Artist Spotlight: Marie Watt
by Emily Lawhead, associate curator of Modern and Contemporary art at the UMFA
Marie Watt is a storyteller. Ideas of kinship, community, stewardship, tradition, and memory run through her work, as well as many mythologies: the Seneca Creation Story, Greco-Roman epics, and even pop culture sagas like Star Wars and Star Trek serve as inspiration. Born in Seattle in 1967, she is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians (Turtle Clan), one of six nations that make up the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Her mother, Romayne, grew up on the Cattaraugus Reservation in Upstate New York and worked for decades as a Title IX Indian Education Specialist for Seattle’s public schools. Her father’s side of the family were German-Scots ranchers in Wyoming. Watt often jokes that she is “half cowboy and half Indian”—a self-designation that captures her approach to the complexities of heritage.
Watt began her education at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where she studied speech communications and art. She later attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe before earning an MFA from Yale University. “I loved my cohort” she recalls, “but I felt out of place, so I did the only thing that made sense to me and started using corn husks as a reference to my home and culture.” That impulse—to ground her work in materials that already carry stories—has guided her ever since. Back in Oregon, she continued to explore subjects that hold memory: letters, ladders, dreamcatchers, shelters, animals, and, most notably, blankets.
Blankets entered Watt’s work almost by accident, through a bout of insomnia that sparked an early series about sleep. As she continued her explorations, she realized that blankets are universal and intimate; they absorb family histories, protect and comfort, and move with us through the most vulnerable parts of our lives. Their familiarity became a powerful entry point for the themes that now anchor her practice—connection, shared responsibility, and care.
Over the past twenty years, Watt has transformed blankets into one of her most recognizable motifs, especially through her monumental blanket stacks. These towering forms draw from many sources: overstuffed linen closets, Indigenous totems, the tall conifers of the Pacific Northwest, the Haudenosaunee ironworkers (or “skywalkers”), communication towers, and art historical touchstones such as Trajan’s Column (113 CE) and Constantin Brâncuşi’s Endless Column (1938). When stacked vertically, they become more than soft, utilitarian objects—they become the “earth/sky ladders” that play a significant role in the Haudenosaunee creation story.
The UMFA recently acquired a major blanket sculpture: Telegraph (2024). Topped by a ham radio tower, this blanket stack reflects communication across generations. As Watt explains: “Multi-channel communication towers are now ubiquitous in our world as radio towers and cell towers communicate both verbal and nonverbal communication. They telegraph information: a call and response, two-way conversation, sending and receiving, back to ancestors and forward to future generations…. Blankets do this as well. They receive physical and metaphysical information about our lives.” Like her other works, the blankets in Telegraph were thrifted or gifted—they carried people through many seasons of life before finding new meaning in Watt’s studio. Stacked together, the sculpture connects the public to the personal, from the broad reach of a radio tower to the intimate stories held in the blanket fibers. The tower acts as a metaphorical amplifier, “telegraphing” the voices embedded in each blanket.
Watt’s interest in shared storytelling extends beyond her sculptures. Collaboration is central to her process, especially in printmaking. The UMFA’s upcoming special exhibition, Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation, traces three decades of the artist’s career. At its heart is a retrospective of Watt’s printmaking practice, especially her collaborations with master printers at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, the Tamarind Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Printmaking is inherently collaborative, requiring multiple hands and specialized expertise to bring major projects to life. These long-term partnerships are highlighted in the exhibition, alongside the resulting prints, sculptures, and textiles that animate the stories in Watt’s work: how the world came to be, what we can learn from animals, and how we shape our ethical obligations to the planet as well as to past and future generations.
Watt also creates work with communities, not just about them. Recently, she has been hosting “printing circles,” inviting participants (including students, friends, or other community members) to create plates and pressure prints inspired by words central to her practice. With their permission, she collages the resulting prints into large-scale “print tapestries.” Two major examples, Companion Species (Rock Creek, Ancestor, What’s Going On) and Companion Species (Passage) are featured in Storywork. Both wereprinted by master printer Paul Mullowney and Harry Schneider at the Mullowney Printing Company in Portland. The UMFA is honored to partner with Watt to host a printing circle on February 21, 2026, as part of the exhibition’s opening festivities.
In addition to her thriving studio practice in Portland, Watt’s national recognition continues to grow. In 2025 alone, she received the prestigious Heinz Award for the Arts, was elected to the National Academy of Design, and was selected to create an installation for the Obama Presidential Center. Her work can also be found in major public 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. These achievements further affirm her role as one of the most influential contemporary artists working today.
Don’t miss your chance to meet and collaborate with this remarkable artist. The exhibition’s Preview Party will be held on February 20, with a free community celebration and printing circle on February 21. And the UMFA’s newly acquired Telegraph will remain on view in the Global Contemporary gallery through March 2027.