Artwork copyright Natalie Ball. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artwork copyright Romson Bustillo. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, by Everything Time Studio, 2021.

Mama Bear IV, 2020

Natalie Ball
(American | Klamath, born 1980)

Location: North Hill Elementary, Des Moines

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Artist Natalie Ball (Klamath and Modoc) is interested in exploring and revealing hidden histories and dominant narratives related to Native Americans. With her art she is building 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. She notes that “My goal is, for my art…to add to the discussion of complex racial narratives that are critical to further realizing the self, the nation, and necessarily, our shared experiences and histories.”

This artwork is part of a curated collection by Asia Tail for North Hill Elementary, in Des Moines, Western Washington, in July 2021. The local art selection committee wanted art that reflects their diversity, their values as a sustainable green school, and the 5th grade experience of growth, togetherness, and transitions. The artworks show us that everything is connected. Asia Tail notes “Just as people shape the land, the land shapes us. How we treat our plant and animal relatives matters now and for all the generations that come next.”

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

ABOUT THE 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.