Melissa sitting on a stool in her home print studio. There are sunny windows behind her.

Born and raised in Detroit, I am a teaching artist and printmaker. My current body of work is inspired by urban ecology (this work not yet online) and creating community through art. First introduced to screen printing as an art student at Wayne State University, I have been making screen prints for over 20 years. With my friends, I co-owned Ocelot Print Shop, a community screen printing shop in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, for five years. I have been teaching art and screen printing workshops for over 10 years and maintain an art practice in my home print studio in northwest Detroit. I have shown my work nationally and locally, including at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Printmakers love to share — we don’t want to make just one thing, we want to make 10 or 24 or 50 of them so more people can enjoy them. I enjoy sharing my physical work, but I also love to share the process of screen printing through my blog posts and workshops.

My dog Bernie, a black greyhound, is lying on a rug on the back porch.

My studio mate, Bernadette the greyhound.

You can find my work for purchase IRL at Signal-Return and POST and online in my Etsy shop. You can also join my Patreon, where I create and send to Patrons a new screen printed postcard every month.

I’m not on social media, but I send out monthly studio updates via my email newsletter. If you want to hear from me more often, I post weekly studio updates to my Patreon.

In March 2024, I led Drawing Upside Down: A Low-Pressure Sketchbook Practice, which was a fun virtual drawing workshop for CreativeMornings Fieldtrips. I shared how drawing upside down changed my sketchbook practice and how it helped alleviate some of the anxiety I felt with keeping up with my sketchbook.

In the spring of 2022, I was a guest on Conan O’Brien’s Conan O’Brien Needs a Fan podcast, where I shared my experience working at a woodshop and my attempts to play guitar like Buddy Holly.

Me as a guest on Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan.