Artist Bio

Melissa Belli is an Artist and a Physician. She graduated from Medical School in 1999 and completed residency at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at Hamot. Afterwards she travelled the world and volunteered in Tanzania. While living and practicing medicine in Los Angeles, CA, she attended UCLA School of Art, OTIS College of Art and Design and Santa Monica College. In 2007 she relocated to Italy to attend a two year program at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy focusing on printmaking. She received the school’s highest prize, for her etching work based on human cells. While in Venice, she had an artist studio overlooking a canal and later had a Solo show entitled, Animalcules: An Exploration of the Microcosm Within. She later moved to London, UK studied at the Prince’s Drawing School and completed a fellowship in Integrative Medicine. She also participated in Imperial College of London’s  Beautiful Science project, an art-science collaboration that matched scientists and artists to create art based on current cellular research with a culminating exhibition at the Brick Lane Gallery.

She moved back to California in 2011, worked in private practice and taught at The University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. She continued printmaking at Josephine Press in Los Angeles and exhibited at The Pacific Design Center, The New York Hall of Science and The Curator Gallery in New York City. Currently she lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Printmaking work has continued at Pacific Northwest College of Art, and she is currently participating in Print Arts Northwest Emerging Printmakers Residency.