Brenda Mallory is a multidisciplinary artist whose mixed-media sculptures and installations combine cloth, fiber, beeswax, handmade paper, reclaimed industrial materials, and found objects. She frequently joins repeated organic forms with hog rings, nuts, bolts, threaded rods, and other plainly visible hardware. These provisional seams and repairs suggest systems that have been damaged, interrupted, or forced to adapt. Through this visual language, Mallory explores environmental change, cultural disruption, resilience, interconnection, and the continuing effects of colonial power on Indigenous peoples and lands.
Mallory lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She grew up in Oklahoma and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her early awareness of land, natural resources, and practical reuse was shaped by a family that farmed, hunted, gardened, kept bees, and fished. She earned a BA in Linguistics and English from UCLA and a BFA in General Fine Arts from Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Her major solo exhibitions include The North Star Changes at the Heard Museum in Phoenix in 2023 and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem in 2025; In the Absence of Instruction at the Gorman Museum of Native American Art, University of California, Davis, in 2024; To Walk in an Intertwined World at daphne art in Montreal in 2025; and exhibitions at Russo Lee Gallery, Upfor Gallery, Oregon State University, Colorado State University, and Portland International Airport. Her work has also appeared in nationally significant group exhibitions, including The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans at the National Gallery of Art and Marking Resilience: Indigenous North American Prints at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Mallory’s public-art work includes pieces acquired through Oregon’s Percent for Art Program for Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. These include Raveled Lines #1, a reconstructed collagraph print made with paper, thread, and wax, and Firehose Experiment #13 (bioform), made from reclaimed linen firehose, paint, threaded rods, washers, and bolts. Her work was also selected for the Multnomah County Central Courthouse’s public-art collection, part of a major Percent for Art project through which 47 works by 20 regional artists were commissioned or purchased.
Her work is held in numerous public, museum, and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Portland Art Museum, Heard Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Gorman Museum of Native American Art, Library of Congress, Microsoft, Oregon Health & Science University, and the Multnomah County Courthouse.
Mallory has received the Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts, Eiteljorg Contemporary Native Art Fellowship, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Visual Arts and Mentor Artist fellowships, Ucross Native American Visual Artist Fellowship, Bonnie Bronson Visual Arts Fellowship, and the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellowship. Her grants and residencies include support from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, Regional Arts & Culture Council, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Bullseye Glass, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, GLEAN/Recology, International Studio & Curatorial Program, and the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.
Sources: Brenda Mallory’s official biography and exhibition record; Joan Mitchell Foundation; Oregon Community Foundation; Heard Museum; Hallie Ford Museum of Art; Gorman Museum of Native American Art; Regional Arts & Culture Council; Oregon Percent for Art and Public Art Archive records.