Joy Schendledecker works in a variety of media including fibers, sculpture, collage, printmaking, and photography. She has a longstanding preoccupation with bodies and gender, matter-out-of-place, attraction/repulsion, labor, and materiality. Her current work focuses on petrochemicals, plastics, and marine debris, through the multiple lenses of discard studies, environmental justice, and toxic post/humanness in the era of the Anthropocene/Chthulucene/Capitalocene.

Joy attended Maryland Institute College of Art and University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She lived in London for 10 years before moving to Santa Cruz With her partner and children in 2015.