Melissa Kuhl Yerkes knew at age 9 that her passion was every form of
art she could get her hands on. In high school she won the top award
every year at the State of New Jersey's Teen Art Festival. Melissa
chose Moore College of Art to continue with her studies, and
graduated with a degree in Textile Design. While in college, she went
with 2 teachers and 16 other students to study in England and
Holland, and wrote a journal about Textile Design. During her college
years she also went to Guatemala, and studied and did back strap
weaving and received college credit from Institute Alaenda in Mexico.
Melissa was one of two students from her college to be selected to be
in a juried show at Cheltenham Art Museum. The following year she
traveled out West and studied Navaho weaving and gathered boxes of
plant materials, while traveling thru many states. Upon her arrival
home, she made dyes from all the plants she brought home, and dyed
the yarn she spun from her own sheeps wool. Melissa has entered many
art shows around the United States, and has finished in first place
in photography, weaving, off loom, textile design, painting, and
much, much more. Her main focus for 15 years was gourd art, and thru
her travels to meet new friends of similiar interests, she found a
couple, the Wuttke's who took her gourds to every show in the US,
where Melissa added many more ribbons to her collection. Because of
her love for plant materials, Melissa has won every top honor from
The National Horticultural Society for her garden plants and her
floral design. Many stories have been done about Melissa in the
newspapers due to the fact that no one else has received 16 to 26
blue ribbons per show. All of this led to her love of gourds and not
long ago started doing rims on her gourds by using Yucca leaves from
her garden. She boils the leaves for 6 days, scrapes all the green
from the leaf, and is left with white fibers which she bleaches then
dyes. Over the past 4 years, Melissa has plunged into every form of
art she can get her hands on. She still takes classes, as she loves
meeting new people. Melissa teaches many types of classes, as she
gets great joy from passing on what she can teach. All of Melissa's
interests led her to create "Glitzy Girl Zine", a zine of submissions
of art work from artists from all over the world, tutorials, antique
family photos, and art challenges, and many gifties from Melissa for
subscribers to play with. Subscribers have all been very excited
about it.