Don Joint

It is difficult to envision what might result from a fusion of Americana subject matter, images appropriated from Japanese woodblock prints, and painterly abstraction, until you see Don Joint’s mixed-media collages. Joint’s series “Waldameer” (2010), named after a historic Pennsylvania amusement park where the artist whiled away his childhood, is redolent of a child’s world: Against an atmospheric backdrop of paint and ink, images of rides, games, clowns, and animals, interspersed with amusement park tickets, transport viewers back to an age of innocence and ease. The evocations of Japanese culture, while seemingly incongruous with an American man’s reminiscences, stem from Joint’s childhood tendency to ponder the phrase “Made in Japan,” which was stamped into every toy he won at the park.