Capturing Community

Joyce Cleary has been a Pickerington resident for over 30 years. She retired after 44 years of working in the Ohio Department of Commerce and she hasn’t stopped moving since.

As a volunteer at Amber Park Senior Living, the Pickerington Tree Commission, American Red Cross and Pickerington Food Pantry, as well as a member of the Pickerington Community Chorus and an active member of her church, Cleary is always discovering new ways to get involved with her community.

“(God) has given me a gift to love people and understand how important community and helping each other is,” Cleary says.

During her time volunteering, Cleary has helped install benches and tree placards at Sycamore Creek Park Arboretum. She has helped families recover from house fires and spent countless hours playing games and chatting with Amber Park residents. For Cleary, her service is about her neighbors.

“I focus on people. I focus on loving one another and serving,” Cleary says.

When she’s not out in the community, Cleary is leading a home church and volunteering with her church community.

Longtime resident cultivates rewarding lifestyle of community involvement and photography

Lifelong student

Before moving to Pickerington in 1994, Cleary attended Columbus State Community College and Franklin University for about 15 years, where she discovered she wanted to be a lifetime learner.

“I took business, I took accounting, I took engineering. I took advertising because I wanted to take photography. I can’t remember all the classes I’ve taken. I could care less about the degree. I just wanted to learn,” says Cleary.

Still a student, Cleary currently enrolls in classes at Dwell Community Church where she expands her knowledge on the books of the Bible.

In addition to her dedication to continued learning, Cleary also cultivates a love of the outdoors and photography. In fall 2022, Cleary reached out to Pickerington Magazine to offer her photography work for publication. Since then, Cleary can be seen around Pickerington snapping pictures of the city’s natural parks, exciting events and local businesses. Cleary’s work is featured in each of the last two issues of Pickerington Magazine. As an active member of the community for so long, Cleary can capture the essence of Pickerington in one shot.

“I’ve liked photography all my life. I always loved taking pictures of my family and vacations. I love documenting what we’ve done,” Cleary says. “My favorite type of photography is nature. I love doing landscapes, animals – just nature.”

In 2020, Cleary and her husband, Tony, visited Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, where Cleary had the chance to capture wild animals in their stunning natural habitat.

“We knew where the wolves would be, so we went out and we would sit on the side of the road with my camera and I got (pictures of) wolves, a grizzly bear, a black bear, a coyote,” Cleary says.

Cleary has brought her camera across California, Utah, the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon, and her goal is to visit every national park. For her next trip, Cleary and her husband plan to visit Acadia National Park in Maine.

“I have a quote by Ansel Adams and it’s something like, ‘God puts me somewhere at the right time where he wants me to take a photo,’ and I love that,” Cleary says.

Back in Ohio, Cleary shifted her focus from wildlife imagery to capturing other subjects. For her current project, she is working on compiling a collection of before-and-after images of historical buildings in Pickerington.

“I think (the history) is interesting to a lot of people, but I do think history matters. It’s what we were, what we’ve become, where we’re going,” Cleary says.

And while Cleary has the itch to trav- el and capture images all around the country, her expeditions always lead her back home to Pickerington.

“There’s a lot of things I’d like to do, but (Pickerington) is my home. This is where I come back to,” Cleary says.