Joyce McAndrews

Multimedia artist/street photographer, Joyce McAndrews began Project: Co-Mingle in 2015.

Joyce's mission of commingling various sectors of the community succeeded by gathering together community members with opposing views at a time when Seattle remained divided in a city-wide heated debate over the unprecedented growth of Amazon.

Project: Co-Mingle began when Joyce came upon a hand-painted sign on a South Lake Union job site that read "Co-Mingle". She thought the construction team was encouraging the community to get along during the demolition of another city block.

To Joyce's surprise, she gained unprecedented access to the construction site and was unconditionally welcomed into the wildly misperceived world of construction.

After several visits to photograph, Joyce found the true meaning of the co-mingle sign. It was not a community outreach, instead, it was the area on the site that was more or less the dumpster, where excess materials were sorted and recycled whenever possible.

From the moment Joyce stepped inside the curtained fences, she was awestruck. Joyce witnessed the human side of the construction world and as a result, was able to see a positive side to development. The crew's pride in their work and dedication to their trade radically impressed her.

At first, Joyce was opposed to the destruction of our once quaint city, and then she followed the crew for five years, documenting the rise of the Troy Block in 2018 and the Rainer Square Tower in 2020.

Thanks to the 65 Kickstarter donors, including the Lear Family Foundation, and additional financial backing from developers Touchstone, NW, Phase I of Project: Co-Mingle was successfully presented on May 3, 2018, in the Troy Block Arcade. FareStart's mission is to transform lives, disrupt poverty, and nourish communities through food, life skills, and job training, catered the Project: Co-Mingle event attended by the area residents, artists, developers, contractors, architects, the crew, family, friends, and Amazon employees.

While shooting the construction world, Joyce also covered the Women's March in Washington, DC in 2017, Seattle in 2018, and Los Angeles in 2019. Unfortunately, Joyce missed Portland's Women's March in 2020 due to COVID. In 2018, Joyce also shot the March for Our Lives and Black Lives Matter rallies in Seattle.

After the topping off of the Rainer Square Tower in 2019, Joyce hit the Seattle streets to capture our city’s bustling neighborhoods as construction continues.

When the Pandemic struck, Joyce returned to the restaurants she had photographed to shoot the empty spaces and boarded facades where once we commingled. As restrictions were lifting she captured her community throughout the many transitions, commingling as best she could to keep connected.

On June 25, 2022, Joyce was out on the streets again covering Seattle protesters’ response to Roe v. Wade being overturned.

Safety First!