Melissa Sutherland Moss is a recent graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art’s summer low residency MFA program (MFAST). This is where I first met Melissa and became familiar with her work and the sheer power, presence, and commitment she brought to her performances and exhibitions on campus. Sutherland Moss now splits her time between New York and Baltimore and will soon exhibit work at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and recently finished an artist residency at Mass Moca in Massachusets. As a Caribbean American, her work is deeply linked to landscape, language, and cultural history. Recently we reconnected at her studio in Baltimore, not far from MICA’s campus, to talk about life after graduate school – how to structure life and studio time, teaching, rest, and how her interests are manifesting in new ways and materials in her work.

Interview between Amy Boone-McCreesh and Melissa Sutherland Moss

Amy: Where is your current studio, how long have you been here?

Melissa: My studio is currently located at the Motorhouse in Baltimore, and I’ve been here since October of last year. I’ve kind of been studio and residency hopping, trying to find something at a good price here in the city. So,  I’ve only been here for a few months, and honestly haven’t really gotten a chance to spend as much time as I would like here between teaching, exhibitions, making work, and also just trying to rest.

A: How do you structure your life and studio time now that you are a little more stationary?

M: Honestly, I’m still figuring that out, because I don’t think my life and studio time exist in a perfectly structured way. It changes depending on what season I’m in, whether I’m teaching, preparing for an exhibition, traveling, or just trying to recover physically.

A lot of the time I work in pockets. I’ve learned not to wait for a full uninterrupted day because that rarely happens. Sometimes it’s a few hours in the studio, sometimes it’s writing something down, organizing images, reading, looking at materials, or sitting with an idea before I even begin making. I’ve had to accept that all of that is part of the practice too.

I’m currently teaching adjunct at MICA so that also shapes my rhythm a lot, because it requires a different kind of energy, so I’m constantly thinking about how to protect enough mental and physical space to return to my own work. And honestly, rest has become a much bigger part of how I think about structure now, especially because my body forces me to pay attention. I can’t push the way I used to without consequences.So balance for me is less about having a perfect routine and more about staying in relationship with the work even when I’m not physically producing every day. Some days that looks like being here in the studio, and other days it looks like reading, walking, organizing thoughts, or just letting myself pause without feeling like I’m falling behind. That’s probably the most honest way I can describe it, that I’m always adjusting, but I try to keep the work close even when life is asking for something else.

A.  How have  you figured out which work to do where? 

M. Like this piece, for example, I’m still trying to figure out how it can hang suspended in space, but this studio doesn’t really give me that kind of access. So it’s not being shown the way I ideally want to see it, but it’s the best I can do right now just so I can at least get it up and look at it.

I’ve actually been working on this one for about two months, but in different places. At first it was pinned to a wall and I started weaving it that way. Then when I took it to the studios at MASS MoCA, I was able to suspend it, and that really changed how it started to form. It helped shape the piece in a different way. Then I brought it back here, back to Maryland Institute College of Art, and took it into the print shop so I could print text onto the straps, on the inside parts. When it hangs in space, you can actually walk around it and see the inside of the straps, which only become visible from certain angles.

For me, the whole process can feel a little stressful, honestly, but I try to remind myself to work in small pockets. A lot of my work already functions like collage anyway, so it naturally exists in fragments. That’s kind of how I stay sane with it, telling myself, okay, work on this section here, work on that part there, and then when enough pieces exist, bring everything back together in the space where it can actually assemble. That’s really what helps me keep going and not shut down completely, because once you stop, it can be hard to return. So I keep working in fragments, and then when I’m ready, that’s when everything starts coming together.

A: So for those that may not be familiar, how would you describe your work? What are the big themes that you’re trying to get at with your work?

M: Zoomed out, I think my work is really about trying to understand how identity gets shaped through memory, migration, landscape, and inherited history. I don’t know that I’m looking for a clear answer or some kind of resolution. It feels more like I’m still trying to get a deeper understanding of my own footing, of what it means for me to be here in America while carrying these other histories that are always present.

A lot of what informs the work comes from different places that are connected to me: Costa Rica, Jamaica, and my life here in the United States. I’m constantly thinking about how those cultural influences live in me at the same time, how they affect the way I move through the world, how they shape my perspective, and also how I’m perceived by others. There’s often a difference between how I understand myself internally and how I’m read externally, and that tension shows up in the work a lot.

