Melanie Berardicelli is a Master of Fine Arts, Certificate of Fine Arts, and Continuing Education

Professor at the New York Academy of Art. As a professor, Melanie teaches still life and figurative

drawing and painting, portrait and figurative sculpture, and structural anatomy. An educator in the fine

arts since 2014, Melanie has taught drawing, painting, sculpture, and art history classes at the Ivy League

School in Smithtown and USDAN Center for the Creative and Performing Arts. Melanie is also President

of Audubon Artists, Inc. As president, she has curated Audubon's 2024 and 2023 Annual Exhibitions and

created the 2022 Annual Exhibition Catalog to highlight the achievements of Audubon's Elected,

Associate, and Honorary Members.

Melanie received a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting at the New York Academy of Art in

2021, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts In Painting and Drawing at SUNY New Paltz in 2017. Upon her

graduation in 2021, she assisted the late Audrey Flack in her New York and East Hampton studios. As a studio

assistant, she has helped Audrey paint and sculpt her final Post-Pop Baroque Series, which debuted at

Hollis Taggart Gallery in March 2024.

Melanie’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout New York State,

including The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, The Mutter Museum, Sotheby’s, Cryptic Gallery,

Greenpoint Gallery, Upstream Gallery, The Huntington Arts Council, and The New York Academy of Art.

Melanie's personal work currently focuses on the history of the Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints. After

reading Paul Koudounaris’ Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs,

she was captivated with the Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints of the German-speaking countries. She

admired the tireless dedication of the nuns who clothed and bejeweled the skeletal remains of Christian

martyrs from 100 AD with their own rings and gems. Combining her love of anatomy and sculpture with

the ornate, she hand-tailors, embroiders, and beads costumes to adorn her resin-cast skeletal écorchés to

recreate twenty-four-inch Roman Martyr Catacomb Saints. Through both painting and sewing on canvas,

she re-imagines what these saints looked like during their lifetimes, giving them back their identities and

re-christening them after the heroic people that she has come to know in her life.