38 | JUNE 3 • 2021 

COURTESY OF JESSICA HAUSER

ARTS&LIFE
ART

B

y day, Jessica Hauser 
is a dynamic nonprofit 
leader doing everything 
in her power to ensure Detroit 
students have the tools they need 
to succeed. As executive direc-
tor of the Downtown Boxing 
Gym, her days are filled with 
nonstop Zoom meetings and 
tackling significant concerns 
like funding, staffing and getting 
emergency food to families as 
well as overseeing the free after-
school academic and athletic 
program’s operations alongside 
Khali Sweeney, DBG’s founder 
and CEO. It was a big job before 
COVID-19 and the pandemic 
amplified everything.
“We were working 20-hour 
days,” says Hauser, a former 
member with her family of 
Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park. 

“It’s been a super stressful year.”
Enter Joy Doodles, the one 
thing Hauser says helped her get 
through some of the toughest 
times. Joy Doodles is her name 
for a free-form style of drawing 
and painting that she first recalls 
doing as a young child with her 
late father, Joel Hauser. Sadly, 
he was hit and killed by a drunk 
driver when Jessica was just 10 
years old, changing her family 
and the course of her life forever.
“He would sit and draw these 
squiggly lines and tell me to just 
be as creative as possible to fill 
them in,” she recalls. “Something 
about it was just really calming. 
My favorite thing about it is 
there are no boundaries. You can 
create your own thing; you can 
really express yourself.”
Decades after drawing with 

Jessica Hauser’s ‘Joy Doodles’ 
bring back childhood memories 
of her late father.

Oodles of 
Doodles

ROBIN SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Jessica Hauser

