Gallery artist Brenda Mallory is one of 15 US-based artists chosen to receive a Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2025. The fellowship distributes $60,000 over the course of five years, in addition to opportunities for professional development, peer engagement, and network building. The program provides Fellows with individualized support, "in which each artist can tailor their professional development sessions and the distribution of their fellowship funds to best meet their particular needs, combined with cohort building that recognizes that a strong and engaged community of peers is one of the most important resources for any artist." (Joan Mitchell Foundation)
“I’m thrilled to congratulate this year’s Joan Mitchell Fellowship recipients—a group of esteemed creative practitioners whose work represents a broad range of stylistic approaches and themes, reflecting both their material explorations and their varied personal backgrounds,” said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “Joan Mitchell was clear in her will that her foundation should support artists in their practices—a mandate that reflects Mitchell’s own deep and abiding commitment to her work as a painter and her strong belief in the importance of artists having the resources to thrive. As we celebrate the many facets of Mitchell’s legacy in her centennial year, we welcome the new Fellows to a remarkable community of artists that has grown out of Mitchell’s generosity, encompassing more than 1,200 former grant recipients, 365 former Artists-in-Residence, 75 Joan Mitchell Fellows, and hundreds of other artists and art students who have intersected with Mitchell’s legacy and the Foundation’s programs over the past three decades.”
Brenda Mallory’s mixed-media sculptural works are comprised of a variety of materials including cloth, fibers, beeswax, and found objects. By creating multiple forms joined with crude hardware that imply tenuous connections or repairs, her work addresses ideas of interference and disruption in long-established systems of nature and human cultures. Mallory lives in Portland, Oregon but grew up in Oklahoma and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She holds a BA in Linguistics & English from UCLA and a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art. She has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. She is a recipient of the Eiteljorg Contemporary Native Art Fellowship, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship in Visual Art, and the Ucross Native Fellowship. She has participated in artist residencies including Ucross, Anderson Ranch, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Glean, Bullseye Glass, and Signal Fire Outpost, c3:initiative, and the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at Sitka Center for the Arts.
Image: Brenda Mallory, 2024, photographed by Mario Gallucci.