Portrait of Melissa Joseph in her studio, 2024. Photo by Ryan Lowry for Artsy.
The Artsy Vanguard 2025: Melissa Joseph
“It’s hard to know where to look first in Melissa Joseph’s midtown Manhattan studio. Perhaps the work table, piled with tufts of wool in an array of colors that would make the Crayola 64-pack blush? Perhaps the heap of tires in the corner, or the knickknacks that line the windows overlooking 39th Street. Or maybe a small, figurative felt piece displayed in a shadow box frame, depicting a sunset, as filtered through the frame of a cell phone screen.
Joseph didn’t make this work—her eight-year-old niece, Olive, did. Even so, it feels particularly emblematic of the artist’s personality and practice. A “pathologically extroverted” (her words) former art teacher still eager to nurture the creativity of those around her—including, I would come to find out, visiting journalists—Joseph radiates warmth that is equally present in her felt compositions. These works, which often depict her family members, are cocoons of memory and heritage, deeply concerned with materiality and the afterlife of images. Joseph has worked across a variety of media, including ceramics and paper pulp, but it is her fiber portraits—created using a distinctive needle-felting technique and often paired with found objects—that have become her signature..”
—Olivia Horn for Artsy