Melissa Melero-Moose
Melissa Melero-Moose was born in San Francisco, CA 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, New Mexico and a Bachelor of Science from Portland State University, Oregon. Melissa currently lives with her family in Hungry Valley, Nevada working as a professional artist, curator for the Great Basin Native Artists Gallery inside of the Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum, Great Basin rep for First American Art Magazine and community advisor for the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada.
Starting Out
Melissa’s work draws from her connection to her homelands, layering organic materials like willow and pine nuts with experimental mixtures of acrylic mediums. Her recent series, Access Denied, addresses two parallel concerns for Indigenous peoples in the Great Basin: limited access to natural resources, and limited representation within positions of power, specifically the visibility of Indigenous artists.
The practice grew out of making parts of her son’s Paiute basket cradleboard with family members, from the willow alignment to the beadwork for the hood. That work led her to basketry, to weaving, and to advocating for weavers facing diminishing access to materials on Indigenous and public lands.
“The basketry images transforms into the barbed wire that separates Indigenous peoples from access to the basket materials, food, and water on our homelands in Nevada, which is the essence to our traditions and survival.”
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