Finding Joy

The Girl with Open Arms

Ellen Williams

I don’t want to call myself corrupt, but I will say some baklava was hand delivered to me personally in exchange for chasing down this story. In all honesty, I would have done it, sweet treats or not – Joy happens to be my favorite piece of art around campus, and I love paying her visits on lovely afternoons. Resident Nikki Fallis approached me about doing a piece on “Joy.” When her family was waiting to pick her up the other month, her little grandniece Penelope saw her standing proudly outside of building six and promptly ran and took her hand. Nikki’s family is Greek, and little Penelope couldn’t help but imitate Greek dancing with her new bronzed partner. That is the kind of thing this statue seems to invite. People don’t just look at her. They join her. 

Betty Allison poses with Joy in her new home in front of building 6.

“I think it is beautiful — it makes me happy when I see it,” Nikki told me. I couldn’t agree more. Nikki pointed me in the direction of Ann and Elizabeth Allison, second-generation Still Hopes residents. Their father was a Day Program participant decades ago, and their mother, Betty Allison, lived in Evergreen and eventually Jane Bruce for almost 20 years following his passing. We have Betty to thank for “Joy,” as she was her gift to Still Hopes. She loved the look of “Joy,” and she was quite fond of her sculptor. Her son Robert, Ann and Elizabeth’s brother, was the artist! 

“I can still recall my mother always telling him to pick up his clay off the floor,” Ann remarks. That childhood passion turned into quite a prolific career. Robert’s work is now featured in several galleries, and in the famous Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado. 

I had a chance to ask Robert about how Joy came to be. “She came about as one of three figures that were commissioned for a fountain for the city of Orangeburg,” he told me. The model wasn’t one of his own children - he learned early in his career that if he sculpted one of his kids, the other would get their feelings hurt. So, he used a neighbor’s child instead, and out of that came Joy: a girl in motion, one of three figures now part of a fountain installed in Orangeburg, and, in a smaller edition of just five castings, a solitary figure who found her way to Still Hopes.

I asked Robert whether he felt any particular connection to Still Hopes because of the statue standing here. I would imagine most artists pour so much of themselves into their work that it may feel like a piece of them existing externally in the world.

“The answer is yes,” he said, “but I think I would feel a connection even if she was not there.” When he and his siblings visited their mother over the years, they stayed with her here, and those visits left him with what he called a lot of fond memories of her at Still Hopes. The statue didn’t create that bond. It’s simply where the bond happens to live now, out where anyone walking by can share in it.

Betty Allison spent almost twenty years of her life here, and when she wanted to leave something behind, she chose joy itself.

Two of her children now walk this campus today. And so does Joy — mid-step, smiling, waiting for whoever is running late to stop, and dance.

Read more stories in our Connections magazine.