Meet local artist Melissa Martinez, creating fascinating and beautiful multimedia artworks, which center around nature working in wide range of media and style.

Currently she offers drawings, wall hangings, installations, her Salvage Jewelry line found at Made Art Boutique in Phoenix and public art commissions. A valley resident for the last 22 years, it is something which has greatly I pacted her work, Martinez says,"my art is an exploration of the Sonoran Desert, plants, weather, and naturally occurring phenomena."

Martinez is traditionally trained receiving her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Arizona State University. She is a former member of Eye Lounge Artist Collective in Phoenix, as well as a former recipient of a Contemporary Forum Grant, and she has extensively exhibited her artwork throughout the country in both galleries and museums. She currently teaches elementary art and continues to do freelance museum and interior-design work in addition to her fine art career.

She has a taste for public art after the recent completion of two large scale public art projects for the City of Tempe, you can now experience these beautiful works of art for yourself, located Hardy Drive between University and Broadway. Take Flight, located on 13th Street in, has perched birds upon thin poles that move in the wind and are placed within the median. The Hardy Streetscape Project, features an impressive monumental sculpture of a tree covered in pinwheel flowers, bus shelters decorated with pinwheel flowers, and hand-stamped flowers on the concrete along the walkways.

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Currently Martinez has an art installation titled Drip, Dribble, Drop on display at the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. This installation features white umbrellas and beautiful lighting creating an experience similar to that of spring showers. Next up for Martinez is a solo exhibition @ The Gallery at Scottsdale Civic Center Library entitled The Forest Floor. This multimedia sense engaging exhibition is a fantastic world created by the artist, "a world of discovery and a place where you are allowed to, encouraged to, imagine." Be sure to check out what promises to be an unforgettable exhibition, which will open to the public this summer and is perfect for the entire family. For more about artist Melissa Martinez visit her website howestreetstudio.com. *Images courtesy of artist Melissa Marrinez and Scottsdale Public Art and Sean Deckert.