Storywork
The Prints of Marie Watt from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation
The Prints of Marie Watt from the Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation
This exhibition of more than 60 prints, sculptures, and textiles traces Marie Watt’s career from 1996 to the present. For the first time, the artist’s early work (made during her MFA program at Yale), along with her collaborations with master printers, are exhibited in conjunction with monumental textiles and sculpture. The exhibition also explores Watt’s evolving practice of convening sewing and printing circles with family, friends, and community members.
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The granddaughter of Wyoming ranchers and an enrolled member in the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation (Haudenosaunee), Watt has described herself as “half cowboy and half Indian,” conscious of the entangled histories of colonizer and colonized. The exhibition highlights thematic through lines in her work, including dreams, thresholds, myths, memories, motherhood, and the meanings inherent in everyday objects. Many works reference the Seneca creation story and key Seneca principles related to kinship and ecological stewardship. Other societal and art-historical forces are on display as well, including Greco Roman mythology, the cultures of Coast Salish and Plains tribes, the pop culture myths of Star Wars and Star Trek, and the geometries of minimalism. Taken together, Watt’s works make clear that Seneca culture is alive and dynamically responsive to an ever shifting and evolving cultural landscape.