Joan graduated with honors from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2013, receiving her BFA with a concentration in Jewelry and Metalsmithing. Her work is strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and her upbringing in a rural community along the Connecticut River. The barns and old colonial homes among tobacco and corn fields created contrasting forms the she found interesting, and created a fascination with the relationship between mankind and nature. Drawing inspiration from natural and soft objects like flowers and feathers, her work is fabricated using clean lines and smooth finishes in metal, to explore these opposing ideas of hard and soft, masculine and feminine, natural and man-made.