Academic

“Since the economic situation is so bad due to the
troika’s financial coercion, a lot of people are coming
up with alternatives out of necessity – different ways
of making a living and working together cooperatively.
I want to go to Greece to learn from people there,
interview them and write another short book about it.”
needed to find another way for students to receive
an equal educational experience without the
toxins. So he and the students started a farm in
the lots behind the school—complete with a red
barn, chickens, geese, goats, orchards, vegetable
plots, bees, and even a horse.”
In addition to the students growing and selling
produce for Detroit residents, Ball said they use
the farm as a laboratory, so whenever an animal
dies, the whole school gathers to dissect it to
discover the cause of death.
Ball’s bicycle trip ended with a busy few days
in Washington, D.C., where she and her colleagues
met with 20 different legislative offices to talk
about their concerns.
said. “And I’ve been conducting lots of interviews
with people who help make the electricity,
clean the water, plan roads and bike paths, and
organize community centers. I’m transcribing
all the interviews into a short book and since my
Fulbright is associated with the Royal Danish
Academy of Fine Arts, I have access to their
printing equipment and can print the book there.
This spring, I had a book debut at the LA Art
Book Fair and in the fall, it will be at the New
York Book Fair. It’s a collection of oral histories
of people living in the Mojave Desert. Hopefully
the book I print in Copenhagen will take a similar
trajectory to that one.”
Continued on page 31
FROM GPA TO GREECE
Even though her educational journeys thus
far have been all over the country and in many
parts of the world, Ball credits The Grosse
Pointe Academy and its teachers and staff with
giving her a great academic beginning. After the
Academy, and after she graduated from Grosse
Pointe South High School, she matriculated at
the University of Wisconsin, where she received
a BS degree in art, and where she also used
a university greenhouse to experiment with
growing plants for live use in her sculptures. She
then attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine
Arts in Copenhagen, and finally, to Portland State
University, where she earned an MFA in art and
social practice.
Ball will tell you, however, that it’s getting
out and talking to people and finding out about
their needs that is the most important part of her
ongoing education.
“My Fulbright research focused on the
infrastructure of the country of Denmark,” Ball
(Left) GPA alum
Katherine Ball (’98) is
in the halls of Congress
at the end of her 2010
bike tour
(Left) A mycoboom
placed by Ball as part
of a series of ecological
interventions aimed at
filtering E. coli out of a
lake in Indiana.
THE GROSSE POINTE ACADEMY / FALL 2015 25