Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt

We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew ourselves—
Joy Harjo (Muscogee/Creek), National Poet Laureate

Multimedia artist Marie Watt is a storyteller. As a member of the Seneca Nation with German-Scots ancestry, her stories draw from Native and non-Native traditions: Greco-Roman myth, pop music and Pop art, Indigenous oral narratives, Star Wars, and Star Trek. 

Over the course of her career, Watt has told her stories through prints. The collaborative printmaking process allows her to build community through art and storytelling that is personal, cultural, and universal. Storywork includes over sixty artworks that trace three decades of Watt’s career, focusing on her collaborations with Master Printers at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, the Tamarind Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. In the UMFA’s special exhibition galleries, this print retrospective is accompanied by her monumental blanket stacks, hanging textiles, and sculptures that also bring these stories to life.

As a Klamath elder once told her: “My story changes when I know your story.”

About the Artist

Marie Watt (she/her, born 1967 in Seattle, Washington) 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.

Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University, Connecticut, as well as degrees from Willamette University, Oregon, and the Institute of American Indian Arts, New Mexico. In 2025, Watt was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award and was selected to collaborate on an installation for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Her work can be found in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.