette. In 1978, Joyce moved from Kalamazoo to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied for and earned a real estate license and began a successful 10-year career as a Realtor. In the 1990s, she continued to make art, often traveling to Mexico to paint, and exhibited her work first at the prestigious Munson Gallery and later at Waxlander Gallery. She was also a long-term featured artist at the Joyce Petter Gallery in Saugatuck, Michigan. In 2002, she moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she bought a historic home in the Mesquite neighborhood and soon became a well-known figure in the local arts scene. She loved the community of artists in Las Cruces and even ran her own gallery there for a few years, exhibiting her pieces as well as work by other local artists she admired. After the death of her husband in 2009, she remained in Las Cruces, painting and sharing her home with a series of small and much adored dogs. In 2013, she donated 41 of her paintings and prints to Dona Ana County, where they hang as part of a permanent collection on the second floor of the Dona Ana County Government Center. Joyce is survived by her adult children Kirk Dillman (Lori), Lisa Dillman (Dennis Hamel), Karin Imel (Scott), Mike Macrorie (Marie), and six grandchildren: Erika, Rachel, Cole, Jessica, Olivia, and Deirdre. At Joyce's request cremation will take place and no services will be held at this time. A small private gathering for close friends and family is planned for the future.