Melissa Melero-Moose | |
---|---|
Born | 1974 |
Nationality | Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony, American |
Alma mater | BFA Institute of American Indian Arts, BS Portland State University |
Known for | mixed-media art, co-founder of Great Basin Native Artists |
Awards | Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant 2021 |
Website | melissamelero |
Melissa Melero-Moose is a Northern Paiute/Modoc mixed-media artist and co-founder of Great Basin Native Artists, a collective based in Nevada. [1] [2] She is enrolled in the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe of the Fallon Reservation and Colony. [3]
Melissa Melero-Moose was born in San Francisco, California, [4] in 1974.
Melero-Moose developed a style of abstract, mixed-media paintings that reference the landscape and culture of her Northern Paiute people. She painted with acrylic washes with layers rice paper and natural objects, such as willow, tule, cattails, and pine nuts. [5] Great Basin landscape, petroglyphs, and basketry inspired her work. [6]
She specializes in visual mixed-media art and has had her work displayed through the Nevada Arts Council. [7]
She has frequently exhibited at the Santa Fe Indian Market and Heard Museum Guild Fair & Market in Phoenix, Arizona. [8]
To address the invisibility of Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin in the Native American art world, Melero-Moose co-founded the Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA) collective in 2014. [1] She has curated numerous group exhibitions of Great Basin artists, including Great Basin Native Artists (2016) at the Carson City Community Center. [3] The Great Basin Native Arts has partnered with Stewart Indian School Cultural Center and Museum to maintain a changing art gallery featuring regional Indigenous artists. [1]
"Indian people, even though so much of the population was wiped out, we never stopped creating," said Melero-Moose. [1]
Beginning in 2018, the Nevada Museum of Art gave Melero-Moose a fellowship to research and create a directory and archive of Great Basin Native artists. [9]
Melero-Moose serves on the board of the Nevada Arts Council. [1]
Besides winning several awards at Santa Fe Indian Market, Melero-Moose was selected by SWAIA as its Santa Fe Indian Market Discovery Fellow in 2016. [8]
In 2015, the School for Advanced Research chose Melero-Moose as its Ronald and Susan Dubin fellow. [5]
The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno named her the inaugural Peter E. Pool Research Fellow in 2018. [13]
The Indigenous peoples of the Great Basin are Native Americans of the northern Great Basin, Snake River Plain, and upper Colorado River basin. The "Great Basin" is a cultural classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas and a cultural region located between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, in what is now Nevada, and parts of Oregon, California, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. The Great Basin region at the time of European contact was ~400,000 sq mi (1,000,000 km2). There is very little precipitation in the Great Basin area which affects the lifestyles and cultures of the inhabitants.
The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic Santa Fe Federal Building, a landmark Pueblo Revival building listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Federal Building. The museum houses the National Collection of Contemporary Indian Art, with more than 7,000 items.
The Santa Fe Indian Market is an annual art market held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on the weekend following the third Thursday in August. The event draws an estimated 150,000 people to the city from around the world. The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) organizes the market, showcasing work from 1,200 of the top Native American artists from tribes across the country.
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