VIRTUAL artist talk: “The Great Basin Native Artists” by Melissa Melero-Moose

Travois is a Certified B Corporation focused exclusively on promoting affordable housing and economic development in Native communities. Since 2017, Travois has opened its Kansas City, Mo., office to host Indigenous artists as part of the city’s First Fridays art events. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Travois First Fridays exhibition series has been changed to a digital experience. The digital format provides an opportunity for audience participation outside of Kansas City. Find more information on the Travois website: travois.com/news-events/first-fridays/. Great Basin Native artist, Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute, Modoc) will discuss the origins and processes of her Great Basin mixed-media artwork in a recorded video. She will also explain the evolution of her career, which led her to founding Great Basin Native Artists, a collective of Indigenous artists living in or from the region. This is not a live artist talk. A recorded video of Melissa Melero-Moose’s artist talk will be published on the Travois website. Sign up to receive Melissa’s talk: https://travois.com/event/?ee=85 “I created these works to celebrate the art, design and culture of the Paiute people through color and texture on canvas,” Melissa said. “I am honored to be a part of Travois First Fridays and very grateful to be sharing my paintings and stories in this part of the country.” Melissa Melero-Moose is a Northern Paiute enrolled with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe with ties to Fort Bidwell Paiute, Calif. She is an accomplished artist with her own unique style. Her works consist of contemporary mixed media paintings inspired by the landscape and culture of the Numu (Northern Paiute) in Nevada, California, and Oregon — natural surroundings in the Great Basin (willow and pine nuts), and Paiute basketry and local petroglyphs. Melissa has also integrated her own green painting techniques and disciplines to her process that ensures a lighter environmental footprint. Melissa holds a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and fine arts from Portland State University. Her works are included in permanent collections of the School for Advanced Research (IARC), Santa Fe, N.M.; Autry Museum in Los Angeles, Cali; Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.; the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, Nev.; and the Lilley Museum, at the University of Nevada, Reno. Visit melissamelero.com for additional artist info.