Native American Heritage Month Spotlight Melissa Melero-Moose
Melissa Melero-Moose was born in San Francisco, CA in 1974 and spent most of her childhood living in Reno, Nevada. She is a Northern Paiute enrolled with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe with ties to Fort Bidwell Paiute, California. Melissa holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM and a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Fine Arts from Portland State University, Portland, OR.
Her works are a part of the permanent collections of the Autry Museum, Los Angeles, CA; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Lilley Museum, University of Nevada; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV and School for Advanced Research (IARC), Santa Fe, NM.
She is currently exhibiting regionally and nationally as an individual artist and with the GBNA art collective. Her influences are imagery found in the Great Basin landscape, petroglyphs, beadwork, and basketry from the Indigenous tribes of Nevada and California.
Melissa currently lives with her family in Hungry Valley, Nevada working as a professional artist, contributing writer for First American Art Magazine and founder/independent curator of the Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA). You can visit some current work of GBNA at the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum in Carson City and at Reno Tahoe International Airport in Reno.