Memory is also central. I think I’m always trying to hold on to small fragments before they disappear, whether that’s through family photographs, transferred images, text, material traces, or repetition. Because memory doesn’t arrive whole. It comes in pieces, and sometimes those pieces fade or shift. A lot of my process is about trying to hold those fragments long enough to study them, preserve them, or give them another form.

Material matters a lot in that too. The burlap, rope, straps, transferred photographs, even the way things hang or carry weight, all of that connects back to labor, transport, migration, and what gets carried physically and emotionally across places. So even when the work looks abstract, there’s usually something underneath it connected to how histories travel, how bodies adapt, and how we continue holding things that were here before us.

A: Let’s talk about the role of text in your work. Has this been present for a little while – whether it’s through spoken word or something hidden that viewers read or discover through looking. How would you describe the role of language in your work? 

M: For me, language is very performative. Even before I began leaning more directly into performance, text already felt like a way of extending the body into the work, especially in moments when I’m not physically present. It gives the work another voice, another register, something that can activate the space differently.

I think text creates an entry point for the viewer. It asks them to slow down, to read, to interpret, and sometimes to bring their own memory or experience into what they’re seeing. I’ve always been drawn to language because it can hold so much with very little. A short phrase can shift the whole feeling of a piece. A lot of the text I use is repetitive. It often returns in cycles, almost like a chant or an insistence. Handle with Care, for example, is a phrase I come back to often. It works for me as instruction, but also as declaration. It speaks to vulnerability, but also to how bodies, histories, and even certain communities, especially Black bodies, are asked to endure conditions that are anything but careful.

What interests me is that tension, because the work itself often doesn’t look precious. I’m not interested in making it feel untouched or protected. A lot of the materials are rough, worn, stained, stretched, or visibly marked. I want them to feel like they’ve moved through something, like they’ve traveled, carried weight, absorbed time, and held history.

So when a phrase like Handle with Care appears, it creates a kind of contradiction. You read the instruction, but the object itself tells another story. It looks like something that has already been handled roughly, something that has survived use, pressure, movement, and time. And I think that tension is important because it reflects a lot of what I’m trying to get at in the work overall. 

A: I think you have a really great gift for combining found materials and then bringing ownership to them. It can be really difficult to use found materials and figure out how to use them beyond their own histories- it seems you’ve been able to recontextualize them. How do you think about the marriage of found materials vs those you are making yourself?

M: I think what draws me to found materials is that they already arrive carrying something. They already have a life, a surface, a history, a kind of evidence in them before I even begin. And I’m interested in entering into that rather than erasing it.

Even in this suspended piece, almost everything is found. Each material came with its own story. That turquoise rope, for example, the person I got it from told me it had been in the Atlantic Ocean, and immediately that meant something to me. It held salt, movement, travel, exposure, all of that. I was drawn to the fact that it had already crossed through space before reaching me. Since migration is such a central part of my thinking, materials that have physically moved through the world feel deeply connected to what I’m trying to say.

A lot of the materials I use are fibers or woven surfaces: burlap, straps, rope, industrial textiles. I’m drawn to materials that already suggest labor, transport, carrying, or binding. Some things I find near locomotive yards too, which also connects back to family history, especially thinking about relatives who worked on trains and what those systems of movement meant historically.

What happens in the studio is that I’m not just presenting the material as found, I’m trying to place it into another conversation. Sometimes that happens through printing, stitching, suspension, layering, or combining it with image and text so the material begins to hold both its own history and mine at the same time. The screenprint of the banana image is a good example of that. When I was in Costa Rica, I was photographing things on my family’s land, and one image stayed with me. My father makes banana vinegar, and in his work area there were bananas everywhere, hanging, stacked, gathered. I started looking closely at that image and eventually extracted the banana form itself.

What interested me was how that image opened into something much larger. My father ferments the bananas under tarp, which is what first led me to experiment with printing on tarp as a surface. I wanted to see what would happen if I screen printed onto it, but the material is delicate, almost unstable. The ink barely holds. If I move it too much, parts begin to crack or crumble. And that fragility actually became important. At the same time, the banana carries a huge historical charge for me. For a long time I assumed bananas were native to Costa Rica because that’s what you always read, product of Costa Rica. But they’re not native. And once I began thinking through that, it opened questions about plantation histories, colonial economies, labor, and the arrival of Black Jamaican workers, including my own family history connected to that movement.

