Brenda Mallory, 2022 Hallie Ford Fellow

Brenda Mallory is a multi-disciplinary artist primarily working in sculpture. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation who grew up in Oklahoma, lived experience deeply informs her practice, as do the histories of survival inherent to Indigenous peoples. Mallory uses reclaimed raw materials, dismantled and repaired into compelling and formally beautiful objects. She views this pattern as “disruptions” following global and historical forces: “Disruptions occur at many levels: families have untimely deaths; communities get uprooted and dislocated; climate change impacts ecosystems. Disruption can result in complete destruction, but more often, adaptations take place and the systems continue on, sometimes stronger, sometimes weaker, sometimes even more beautiful, but never the same.”
“Brenda’s Mallory’s work is a healing influence,” says Rebecca Dobkins, Curator of Native American Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art. “She is a constructor, a maker of connections. Her work provides an important reminder that ‘contemporary Native American art’ is not limited
to narrowly defined iconographies.”
Mallory has been recognized as a Mentor Artist Fellow with the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, a Ucross Foundation Fellow for Native American Visual Artists, and a Contemporary Native Artist Fellow by the Eiteljorg Museum. She has been offered numerous residencies including Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Bullseye Glass, Anderson Ranch, and most recently Township10. Mallory holds a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics and English from UCLA, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in General Fine Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR. She has an upcoming 2023 solo exhibition at The Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ.
Learn more about Brenda Mallory, their work and The Ford Family Foundation’s Visual Arts Program at tfff.org.
Hallie Ford Fellowships in the Visual Arts honor the legacy of the late Hallie E. Ford, co-founder of The Ford Family Foundation, who had a lifelong interest in supporting the visual arts. The Foundation awards up to three $35,000 unrestricted fellowships to Oregon visual artists who have demonstrated a depth of sophisticated practice and potential for significant future accomplishment.