Joseph E. Malson is a multi-disciplinary assemblage artist who works in found, thrifted, and donated materials. Typically he makes use of textiles that have been manipulated through handwork or piecework combined with what may be called kitsch, or readily available media and objects to decontextualize and create new avenues of interpretation. Sometimes he recreates those mass produced objects using these methods; exploring the intersection of the mass-produced object, the handmade, the domestic, and the fine art space.

His use of materials that have been attained through second hand stores or from personal collections, along with the use and disruption of traditional crafts coincides with how historically in queer and other minority communities, we create new identities, new families, and new realities out of what is available to us.


Joseph spent his childhood in the southern United States daydreaming about pop stars and male teenage heartthrobs. His adolescence in the Midwest, where he experimented with makeup, vintage clothing, shoplifting, and skipping school. After becoming an adult he returned to school earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Arts.

​He now resides in Savannah Georgia where he is creating new work and contemplating the worth of an MFA.