About me
My work explores the intensity of being alive. I transform emotion into sculptural forms that slow time and inspire wonder. All the work becomes a mask—radiating beauty while holding life's harsher truths. Hidden in color and play, I am vibrating just under the surface, where sadness, love, and joy all exist together. Nothing is separate, yet I still try to untangle it so I can see clearly.
I am a multi disciplinary artist creating my visions in textiles, sculpture, and acrylic paintings. I am self taught and have been a full time artist the past 12 years.
I explore my own spiritual practice through mask making; this is further enforced through wearing and performing in them. I create video installations of myself with the masks to be projected for live music performances
Since 2021 I have expanded my understanding of texture and shape creating handmade rugs and textiles. My designs are informed by my experiences painting and my love for pattern and abstraction.
Each new medium I work with informs my process, weaving and connecting each new idea into all of my mediums. This in turn expands my iconography and purpose.
Here are some interviews to learn more
American Craft Feature "Tuft Joy"
Fiber Art Takes Two, Friday Feature live interview
bio
Melissa Monroe is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist who approaches all mediums as sculpture-fiber, ceramics, paint, music, performance, and mask making. Widely recognized as an innovator in the contemporary tufting movement, her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and featured on Oregon Art Beat and in publications including Hi-Fructose, Fiber Art Now, American Craft, and the Tuft the World book. She lives and works in a converted church in Portland, OR, with her three children, partner, and two dogs. Exhibitions include Lynn Hanson Gallery, Seattle, WA; Mortal Machine Gallery, New Orleans, LA; Hey There Projects, Joshua Tree, CA; and Brassworks Gallery, Portland, OR. Monroe has also presented work at major art fairs including the Seattle Art Fair, SCOPE Miami, and the Outsider Art Fair, New York.
Oregon Art Beat Episode 2025
MY STORY
I grew up in the Gateway neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. I married at 19 and had three children before the age of 25 while working retail jobs and never imagining myself as an artist.
In 2012, while working at a coffee shop in Southeast Portland, I met Jesse Reno painting a mural. Watching someone create art without a plan completely changed my understanding of what art could be. I hadn't thought much about art—I had never been to a gallery or museum. That same day, I gathered leftover construction materials and began crushing glass and pouring paint onto boards. For the first time, I experienced the relief and transformation that creative expression offered.
Within a year, I left an unhealthy marriage, became part owner of the coffee shop, and began making art alongside Reno. When the business was illegally taken over by the other owner, I found myself a single mother with no income or savings. Out of necessity, I started selling artwork online and became a full-time artist shortly after.
For years, I was sheltered—first by growing up in the church, then by a marriage where I was confined. Since becoming free, the art has poured out of me as if it had been saved up. Even while raising three young children, I was able to build a full-time career as an artist.
From 2014 to 2020, I survived painting sale to painting sale while assisting other artists and taking on art-related jobs. During this time, I experimented with mask making, video, and music. Through social media, galleries, and events, I built a collector base, but I was always searching for new materials and ways to express myself.
In 2021, I saw someone using a tufting machine online and immediately saw its potential. I ordered the tools and supplies that day. What began as a side experiment quickly became central to my practice.
Being self-taught, I learn from every piece I make. I am constantly trying to outdo myself and push the work. I never set out to be an artist, but art found me and changed my life.
Longer Artist Statment
My work explores the intensity of being alive. Using humor, color, and playfulness, I create sculptures that hold joy and hardship at the same time. Many of the pieces are soft, but beneath the surface are emotions that are hard. The work vibrates with my energy, as if I can’t fully separate myself from it.
I am obsessed with giving life to things. Rugs become creatures, furniture becomes friends, and animals take on human qualities. Through personification, I create objects that are emotionally present rather than just functional. This impulse is also a reaction to the disposability and sameness of so much around us. I am drawn to color, texture, craftsmanship, and objects with character. In a world filled with mass-produced furniture, plastic objects, and spaces stripped of personality, I create work that invites curiosity, emotional connection, and wonder.
I make masks as a personal part of my practice. They help me enter the emotional world of the work. When I wear them, it changes how I move and how I relate to the pieces. They become a way for me to share my work beyond the object itself. I use them in video, and they act as a bridge between the studio and the outside world. They hold both protection and expression—another way of communicating what the work carries without needing to explain it in words.
I am a self-taught multidisciplinary artist working across textiles, sculpture, ceramics, and painting. Since discovering tufting in 2021, I have become known for innovating the medium beyond traditional rug making, transforming tufted textiles into sculptures and dimensional wall hangings. I create handmade rugs to use as material, sewing and upholstering them into dimensional forms and furniture sculptures. More recently, I have begun incorporating ceramics as heads, feet, and structural elements within the work. My background in painting continues to inform my use of color, pattern, and composition, while each new material expands the possibilities of the next.
Craftsmanship is deeply important to me. I spend a great deal of time refining materials, textures, and construction because I want the work to feel intentional, tactile, and lasting. I get my yarn custom-dyed so my palette is exactly what I want—color has always been essential to me as a painter.
I am less interested in perfection than in creating objects that feel like they have existed for a long time and will continue to exist long after me.
Recently, I have become obsessed with making work that can exist in multiple ways. By creating work with multiple pieces, I develop different display options and invite viewers into play and discovery. Each arrangement shifts the feeling of the piece, creating multiple experiences and emotions within a single work while it remains one object. This idea is very exciting to me, and I believe it will be an ongoing theme that I continue to explore for a long time.