Carol E. Moses

Carol Elizabeth Moses, 74, died Tuesday, March 18, 2025 at her home in Cambridge, MA. She was born in Sumter, SC to Robert and Harriett Moses, the second of five siblings.

Surviving are spouse David Vasconcelos; her daughter Alice Moses (Andy McPhee), son Aldo (Jenny Costello) Pena Moses and his children Lily and Liam; siblings Natalie Moses (Douglas Klaucke), Katherine Moses Royer (Brad), and Laura Moses, and many nieces and nephews.

Carol’s upbringing inspired a love of nature, including plants and birds, that would continue through her whole life.

She moved north to go to college, and eventually settled in Cambridge where she raised Alice and Aldo.

Carol worked in a variety of jobs to support her family, including bakery, factory work, and even as a Boston taxi driver.

As a lifelong learner, she was always excited to discover new things. She went back to college in the 90s to study cultural anthropology. She loved language and travel. Her interests and energy helped her make friends all over the world, particularly in Japan.

In her free time, Carol spent hours making watercolor paintings that expressed her ideas and feelings, eventually showing her work in Cambridge and Boston.

In the mid 1990s Carol retrained to be a technical writer, and got a software job where she met her future spouse, David.

She later retired from software and became a full-time artist, finally able to focus on her most meaningful work.

Her paintings look deceptively simple, yet hold complex structures with interacting shapes and colors. She made some of her best work while thinking of intense experiences, both painful and joyful. The often somber titles evoked strong emotions. She created “word paintings” with text about love and loss, fears, and contentment.

She saw beauty in small things and she captured a lot with her camera: Rusted metal on the beach, moss and lichens, gnarled branches, spiders on her houseplants, or patterns of light through the leaves.

She expanded her art into other media, and did a series of photo portrait and interview projects. Between 2017 and 2019 she spent months in Iceland, Shetland, and Germany to meet and photograph local people.

Carol loved the garden, and experimented with so many trees and plants at her place in Cambridge. She even tried urban beekeeping. In 2011, she got a place in Maine where she added hundreds of native plants and shrubs, with an eye to supporting native insects and birds.

Carol helped her friends and loved ones, and was quick to help and support people she cared about. She shared her home and her resources, wrote encouraging letters to people who were down, got more people to make art, and helped out in community organizations. For those who crossed paths and got to know her, she made a deep and lasting impact.

As a mother, she instilled the importance of education and being good to others in her children. She loved and was very proud of the people who her children became. She also deeply loved her two grandchildren, Lily and Liam.

Carol had a real will to live and had many more artistic and personal projects underway at the end of her life. Throughout her life she had an innocence and child-like curiosity about the world and about people. Her energy and way of being influenced many, and she inspires us to take up her efforts in the future.

Memorial Services and reception will be held at 10AM Thursday, March 27, 2025, at Mount Auburn Cemetery Story Chapel.

In lieu of flowers, we invite you to consider a memorial donation to:
Wild Seed Project: https://wildseedproject.net/
Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association: https://www.mofga.org/
Grow Native Massachusetts: https://grownativemass.org/
Cambridge Insight Meditation Center: https://cambridgeinsight.org/
Temple Sinai, Sumter, SC: https://www.templesinaisumter.org/donate-to-temple-sinai
Outright International: https://outrightinternational.org/
Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/
Bisexual Resource Center: https://biresource.org/

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Carol E. Moses, please visit our floral store.