Melissa was born in Singapore in 1986. She spent her high school years in Honolulu, completed a BA in Studio Arts at Wellesley College in 2008 and has lived in the Cambridge area since. She is experienced in drawing, painting and printmaking, and has also completed small sculptures in metal casting, multimedia and mixed-media installations. Her more recent work increasingly incorporates dark theatricality, sexuality, physicality, movement and organic textures.