melissgrass

MelissGrass (b.1995) is an emerging Long Beach tattoo artist and painter. She holds a deep respect for the culture and history of tattooing and appreciates its Long Beach roots. Her inspiration draws from her Mexican heritage and blends Chicano and West Coast motifs with traditional American elements. She aims to make San Diego natives and her newfound Long Beach community proud. Her designs have been expressed through watercolor, acrylic and oil painting mediums, along with BIC pens and colored pencils. Finding refuge in artistic expression, she continues to explore and implement other forms of art in her works.

Ceramics and sewing fill her spare time, two disciplines Melissa has carried on from childhood. She enjoys revisiting these practices by experimenting and finding ways to push the envelope by combining them with her current passions.

In addition to her tattoo career, she dedicates herself to photographing her colleagues, experiences and friends. Melissa’s nostalgic and colorful photos capture an intimate and sometimes dream-like perception of typically obscure muses within or in proximity to the Entertainment industry. Focusing on portraiture photography, she documents various themes of fantasy and everyday life and combines them to draw focus to her subject in a way that subconsciously reduces the impact of the scene; while simultaneously relying on it to set the mood of her subject. Melissa occasionally discovers and explores photography techniques through self-portraits, pulling ideas from the Tattoo, Music and Film industries to use in the process of self-documentation.
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Melissa hopes capture the support of her San Diego and Long Beach communities and with any luck, have the opportunity to install a mural.

To see and keep up with her work, follow her on Instagram and check out her website!
Melissa completely designed and wrote every last detail that went into the code after learning through MySpace and Tumblr. Check out her original digital work!

Instagram: @melissgrass | Website: www.melissgrass.com