Melissa Melero 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 located in Fallon, Nevada with ties to Fort Bidwell Paiute and Modoc Tribes. 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. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, NM, the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV, C.N. Gorman Museum,U.C. Davis, CA and in other select museums and galleries throughout the U.S. Melissa currently lives with her family in Hungry Valley, Nevada working as a professional artist, contributing writer for First American Art Magazine and founder of the art collective the Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA).