Artwork copyright Natalie Ball. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Natalie Ball. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, by Dennis Dehart, 2021.

Artwork copyright Natalie Ball. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, by Dennis Dehart, 2021.

Mama Bear IV, 2019

Natalie Ball
(American | Klamath, born 1980)

Location: Kamiak Elementary, Pullman

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Natalie Ball (Klamath and Modoc) is interested in exploring and revealing hidden histories and dominant stories related to Native Americans. She is using her art to build a new story, an “auto-ethnography” where she is creating and telling the story for herself and her people. Ball’s art and stories re-think and re-consider everything that we think we know about Native Americans.

This artwork is part of a curated collection by RYAN! Feddersen (Okanogan and Arrow Lakes) at Kamiak Elementary, Pullman School District, in Eastern Washington. RYAN! drew inspiration from the school's namesake, Chief Kamiakin, and his five wives. Her curated collection honors the essential and often under-recognized role that matriarchs play in history by highlighting Indigenous artists whose work connects with activism, collaboration, resistance, and community building.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Pullman School District.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Natalie Ball (Klamath and Modoc) re-deploys and re-contextualizes Native American images and symbols to propose different stories of Indigenous life in the United States. She explores racial stories that are important to the understanding of both ourselves, the United States as a nation, and our shared experiences and histories.
Ball earned a Bachelor of Art degree in Ethnic Studies and Art from the University of Oregon and a Master of Art degree in Indigenous Contemporary Art from Massey University in New Zealand. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree (2018) in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art in Connecticut. She lives in her ancestral homelands in Chiloquin, Southern Oregon, where she raises her three children. She is enrolled in the Klamath Tribes, and is also of African-American, Modoc, and Anglo-American descent.