By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Joyce Cail knows culture shock. She knows a thing or two about strength and resiliency, too.

The Concord artist, whose exhibit, “Nature and Women’s Empowerment,” is on display at Bliss Salon and Spa in downtown Benicia through February, was born in Seattle but moved with her mother at age 10 to Houston, Texas.

Cail, a graphic designer, photographer, painter and “assembler,” returned to the West Coast last May, settling in the Bay Area. Her latest mixed-media collection of 27 pieces reveals nature and female strength in modern times — and against tough odds.

Cail’s fascination with assembling items in a creative way started back in those early childhood years in Seattle. “I remember in Seattle, in my back yard, my dad had a lot of junk and I’d always put pieces together,” she said.

As an undergraduate at Blinn College in Bryan-College Station, Texas, Cail met a retired genetic engineer who invited her to use a unique resource for her art. “He had stacks of National Geographics, from the 1940s, ’30s, first man to walk on the moon to the ’80s. I started collaging the whole house. I was just collaging everything together.” It was a formative experience. “That’s when I realized I’d like to get into graphic design,” she said.

“I never thought I could paint or draw, but once I went to school for it I realized, ‘Oh yeah, I can do that.’”

Cail received her bachelor’s degree in graphic design from Texas Woman’s University in 1998. She lived in the university’s home of Denton for 15 years before moving back to Houston to pursue more visual arts and photography. And to do art shows.

“Houston is a great visual arts area,” Cail said. “They have a big photography festival every two years — Fotofest. So I did that twice.” She also worked as an art director for Houston Style Magazine, and while there worked with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.

It wouldn’t be her last work promoting breast cancer awareness. The series that hangs in Bliss Salon contains images of a friend who has the disease.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you do a photo shoot with me, and maybe I can help you to feel better.’ So she did, and I did a photo shoot in my back yard.”

Many of the resulting pieces came to mind when Cail came across an ad by Bliss Salon inviting artists to exhibit there. By chance her exhibit was scheduled to coincide with the city’s Gal-A-Palooza Women’s Expo on Saturday.

“It’s about breast cancer in woman and nature,” she said. “I like to show the strength of women being empowered and the preserverance that we go through.”

For more information visit joycecail.com.