Melissa Joseph
Peculiarities of Poetry, 2023
Linen pulp paint on abaca base sheet with pigmented cotton blow out
20 x 16 inches

Dieu Donné is pleased to release Peculiarities of Poetry, a new Paper Variables edition by Melissa Joseph. Working with Master Collaborator Amy Jacobs, the artist created a variable edition of 15 works using pulp painting and blow out techniques with handmade paper.

“My work starts with images or stories from my personal archive. I also think of my work as visual poetry- moments in time, captured through gesture like a verse. I came across a beautiful poem by Arundhati Chowdhury online, and the first line was ‘Windows are peculiar poetries.’. This is where the title of my series for Dieu Donné comes from. Each work in this series offers a glimpse into a life.  They can be beginnings or middles of stories, as poems often are, allowing for the experience to continue in our minds, long after we leave the image. The motif of the airplane window is a device to reinforce the sense of peering in from one place in time to another, or from one life to another.”

–––– Melissa Joseph

To collect work from this edition, please explore our Membership Program.

About the Artist

Melissa Joseph is a New York-based artist. She was raised in an Indian/American household in rural Pennsylvania and she worked as a textile designer and K-12 art educator for 13 years before attaining an MFA in 2018. She uses her own family photo archive along with craft and found materials to consider themes of memory, family history, and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life. Her work has been shown at the Delaware Contemporary, Woodmere Art Museum, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Jeffrey Deitch Projects, MOCA Arlington and List Gallery at Swarthmore College. She has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artnet, New American Paintings, Le Monde, CNN, and Architectural Digest and participated in residencies including Dieu Donné, Fountainhead, the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design and upcoming at Greenwich House Pottery in 2023. She is a regular contributor to BOMB magazine.

For more information, please visit her website:
https://www.melissajoseph.net