Marie Watt Studio

Marie has been hosting sewing and printing circles in her studio, community spaces, schools, and institutions as an integral part of her artistic practice. These gatherings are an essential part of the work, not a means to an end. Everyone’s voice is equal in a circle; circles can expand or contract as needed to create space and be inclusive. The panels or prints being made often start with an Indigenous (Seneca) point of view in relation to site, histories, and teachings. Themes then become touchstones for conversation, connection, and cross-cultural knowledge generously exchanged by multi-generational participants. Stories flow when eyes are diverted and hands are busy at work, and new connections are made.

Marie Watt (she/her, b. 1967, Seattle, WA) is a member of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation of Indians whose work draws on images and ideas from Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) protofeminism and Indigenous teachings. Her practice is interdisciplinary, incorporating printmaking, painting, textiles, and sculpture. Watt conducts both solo and collaborative projects, but in all of them she explores how history, community, and storytelling intersect. 

Practice

A significant part of Watt’s practice involves setting a multi-generational and cross-disciplinary table for conversation and collaboration. This can take the form of sewing circles, community-built sculptures, or crowd-sourced participation via social media. Exchanging ideas like this, one story at a time, can help us understand and strengthen our companion relationships– our connection to place, to one another, to animals, and to the universe.

Many of the materials used in the studio—blankets, beads, tin jingles, steel I-beams—are associated with Seneca heritage. Conceptually, Watt is drawn to their DNA and deploys them as a vehicle for understanding history, place, and community. Language, both literal and metaphorical, also weaves through her practice even as she struggles with the historical baggage it carries, particularly its impact on Indigenous communities. Twinned words such as “Mother Mother,” “Deer Deer,” and “Sky Sky” open up space and create urgency, hurling a call longer and louder in space, back to our ancestors, and forward to future generations. 

Background

Marie Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also has degrees from Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts; and in 2016 she was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa from Willamette University. 

Watt has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center; and has received fellowships from Anonymous Was a Woman, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, The Ford Family Foundation, and the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, among others.

She served two terms on the board of VoCA (Voices in Contemporary Art) from 2017–2023. She currently serves on the Native Advisory Committee at the Portland Art Museum, where she also became a member of the Board of Trustees in 2020. She is a fan of Crow’s Shadow, an Indigenous-founded printmaking institute located on the homelands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla; as well as Portland Community College, where she taught from 1997–2004.

Selected collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and National Museum of American Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum. Watt is represented by PDX Contemporary Art in Portland, OR; Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, CA; and Marc Straus in New York, NY.