Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Brenda Mallory

Posted by petra.sairanen

Materials and Marks

• Dates: April 13 – May 12, 2026
• Artist talk and gallery reception: Thursday, April 23, 11am – 12 noon
• Gallery hours: Monday – Friday 9am – 4pm

The Helzer Gallery is thrilled to present Materials and Marks, an exhibition of artwork by nationally recognized artist Brenda Mallory. This exhibition is an opportunity to view a variety of the artist’s mixed media sculptures, some spanning back 20 years.

There is an element of slow delight as one spends time discovering each of these artworks. Mallory uses a variety of materials, including cloth, fibers, beeswax, and found objects but, in each work, something old becomes something new. In Firehose Experiment # 10, Bioform #10, a firehose, retired from its long battles, becomes a black butterfly-like shape with too many wings. The black linen fabric looks old and itself almost burned. The firehose reminds us of our so far futile efforts to keep up with climate change and forest fires. In its transformation into something new, it asks us to hold on to a hope for change.

In New Release, 16mm photographic film is transformed into a shiny colony of twenty variously sized and shaped horn-like vessels grouped on the floor, each adorned with differently colored bands. They seem to be in a state of flux, multiplying and growing. This colony-like structure is also present in Raison d’etre, a sculpture made of groupings of used hexagonal gun shell casings, rubber, and wax, and Interactions, a grouping of tiny pink flesh-like clam shells made of waxed fabric and hinges. One is reminded of both survival and the need for reproduction, and also the dangers of setting ideas and inventions into motion.

Mallory uses a repeated motif of taking apart and reassembling parts using rough wire, stitching, or nuts and bolts. She learned this practice of joinery by watching her father, a farmer who used bailing wire to fix most everything on their farm in 1960’s Oklahoma- where she grew up as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. The seams and joints in Mallory’s work are left as evidence of change – something old fixed together to make something new work, no matter how tenuously. The works become metaphors for adaptation. The idea of adaptation is deeply engrained in Mallory’s heritage. The Cherokee were made to move to Oklahoma and use their knowledge of a different land to adapt to a new land. However, the idea of disruption and adaptation applies to all of us, whether in our family, our workplace, our community, our environment or our nation. Mallory is speaking to these larger issues, where she offers a hope for transformation.

Brenda 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 is a recipient of the The Hallie Ford Fellowship, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Native Art Fellowship, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship in Visual Art and the Ucross Native Fellowship. She has received grants from the Oregon Arts Commission, Ford Family Foundation, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Artist residencies include Ucross, Anderson Ranch, Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, Glean, Bullseye Glass, and the Jordan Schnitzer Printmaking Residency at Sitka Center for the Arts. Mallory has exhibited widely, including a recent travelling solo exhibition, The North Star Changes, which was exhibited in 2023 at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona and again in 2025 at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem, Oregon. She is represented by Marinaro Gallery in New York, NY, Russo Lee Gallery in Portland, OR, and Crows Shadow (Print Editions).