LORETTA BURDEN

Loretta was born to Eunice Brown, and Northern Paiute, and Jo Rangel of Mexico and is the mother of Alex, Sheena, and Skyler and the grandmother to four beautiful grandchildren. Loretta moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, in the 70s and recognized there were not a lot of basket weavers in Southern Nevada, so she learned how to make baskets and her passion grew. Loretta has exhibited her contemporary, as well as traditional baskets, in libraries, art shows, and juried art fairs.

Her artwork has since been featured in the “Basket Weavers of Tradition and Beauty”, Common Thread traveling art exhibit deeds to buckskin. She has also worked with the Clark County heritage museum creating the first Nevada native American arts and crafts exhibit as well as the Native American basket exhibit at the McCarran international airport Loretta has also been featured in one of six Nevada women making a difference for the Las Vegas centennial celebration in 2005 and as a community leader as making positive changes to the cultural fabric of Las Vegas in the documentary women of diversity.

Some of Loretta’s accomplishments include but are not limited to serving as a board member for the Las Vegas Indian Center, being an original founder for the honor of the elders banquet, assisting with information on native Americans for the Las Vegas ethnic visitors guide, being a cultural advisor for the last of the medicine man, and being featured as a distinguished woman of southern Nevada.

Loretta moved to Fallon Nevada in 2015 and continues her passion and cultural activities she hasn’t joined the great basin basketry and continues attending classes and teaching basketry and beadwork in northern Nevada Loretta also enjoy staying active by going to the fitness center and volunteering from any local community tribal events such as helping to construct a duck decoy for the 2017 Nevada day parade and was pictured on the cover of the October November 2018 First Nations Focus tribal news of Nevada and Eastern Sierra.

NOELLE GARCIA

Based in the Chicago area, Noelle Garcia is an artist and educator who focuses on themes of identity, family history and recovered narratives in her work. She is an indigenous artist from the Klamath and Paiute tribes. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Her paintings, drawings, and soft sculptures have been exhibited in galleries and institutions across the United States. Garcia has earned awards and fellowships at various institutions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Nevada Arts Council, the Illinois Arts Council, and the American Indian Graduate Center.

MELISSA MELERO-MOOSE

Melissa Melero-Moose 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 with ties to Fort Bidwell Paiute, California. 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. ​

Her works are a part of the permanent collections of the School for Advanced Research (IARC), Santa Fe, NM, Autry Museum in Los Angeles, CA, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, NM, the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, NV and the Lilley Museum, at the University of Nevada, Reno.

She is currently exhibiting regionally and nationally as an individual artist and with the GBNA art collective. Her influences are imagery found in the Great Basin landscape, petroglyphs, beadwork, and basketry from the Indigenous tribes of Nevada and California.

Melissa currently lives with her family in Hungry Valley, Nevada working as a professional artist, contributing writer for First American Art Magazine and founder/independent curator of the Great Basin Native Artists (GBNA).

CARA ROMERO

Cara Romero (b. 1977, Inglewood, CA) is a contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero was raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, CA and the urban sprawl of Houston, TX. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial photography, shaped by years of study and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective.

As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, Romero pursued a degree in cultural anthropology. Disillusioned, however, by academic and media portrayals of Native Americans as bygone, Romero realized that making photographs could do more than anthropology did in words, a realization that led to a shift in medium. Since 1998, Romero’s expansive oeuvre has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art and commercial photography. By staging theatrical compositions infused with dramatic color, Romero takes on the role of storyteller, using contemporary photography techniques to depict the modernity of Native peoples, illuminating Indigenous worldviews and aspects supernaturalism in everyday life.

Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, NM, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions, and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019). Her award-winning work is included in many public and private collections internationally. Married with three children, she travels between Santa Fe and the Chemehuevi Valley Indian Reservation, where she maintains close ties to her tribal community and ancestral homelands.

ROXANNE SWENTZELL

Roxanne Swentzell was born in 1962, in Taos, NM. Her mother, Rina Swentzell was a Native American from Santa Clara Pueblo in Northern NM. She was a potter and architect. Her father, Ralph Swentzell was a professor at St. Johns College for 45 years. The mix was turbulent but nurtured creativity. Roxanne was exposed to the richness of Native American culture which included pottery, adobe building, farming, and community traditions of the Pueblo peoples. On her father’s side, she was exposed to the wealth of Western philosophy and great works of European art. Roxanne struggled with a speech impediment but at the age of 4, she started using her mother’s clay to create small figurines to communicate. The figures showed emotions and simple scenes that were part of Roxanne’s world. This became her first language. Roxanne’s artistic talents were noticed early and encouraged by parents and teachers alike. By high school, she was invited to attend college level art classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts. After graduating Roxanne went on to the Portland Museum Art School in Oregon; but cultural roots brought her back to Santa Clara to build her home in the pueblo and raise her 2 children. Sculpture became the medium that would support her and her family. In 2004, she opened the Tower Gallery, In Pojoaque, NM. The gallery primarily features Roxanne’s work but has also included works by other Native and non-native artists. Roxanne has always used her work to address topics of gender, culture, and environmental issues. She is a Master sculptor using her chosen medium to convey subtle emotions and the human spirit. A few of the many awards from her 40-year career include: 1st place in Sculpture at the Santa Fe Indian Market (1998), and the Native Treasures Award (MIAC 2011), and the Spirit of the Heard Award (2016 AZ). Her work is in permanent collections at the Smithsonian (DC), Heard Museum (AZ), Denver Art Museum(CO), Museum of Wellington (New Zealand), British Museum of Art (England), and has had shows in Paris, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver, Washington DC, Santa Fe. Roxanne cares deeply about environmental issues and cultural preservation. In 1987, she helped co-found a non-profit, Flowering Tree Permaculture Institute. Today Roxanne continues to create sculptures and work on community projects, all with intentions of addressing issues of today and creating a better world for generations to come.