Heart felt

It may have taken a few sharp rights and smart lefts to find her true calling, but Melissa Joseph believes that her memory-laden felt art is well worth the journey it took to get there.

- By AVANTIKA SHANKAR.

Melissa Joseph's art career is rooted in a bittersweet irony: her late father, who had initially discouraged her from pursuing a career in the arts, is now one of the most prominent figures in the needlepoint felt works that have earned her international acclaim. “My father was a general surgeon, and it’s not unusual that he would have also wanted me to do that,” shares the Indian-American artist, speaking from her home in Brooklyn. “I did one year in premed at Barnard College in New York City, and it just wasn’t for me. I’m squeamish around blood.”

Joseph's father, who hailed from Kerala and later made a life for himself in small-town Pennsylvania, passed away in 2015. By then, Joseph had scraped together an eclectic resume: she had a liberal arts degree from New York University and an associate degree in textile and surface design from the Fashion Institute of Technology, after which she spent a few years designing fabrics. Realising she preferred working with her hands rather than on a computer, she got another degree in arts education from the Rhode Island School of Design and went on to teach high school art for about 10 years. She was three days into a new job at an Ohio high school when her father passed away.