Melanie Dana Nakaue is an artist, writer and educator living in Los Angeles, CA. She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) in 2004, and her BA from Scripps College in Art and a minor in Art History in 2001.

Exhibitions of her sculptures and installations include: Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film festival, Portland, OR,  Searching for Gold Mountain Series, Alexander Gallery, Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, OR, Un/Common, Pacific NW College of Art, Portland, OR, The Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Supersonic, The Windtunnel, Art Center College of Art and Design, Pasadena, CA; Free Roaming, Gallery 4F, Los Angeles, CA (curated by artist Charles Long); Field Trip, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA. Melanie was also selected for a public arts commission, Newhall Art Walk, in Newhall, CA. Her work has been reviewed in the online publication www.artnet.com.

Melanie’s writing was featured at an academic conference at Hofstra University in New York in April of 2007 and her essay titled “Of Other Spaces: The garden as a heterotopic site in contemporary art” is published in Vol. 10 no.1 of The Brock Review, an academic journal published by Brock University in Canada.