Wicker basket and a short knife
10 October - 14 November 2026
Opening Reception:
Saturday, October 10, 6-9PM, 6-9pm
Curated by Alexandria Nazar
︎ FJORD (1720 N 5th St G2)
Opening Reception:
Saturday, October 10, 6-9PM, 6-9pm
Curated by Alexandria Nazar
︎ FJORD (1720 N 5th St G2)
FJORD is pleased to present Wicker basket and a short knife, an exhibition of New York-based artists Melissa Joseph and Ezra Tessler and Philadelphia-based artists Anne Minich and Jim Strong. The title for this show comes from the last work of American poet Paul Zweig, whose depiction of foraging for mushrooms captures the raw, exuberant act of searching for and gathering what he calls “God’s litter.” The studio as a site of foraging is the main theme connecting these artists. But they are also linked by their exploration of craft, the overlap of painting and sculpture, and the blurred line between values of high and low.
For Melissa Joseph, found objects and industrial fragments frame her needle-felted images based on photographs of friends and family. The resulting works reflect Joseph’s evolving sense of herself and the people, places, and forces that have shaped her. Anne Minich’s work, meanwhile, combines raw images from her own personal history with objects like shells and driftwood she either collects or is gifted. Her drawings and inlaid paintings allude to the aging body’s experience of pain and pleasure, connection and loss. In Jim Strong's paintings, assemblages of carved wood, inlaid antiques, ears and woven rattan become unexpected reliquaries for delicate images frozen in evaporated pigments. In eerie, earthen tones Strong creates devotional works which welcome the unknown. In contrast, Ezra Tessler’s shaped paintings clash with unfiltered color. Using handmade paper and collage, Tessler recycles failed efforts in the studio and cast-off materials, offering condensed panoramas of real and imagined worlds.
These varied practices share an impulse to scavenge. In Zweig’s words, they search the forest for “those brown, perfect domes/With milky meat and fat stems bulging like barrels,” salvaging discarded objects and memories, scouring their archives, photo albums, studios, and surrounding streets. In doing so, they seek the wild and overlooked material of the world and repurpose it into the new and the unexpected.
About the Artists:
Melissa Joseph is a New York-based artist. Her work considers themes of memory, family history, and the politics of how we occupy spaces. She intentionally alludes to the labors of women as well as experiences as a second-generation American and the unique juxtapositions of diasporic life. 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. She has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Artnet, Artnews, New American Paintings, WNYC, Le Monde, Vogue, CNN, Whitewall, Family Style, and has participated in residencies including Artpace, Dieu Donné Workspace Residency, The Textile Arts Center, BRIC, Fountainhead, the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, the Museum of Arts and Design, and Greenwich House Pottery. She is the recipient of the 2025 UOVO Prize by the Brooklyn Museum and a regular contributor to BOMB Magazine.
https://www.melissajoseph.net/
IG: melissajoseph_art
Anne Minich (b. West Chester, PA, 1934) attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1953-54 then married in 1955 with the intention of giving up making art. She had three children, Stephen, Elizabeth, and Catherine. She resumed making art at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. Afterwards she relocated to Weehawken, NJ, and NYC, then moved to Philadelphia, PA, where she presently maintains her studio and home. Her work has been in solo and group exhibitions in Miami, Atlanta, NYC, Philadelphia, Germany, and Italy, and has been written about in the New York Times, Bomb, Vulture, New York Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and elsewhere. Her work is in the collections of PAFA, Woodmere, the Hall Foundation, Fondazione Sanatelli, and numerous other institutions.
anneminich.com
IG: anne.minich
Jim Strong is an artist and musician whose body of work spans painting, sculpture, musical instrument invention, performance, writing and publishing. He often merges these elements into works and environments to frame his faith, confusions, friendships and dreams. Strong has created site-specific work for the National Liberty Museum, The Philadelphia Flower Show, and Rhizome DC. He has exhibited at Vox Populi Gallery and Space 1026 in Philadelphia, Platform Project Space in New York City, The Center for New Music in San Francisco, CA and Hudson House in Hudson, NY. He has performed music and screened work internationally notably at RAUMERWEITERUNGSHALLE (Berlin-Friedrichshain), CPH:DOX (Copenhagen, DK), and Unrequited Leisure (Knoxville, TN). He operates the experimental music label COR ARDENS and organizes events and workshops in abandoned graveyards, school auditoriums, and exhibition spaces throughout the Philadelphia area.
IG: jiim_strong
Ezra Tessler is a New York-based artist. Recent solo presentations include Where the stress falls at AD Gallery (NYC, NY), Small Cottage at Hudson House (Hudson, NY), and An angle to the place I live in at Tops Gallery (Memphis, TN). His work has been included in group shows a Kate Werble Gallery (NYC, NY), The Green Gallery (Milwaukee, WI), The Landing (Los Angeles, CA), Jack Barrett Gallery (New York, NY), and MUPO (Oaxaca, MX), and has bee written about in The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, Artnet, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a Pforzheimer Foundation Fellowship, and has been an artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, the Elizabeth Murray Foundation, Ox-Bow, Hewnoaks, and the Workspace Program
at Dieu Donné. He will be an artist-in-residence this winter at Interlude in Livingston, NY.
www.ezratessler.com
IG: ezratessler