Stella Nall /Bisháakinnesh is a Montana based multidisciplinary artist and poet. A First Descendant of the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe, Stella is ineligible for enrollment based on the tribe's current blood quantum standards. Her mother is a tribal member, and her father is non-Native – the complexities of her identity deeply influence her creative practice. Drawing from her academic background in Psychology and fine art, as well as her lived experiences, she explores themes of identity, belonging, and visibility – particularly within the context of contemporary Indigenous life.

Stella’s practice blends the whimsical and the deeply personal. Inspired by the natural world, Montana wildlife, and her imagination, she creates vibrantly colored, intricately detailed creatures and scenes that reflect both cultural specificity and universal human emotions such as love, joy, grief, transformation. Her work invites audiences of all backgrounds into moments of shared experience, while also centering Indigenous presence and storytelling from the culture she was raised with. 

As a multimedia artist, Stella utilizes a wide range of materials and techniques, including beadwork, painting, illustration, wood carving, ceramics, and printmaking. Her distinctive visual language is marked by careful, intricate mark-making and a sense of playful reverence. She earned a BFA in Printmaking, a BA in Psychology, and a minor in Art History and Criticism from the University of Montana in 2020. She currently lives in Missoula, MT, where her work is represented by Radius Gallery.  

Her art lives in both public and private spaces. Her murals, full of joyful, place-based narratives, can be found across Montana—from schools and parks to alleyways and community centers. Her work is included in the permanent collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.), the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), and the Montana Museum of Art and Culture (Missoula, MT).

Stella’s interest in the connection between visual art and writing language is rooted in her family history. Both her grandmother and great-grandmother were sent to assimilative boarding schools, and as a result, she was not raised as a fluent Apsáalooke speaker. The generational harm from these schools is evident within her own family and wider community, and fuels her commitment to contributing to the tribe's language revitalization efforts. In 2024, she collaborated with the Crow Language Consortium to illustrate the tribe’s first monolingual children’s book, Káale Ihké Shóoke Koolák Baleealoóweeli? (Grandma, Will You Tell Us About the Stars?).

Her poetry and illustrations have appeared in publications such as Scribendi, Cutbank, Denver Quarterly, Montana Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and McClain’s Printmaking Catalog. She is currently working on What Does It Mean To Mend?, an edition of artist books created as an artist in residence with Women’s Studio Workshop. The books feature illustrated poems printed with letterpress and risograph, with hand-stitched beadwork on the covers.

Her first solo museum exhibition, Offerings from My Heart, will be on view at the Missoula Art Museum from October 4–December 27, 2025, and at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, NM, from February 6–June 14, 2026.