Demond Melancon

About the Artist

Demond Melancon (b. 1978) works solely with a needle and thread to sew glass beads onto canvas.  He began this practice in 1992 when he first became part of a more than 200-year-old culture known as the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans.  Big Chief Demond Melancon is well known for creating massive Suits as a Black Masker.  His Suits are sculptural forms based on the size of his body which are composed of intricate, handsewn beadwork revealing a collective visual narrative.  In 2017, Melancon pioneered an emerging contemporary art practice using the same beading techniques he’s been refining over the past 30 years in the Black Masking Culture. 

Melancon’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Brooklyn, NY; Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Haus der Welt der Kulturen, Berlin; and the Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA.  His work is included in the collections of the International African American Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, LSU Museum of Art, and the Boston Art Club. Demond Melancon was selected as a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow by the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

As a self-taught artist, Melancon has been heavily influenced by the teachings of Kerry James Marshall.  Often reflecting untold stories from bygone pasts, many of his works honor Black subjects historically excluded from the artistic canon while confronting stereotypical representations of Black identity.  Melancon’s work expresses his deep interest in exploring the possibilities of visual storytelling and redefining the traditions of portraiture.  Demond Melancon is one of the few artists to pioneer the use of glass beads as an accepted contemporary art medium in the larger arts sector.  Through the potency of his art and by reconsidering predominant narratives, Melancon deliberately repositions historically overlooked subjects and reimagines institutional portrayal of the Black subject.

Demond Melancon was born and raised in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward.

Melancon was born in 1978 and grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. He was initially taught by a prolific elder named Big Chief Ferdinand Bigard. Melancon went on to study under Nathanial Williams in connection with a 1993 Louisiana Folklife Apprenticeship Grant. Melancon joined the Seminole Hunters and masked as a Spy Boy for over 15 years under Big Chief Keitoe Jones. In 2012 the elders of the Black Masking community declared that Melancon would then be known as Big Chief Demond Melancon of the Young Seminole Hunters, his very own tribe based in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

He has been part of the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans since 1992 and second-lining since he began to walk.  When Demond was 14 years old, he had the opportunity to learn from several influential elder Big Chiefs.  They not only taught him how to sew and bead intricate suits, but also about the history and traditions of the Black Masking Culture of New Orleans – which began over 200 years ago. Prior to the Black Masking elders declaring Demond would become the Big Chief of his very own tribe, he had become very well-known as being a fierce Spy Boy for the Seminole Hunters. Big Chief Demond is well-known for his meticulous hand-sewn beadwork, use of very small beads, and attention to details often combining various types of beads (opaque, transparent, matte, metallic) and a broad spectrum of colors for effect. 

Today Demond Melancon is Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunters based in the Ninth Ward.

The role of the Big Chief is to command and lead the tribe during practices throughout the year and in ceremonial battles on Mardi Gras Morning.  A Big Chief’s prestige is often not only measured by the beauty and intricacy of his suits, but also by his command and presence within the community. 

Two factors that contribute to the technical difficulty the style of Black Masking suits Demond creates are the massive size of the main aprons (the portion of a suit worn from the waist to the ankles) and the incredibly small size of the beads he uses to create them.  Typically measuring at over 50 inches wide, Demond’s main aprons  are also created using smaller size beads (referred to as size 11/0s which measure at 2.1 mm) than most other Black Maskers of New Orleans use.  Because of the size of his suits coupled with his use of smaller beads, Demond’s suits generally take over 4,000 hours of sewing 1 million glass beads.