Biography

Melissa Melero was born in San Francisco, CA in 1974 and spent most of her childhood living near
Reno, Nevada. She is a Northern Paiute enrolled with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe located in Fallon,
Nevada. Melissa grew up surrounded by artisans in her family from painters to beadwork artists and was
inspired by all mediums. While taking photography at the Institute of American Indian Arts in 1993,
she was motivated to explore many different mediums such as painting, sculpture, and jewelry.
After leaving school she focused on painting and experimented with mixed media incorporating her
photography and an array of mediums like oil pastels and watercolors. Her work closely integrated
nature, culture, and personal development with the images of the circle, the four directions, and
petroglyphs from her tribal areas in Nevada. Her style consisted mostly of figurative and narrative
qualities, and slowly transformed to the abstract images of present. The transformation of Melero's
style occurred over a vast time period while being known by her peers as an alchemist of mediums.
Her work at present reflects highly textured and brightly colored abstract images inspired by her
culture, her family, and personal and significant events in her life.

Melissa currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working as a professional artist and exhibiting
at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, local, and east coast galleries. Her current
influences are imagery found in nature, petroglyphs, beadwork, and basketry from the Northern
Paiute Tribe of Nevada. "I have the constant desire to create these images in my head and in the
process these works mesh into organic, caught in time objects of history and personal development."