2018 Betty Bowen Award Winner: Natalie Ball

^{Artist Natalie Ball.}

Multidisciplinary artist Natalie Ball is the winner of the 2018 Betty Bowen Award. The award, juried by the Betty Bowen Committee, comes with an unrestricted cash award of $15,000 and a solo exhibition at SAM. Founded in 1977 to continue the legacy of local arts advocate and supporter Betty Bowen, the annual award honors a Northwest artist for their original, exceptional, and compelling work.

Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Natalie Ball is an MFA graduate from Yale University and recently relocated to Chiloquin, Oregon, which is part of her ancestral Klamath homelands. Working with textiles, found objects, photography, and sculpture, Ball’s work strives to dislodge dominant narratives and expectations surrounding Native American experience and history. She understands her practice as “offering objects as proposals of refusal to complicate an easily affirmed and consumed narrative identity.”

_{(Image courtesy of the artist.)}