Quick Facts
Biography
Natalie Ball (b. 1980) is a Klamath/Modoc interdiciplinary artist based in Chiloquin, Oregon.
Background
Born in Portland, Oregon, Ball is enrolled in the Klamath Tribes. She is also of African-American, Modoc, and Anglo-American descent. Ball is a descendant of Kientpaush, also known as Captain Jack (1837–1873), the chief who led the Modocs to fight the United States in the 1872 Modoc War. Her grandfather was a painter, and her aunt Peggy Ball, was a quiltmaker. Her family moved from Klamath lands to Portland, Oregon, after the Klamath Termination Act was passed in 1954.
Ball has a daughter, Lofanitani Aisea.
Education
Ball earned her bachelor's degree in art and ethnic studies from the University of Oregon, and her master's degree in Maori Visual Arts from Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. She earned her MFA from Yale University School of Art in painting and printmaking in 2018.
Artwork
Ball's art practice includes installation art, performance art, mixed-media textile art, sculpture, painting, and printmaking. Her textiles often combine stitched words with quilts and dolls that draw upon Modoc and Klamath history.
The artist writes that she "examines internal and external discourses that shape Indian identity."
Art career
Ball has exhibited internationally, including in Hungary and New Zealand. She earned an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University School of Art in 2018.
Nationally, Ball has exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, SOMArts, Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, where she created an installation, Mapping Coyote Black in 2015.
Awards and honors
Ball's many awards including the MRG Foundation's Lilla Jewel Fund Award, Santo Foundation Award, and Oregon Arts Commission's Joan Shipley Award (2016). Also in 2016, the Oregon Arts Commission named Ball an Individual Artist Fellow. In 2018, the Seattle Art Museum gave her the Betty Bowen Award. In 2019, Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts awarded her a Golden Spot Residency Award.