Beer With a Painter: Melissa Joseph
Our series on painters and their practices is back, this time for an interview with the New York-based artist who creates “paintings in felt” to explore her Irish and Indian family history.
When Melissa Joseph welcomed me warmly into her Midtown studio this fall, she immediately invited me to try needle felting — the process she uses to create what she calls her “paintings in felt.” Feeling self-conscious, I procrastinated as long as possible, asking questions in the meantime. But Joseph insisted it’s the only way to understand the medium, so after my final question, she cut me a small rectangle of carpet padding, handed me the needle tool, and invited me to pull pieces of brilliantly colored wool from her cabinet. As I stabbed the wool into place, I suddenly got it. It is meditative, and also a bit violent, which feels healing, alongside the tactile fuzziness of the soft wool.
Joseph’s felted works are often enclosed and framed by small containers — found objects like a vintage first aid box, an anchor, or a silver platter. In this way, the memories of family and friends she renders in felt are held like devotional objects or religious icons. Joseph depicts her biracial family with roots in both India and Ireland. Grief and loss were a catalyst for her work; her career as an artist began after the death of her father in 2015. Joseph brings care to candid, sometimes awkward familial moments, simultaneously attaching new meaning to the discarded objects she so tenderly repurposes.
Born in Saint Marys, Pennsylvania, in 1980, Melissa Joseph lives and works in New York City. Prior to receiving her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 2018, she had trained and worked as a textile designer and high school art teacher. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Delaware Contemporary, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA Arlington, ICA San Francisco, and List Gallery at Swarthmore College, among other institutions and galleries. She is the recipient of the 2025 UOVO Prize by the Brooklyn Museum and the 2025 Eden Art Foundation Artists Now Award, and is a regular contributor to BOMB Magazine.
