Though not a native of Greenville, Nelle Lee Hayes is at home here. The Art Room, her art gallery and studio located at 403 S. Evans Street in "uptown" Greenville, NC is in a building where her great grandfather Herbert Augustus White operated his insurance and savings and loan businesses in the early 1900's.

Her father William W. Lee, Jr., a Greenville boy born and raised graduated from The United States Naval Academy and pursued a Naval Career before returning to Greenville in the early 1970's.  Born while her father was stationed in California, Nelle spent the first 11 years of her life there. After finishing high school in northern Virginia she came to Greenville to attend the School of Art at ECU where she met and married Larry Hayes, also a pirate!  BS degree in Art Education in hand, she became an eastern North Carolina high school art teacher. 

Over the thirty year span of her career in Art Education: she taught at Pamlico County High School in Bayboro, New Bern High School and West Craven High School, finished an MAed degree at East Carolina, became one of the state's earliest National Board Certified Teachers in Early Adolescent Young Adult Art, was a certified mentor and clinical supervisor for Art Education interns from ECU and was named North Carolina's Art Educator of the Year in 2003.

She and Larry raised three wonderful children before she retired from teaching January 1, 2008.  In February of 2008 she decided to renovate the building at 403 S. Evans to house The Art Room, her gallery and studio. Specializing in portraits, Nelle prefers working by commission to create personalized works of art filled with symbolic meaning.