That’s why I call that series Bitter Harvest. Because the banana is not just fruit, it’s a symbol carrying labor, displacement, survival, and extraction. So I think that’s really how I understand found material in my work: it already holds one history, and then through the work I ask how that history can meet another one, or how something familiar can begin to reveal everything sitting underneath it.

A: How do you address color and pattern?

Color is very intuitive for me. It’s usually not something I over-plan in the beginning. I tend to respond to it instinctively, and later I realize how much it’s connected to landscape, especially Caribbean landscape and the environments that stay with me visually.

A lot of the colors that keep returning in my work, the turquoise, greens, yellows, certain blues, they’re all tied to places I know and remember. In Costa Rica, for example, so many houses are painted that bright turquoise color, and I think that has stayed with me deeply. I’m naturally drawn to it because it immediately brings back an entire atmosphere, not just a color, but heat, light, air, memory, architecture, the feeling of being there. When I step back and look at the work over time, I realize those colors keep appearing whether I intend them to or not. They almost arrive on their own because I’m always thinking, consciously or unconsciously, about landscape and what certain colors carry emotionally.Pattern enters differently, because pattern often comes from something very specific and personal. The pattern behind the banana, for example, comes from my mother’s couch, a couch she’s had for over thirty years. I’ve actually wanted to make a whole project around that couch for a long time, and I’ve been collecting photographs of it for years.

She bought it when she first came to America, and that couch sat in our house in Brooklyn through so many years of family life. For me, it’s important because it witnessed so much, conversations, people coming and going, ordinary daily moments, difficult moments, celebrations. It became one of those objects that quietly held the life of the house.

When she decided to move back to Costa Rica, she didn’t want to take it because shipping it felt too expensive, so she gave it to one of her close friends. What’s funny is that her friend kept the entire couch set wrapped in plastic for about twelve years, so it stayed in almost perfect condition. Then after all that time, my mother called and asked if she could have it back. I remember thinking, that’s kind of wild, but also I understood it, because certain objects hold so much memory that they don’t really leave you.So when I pull that pattern into the work, it’s not just decorative. It’s carrying domestic memory, migration, and the emotional weight that everyday objects can accumulate over time.

A: What role does the figure play? There are these little moments of evidence of the figure in your work. Obviously, it’s a lot more obvious when you are there doing a performance. But what about the role of the person?

 M: Yeah, I think the figure is present in my work even when it isn’t fully visible. And like you said, it appears directly through performance, when my body is actually in the space, but even when I’m absent, I think the work still carries evidence of a body, traces of movement, weight, gesture, suspension, strain.

A lot of the forms I make end up suggesting the body without describing it literally. People often say certain pieces feel like a torso, a hanging skin, a spine, something held upright or suspended. And I think that happens because I’m interested in the body as a site where history is carried, where memory settles, where labor leaves marks. Even when I’m not intentionally making a figure, I realize I’m often building forms that imply presence, as if someone has just left or as if the body is still embedded in the material somehow. You know? The handles that you see throughout my work are important in that too. I use them a lot because they immediately suggest lifting, carrying, holding, strain, physical effort. They point to labor, but also to care, because a handle exists so something can be moved, supported, or transported. 

So I think the figure in my work is less about portraiture and more about evidence, evidence that a body has been here, that it has worked, carried something, endured something, or left a trace behind.And sometimes there is something spiritual in that too, because the body is not always fully present, but there’s still a sense that something remains, like fragments of presence, fragments of people, fragments of histories that continue to shape the space even when they aren’t fully visible.

A: Do you have anything coming up or anything you want to promote or talk about?

M: Yes, my work will be included in a group exhibition at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and that exhibition runs from August 1 through September 20, 2026, so that’s the next public presentation I’m looking forward to.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to not immediately rush into the next thing just because it feels like you’re supposed to always have something lined up. After my recent show came down, I honestly felt like I need a real break, physically more than anything.

A: Do you want to recommend any artists, reading, tv?

In terms of recommendations, there are definitely artists whose work I return to because they keep reminding me what material can do emotionally and conceptually. Kennedy Yanko is someone I really admire for the way she brings together industrial material and paint in a way that feels both heavy and incredibly alive. I also think about Vanessa German because her work carries so much spirit, presence, and emotional force. There’s a fullness in what she builds that I really appreciate.For reading, one book I always recommend is The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat. It’s one of those books that stays with you. It’s beautifully written, but emotionally very heavy, so I usually tell people, be prepared to cry. It holds history, tenderness, violence, memory, and loss in a way that doesn’t leave you easily.