Artists Spotlight: Marie Watt
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| Photo: Vanessa Bertagnole |
Marie Watt, multidisciplinary artist
Public Art Grant for Installation Space, 2008; Recipient of RACC Project Grants 2001, 2004; recipient of RACC Professional Development Grant 2004
Marie Watt is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Portland,Oregon. Formally, her work draws from Indigenous design principles, oral tradition, and history. Watt uses materials that relate to her ideas and most recently has been exploring the stories connected with commonplace woolen blankets.
In 2004, as part of the Continuum 12 artists series, an exhibit of her work opened in New York City and the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian. The exhibit includes Blanket Stories, a sculpture made of two towers of wool blankets, with each stack sewn together with a central thread. The blankets are ones Watt collected over several years, including many Hudson's Bay point blankets that were given to Native Americans in trade by the Hudson's Bay Company during the 19th century.
Watt’s work can be seen at the Seattle Art Museum which recently acquisitioned a sculptural work entitled, Blanket stories: Sky Woman, Three Sisters, Four Pelts, Cousin Rose and Relations, 2004 (at right). She is also the first artist-in-resident in the Seattle Art Museum Think Tank with a community project entitled Custodian which will be up through October 2007.
Woman fellowship (2007), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship (2006), an Eiteljorg Museum’s Contemporary Native American Artist Fellowship (2005) and the Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Award (2005). She has been the recipient of numerous RACC grants as well as a 2004 Oregon Arts Commission Artist Fellowship.
In November 2007, Watt was selected by the Portland Art Museum at one of five artists to receive the Contemporary Northwest Art Award. Watt was selected by Jennifer Gately, the museum's curator of Northwest art, from a field of 28 finalists. Other honorees were Dan Attoe, Cat Clifford, Jeffry Mitchell, and Whiting Tennis. Work by Watt (see below) will be shown with the other artists at the Portland Art Museum from June14-September 14, 2008.
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| Watt's Forget-me-not:Mothers and Sons, 2008, Reclaimed wool blankets, satin binding, thread and steel. |
On May 15, 2008 Portland Art Museum will present an Artmaking opportunity - Community Project in collaboration with Marie Watt. Join Museum educators and create wool blossoms to contribute to artist Marie Watt’s Contemporary Northwest Art Awards installation, which explores themes of storytelling, remembrance, and the indigenous ideology of seven generations. Each hand-stitched blossom will become part of her artwork and represent the civilian lives lost in Iraq during the war, our own lost loved ones, and our stories. 5-7pm. Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park, Portland.
Watt is represented by PDX Contemporary Art and has exhibited at heralded local venues including the Marylhurst Art Gym, the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, and the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis and Clark College. Nationally, Watt has exhibited in shows at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s George Gustave Heye Center in New York, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Institute of American Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Watt was awarded full fellowships to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1995 and the Vermont Studio Center in 2000.
Watt holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art (1996), a BS in Communications and Art/Art History from Willamette University (1990) and an AA in Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts (1994). She taught for 10 years as a full instructor at the Sylvania Campus of Portland Community College.
Contact Information:
website: www.pdxcontemporaryart.com/main/artists/artists_watt.html
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RACC Staff to Contact
Mary Bauer
Communications Associate
503.823.5426
mbauer@racc.org
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