Joyce Haynes is an artist with a strong liking for birds.
"I'm into birds," she admits.
A conservationist, bird watcher, outdoors woman, artist, and illustrator are hallmarks of this Pineville resident. Over the years, Haynes has moved to combining two of her greatest loves—art and birds.
Haynes is a California girl who graduated with an art degree from the University of Louisiana—Lafayette, the core city of Cajun country. After graduation, she took a job with the Wal-Mart Corporation, Bentonville.
At Wal-Mart, she worked as an fashion illustrator, mostly providing material for the famous Wal-Mart flyers that are inserted in Sunday newspapers over much of the world.
In time, she moved north across the Arkansas line into McDonald County and went to work as a writer /illustrator for the McDonald newspapers.
During all these times of doing commercial art, Haynes continued her interest in the outdoors, art, and birds. She became part of the Elk River Watershed Improvement Association. She took part in the Master Naturalist program. She is the only reporting person in McDonald County who participates in the National Migratory Bird Count.
With all these outdoor interests, her art has also moved towards wildlife, especially birds. Presently, she is working on artistically reproducing all the eggs of American birds by sculpting them in clay. The difficult part is studying and learning all the markings of individual bird eggs. Most everyone knows that robin eggs are "robin egg blue." Some bird eggs are spotted, some are dark brown, some are streaked like the grasses they are laid in. And, of course, they come in many sizes.
Over the years, Haynes has acquired an exact sized replica of every penguin. With this display, she gives talks about penguins, using her models for demonstration. Her penguin presentations are especially popular with grade school children.
An interesting banner Haynes brought to Eagle Days in Stella this year was of bird wing spans. The large illustration showed the underside of birds with their wings fully extended (spread eagle). The largest in the illustration was the American Bald Eagle and the smallest a ruby-throated hummingbird.
The wingspan banner hung on the wall of the Chert Glade Master Naturalists' tent. This allowed people to stand in front of it and stretch out their arms to compare their own wing span to the eagle. This illustration and wingspan comparison was very popular with photographers.
