TXST Alum Turns Passion and Loss Into Brush Strokes Pottery

One day about 20 years ago, TXST alum Courtney Harding Joyner was walking down a boutique- and café-lined street in Boulder, Colorado, when one of the shops caught her attention. She stopped and stared through the window of a paint-your-own-pottery studio, where patrons were transforming plain ceramic pieces into brightly colored artworks. 

Courtney, who majored in broadcast journalism as an undergraduate (1999) and communications studies as master’s student (2003), had never considered a career in art, but something about the pottery studio spoke to her. When she got home to Texas from her Colorado vacation, she immediately began writing a business plan.

“For whatever reason, I could not shake the feeling,” she remembers. “It was being drawn to something and knowing it’s what I wanted to do.”

Two decades later, Courtney has used that inspiration—and a healthy dose of resilience—to create her own colorful business, Brush Strokes Pottery. The Austin-based company’s signature product, a colorful ceramic cactus lit by an interior lightbulb and bedazzled with Lite Brite-style lights, charms shoppers at art markets and has been featured in Better Homes and Gardens and Southern Living magazines. Through Brush Strokes, Courtney has also raised money for Alzheimer’s research in honor of her mother, who passed away from the disease in 2021, by donating a portion of the sales of a special purple cactus.

Courtney grew up in College Station and knew when she toured TXST (then Southwest Texas State University) that she didn’t want to apply anywhere else. The university was the perfect size, and the tree-covered campus felt like home. She majored in communications and specialized in broadcast journalism, enjoying courses with associate professor Laurie Fluker and with associate professor emeritus Tim England, who oversaw the campus newscast. Courtney uses the skills she learned on set, and during shifts at the campus radio station, when she produces social media marketing videos for Brush Strokes and interviews fellow artists for her video podcast, Creative Chronicles. 

After a stint in event planning and marketing, Courtney returned to Texas State to earn her master’s degree in communication studies. For her graduate assistantship, the Chi Omega alum worked in the office of Campus Activities and Student Organizations (now known as Student Involvement and Engagement) as the advisor to Panhellenic sororities. She noticed how her supervisor, Terence Parker, was able to maintain both a relaxed, friendly rapport with his staff and a sense of discipline and accountability. Courtney realized that “you can have a relationship with your staff; you can mentor and also be personable and create a fun work environment, and still be the boss.”  

Parker, who now works in the Dean of Students Office, remembers helping Courtney establish that kind of rapport with sorority members, only a few years her junior. “The challenge for her was to create boundaries to where they could see her as someone who held them accountable to policies and procedures, when she was about their same age,” he says. “Courtney was always genuine and had a great attitude, and the women gravitated to her because of her attitude. She was very caring and approachable. She served as a role model and mentor for the women to aspire to.” 

Courtney now tries to cultivate a similar work environment for her Brush Strokes part-time staff, all college students or recent graduates. She’s been successful, says first-year TXST student Nora Mattie, who started working for Brush Strokes over the summer. “There wasn’t a second when I started working here that I felt like an outsider,” Mattie says. “It’s nice to have this little community as my first job.” 

After earning her master’s degree, Courtney returned to the corporate world with jobs in marketing, communications, and business development. In 2007, a few years after she saw the Boulder studio, she launched Brush Strokes Pottery as a side gig. She had hoped to open a shop like the one she saw in Colorado, but when she couldn’t find a retail space, she decided to operate as a mobile paint-your-own-pottery studio. Courtney loaded up her SUV with blank plates and décor and traveled to birthday parties, corporate retreats, and sorority sisterhood events. Seven years later, she left her job to run Brush Strokes full time.

In 2018, Courtney brought some ceramic cacti to a paint-your-own event, and afterward, she decided to paint and sell some herself. Soon Courtney was bringing her festive cacti to art markets and holiday craft shows, where customers were drawn to the pieces’ funky style and to what the plants represent. “They’re strong and resilient in the toughest conditions,” Courtney says.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which put an end to in-person events, prompted Courtney to pivot into selling DIY art kits and painted ceramics online, and the cactus became her most popular item. Courtney sources the unpainted ceramic pieces from a manufacturer, hand paints them, and adds brightly colored interchangeable lights in different shapes. This fall, Courtney will launch a new product, her first native Texan cactus—a prickly pear. Courtney designed the ceramic succulent herself and worked with the manufacturer to create it. “That’s something I never, in my wildest dreams, thought would happen,” she says.  

Courtney’s cacti also gently reminded her to be resilient as her mother, Nita Harding, battled Alzheimer’s disease. Harding was an artist who loved bright colors and painted exquisite watercolors but began showing signs of dementia in 2011, when she was in her mid-60s. After a long, gradual decline, she died in February 2021.

The loss was excruciating, but Courtney wanted to honor her mother and find a way to give back. In the summer of 2021, a few months after her mother’s passing, she introduced a cactus painted purple, the color of Alzheimer’s awareness, and donates 15 percent of its sales to the Alzheimer’s Association. Courtney also has hosted “Longest Day” fundraisers on the summer solstice for the cause. One such event, a gallery night at her studio that displayed art by Courtney’s mother and other people affected by the disease, raised $5,000.

At art markets, where Courtney often is assisted by her sister, Jaclyn Harding Moore, a 2001 TXST graduate, she displays a purple cactus with a sign explaining its significance. When someone has Alzheimer’s, “you feel like their light is dimming,” she says. “So I want the cactus to shine that light brightly again, and I want their loved one to think about the happy times.”