Melanie Joy

Welcome to Heart Ink Arts Community! Heart Ink was born from several loves of my life: creative expression through art, children, and the gift of story whether that be a book or our own life narrative. As as a credentialed teacher with a M.A. in Education from Biola University, I have a passion to continue to give back to the community of Whittier where I have lived for over a decade. I work for a non-profit organization called InFaith, in partnership with Calvary/El Calvario Church, to provide the Heart Ink classes and First Aid Arts workshops to the local community funded by donations. Our Friday Free Expression classes do require a fee to help us offset costs, but are geared to provide more individual development and instruction for those who can afford to pay.

As a young child, I loved to draw but had few places to explore my skills, like many children today. And it wasn’t until my elementary art class in preparation for becoming a credentialed teacher that I realized art is still one of my favorite subjects to teach.

I believe that creative expression, resources for play, and healthy spaces for child development should be accessible for everyone whether you make art a hobby, as a way to de-stress at the end of the day, or a full time future career. The value of being creative in itself has worth, not just the product that we create. We value the arts for the process of where it takes us as a person (and our story and narrative) first through the freedom to explore and discover without fear of the end-product being measured or judged. I’m still learning and growing every day as a person, and art is merely the expression of that growth. It’s where we can risk failure but make new discoveries both personally and artistically while we create, grow, and change as an individual.

I hope to encourage that excitement of artistic self discovery in each child as they create.

Our Heart Ink (FREE) classes will have a ten-minute interactive Bible story that takes us through the Bible chronologically. So if you come weekly, you’ll see the WHOLE STORY unfold as it connects to a real art lesson over a two year period. Our First Aid Art workshops focus on exploring our own life story and learning to heal from our traumas using the ARTS. And our Friday Free Expression days, are for those who want to keep expressing themselves even more and write their story with art!

These different services are simply my gift of loving on the community by sharing ART & STORY with PEOPLE. I hope you’ll join us in person soon!