Melissa Potter is a multi-media artist whose work deals with women and their rites of passage from marriage to motherhood. She exhibited at venues including White Columns, and Bronx Museum of the Arts, as well as film festivals including the VideoDumbo Festival and the Reeling International LGBT Film Festival. She is a three-time Fulbright recipient to Serbia and Bosnia and Hercegovina. Through these programs, she built two papermaking studios at university art departments. She has been the recipient of other awards and residencies including the Soros Fund for Arts and Culture, ArtsLink and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. Potter co-curated exhibitions including Social Paper, the first exhibition considering hand papermaking in a socially engaged art context, and Among Tender Roots, the first retrospective of Mexican artist, Laura Anderson Barbata’s work. Her critical essays have been printed in BOMB, Art Papers, Flash Art, Metropolis M, Hand Papermaking, and AfterImage among others. She is founder of the blog, Gender Assignment.

She is currently an Associate Professor in the Art & Art History Program at Columbia College Chicago.