Joy Appenzeller Bauer graduated from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995 where she refined traditional French impressionism and urban realism oil painting techniques. After art school, she focused on commissioned portraits for 15+ years while working in advertising/corporate communications and earning an MBA. As a senior manager, she travelled around the world and built up a repertoire of reference photography.

Although equally comfortable with figures, she now concentrates mostly on landscapes and cityscapes, capturing the character and atmosphere of each traveled location (click here for artist statement). On account of multiple marriages, Joy’s art post 2003 is signed without a last name – simply “Joie” (Joy in French). Her work is on display at several galleries and juried art shows/fairs and she is a board member of the Skokie Art Guild.

While the smaller impressionist landscapes are often painted plein air in a single day outside/looking out a window, Joy’s realism paintings take 2-4 weeks to complete. Starting from a few of her reference photos, she hand-draws the entire composition to scale using drafting tools as necessary. Most paintings start out as drawings, progress to color-blocked designs, and then become painstakingly detailed from upper-left to bottom right. Visit the Art de Joie process page for a step-by-step explanation.

Miles Bauer has been working as an IT professional for over 25 years, both as an independent consultant and as a corporate Fortune 100 technical manager (architect). He oversees global deployments and ensures regulatory compliance and alignment with core business operations/financial objectives. Some of Miles recent projects have yielded annual cost savings in excess of $20MM. Becaues Miles has such a strong technical background (JAVA, PHP, EGL, ASSEMMBLER, etc.), he is able to be hands on as needed, invaluable when assessing outsource resources and potential upgrades. Miles earned both a BS in Computer Science and Mathmatics as well as an MBA.

Ironically, Joy and Miles both attended the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management but did not meet until years later. They now collaborate on web development projects; Joy handling the design and Miles handling the programming.