Marie Watt

Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts 2017

Media

Sculpture, Textiles, Drawing.

CUrrentLY

Practicing artist.

Background

Watt’s work draws from history, biography, proto-feminism, and Indigenous principles, and addresses the interaction of the arc of history with the intimacy of memory. She uses materials that are conceptually attached to narrative, in particular, exploring the stories connected with commonplace woolen blankets, cedar, and iron.

She has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions, including The Rockwell Museum, Corning, NY; State University of New York at Geneseo; Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle; Washington; Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Salem, Oregon; Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, Pendleton; Oregon; Missoula Museum of Art, Missoula, Montana; Nicolaysen Museum of Art, Casper, Wyoming; Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho; Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Sante Fe, New Mexico; Hoffman Gallery, Portland, Oregon; the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York; and PDX Contemporary Gallery. She has been included in numerous group shows throughout the United States including Illinois, Ohio, New York, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Texas, Connecticut, and Oregon, as well as in Quebec, Canada. Watt has received a number of artist residency posts in the United States.

She was the recipient of a number of awards and grants, including the 2009 Bonnie Bronson Fellowship, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, an Art Matters grant, a Native Arts & Cultures Foundation Fellowship, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, the Seattle Art Museum Betty Bowen Memorial Award, the Eiteljorg Museum Artist Fellowship, as well as numerous Oregon-based residency programs such as Crow’s Shadow Institute for the Arts, Sitka and others.

She has been reviewed in regional and national publications, including First American Art Magazine, the South Atlantic Quarterly, ARTnews, New York Times, Art in America, Artweek and The Oregonian. Watt is collected by a number of private and public collections, such as the Boise Art Museum, the Bonnie Bronson Collection, Brigham Young University Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Eiteljorn Museum of Art, Facebook Collection, Fidelity Investments, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, Microsoft Collection, Missoula Art Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts – Sante Fe, National Gallery of Canada, Portland Art Museum, Portland Community College, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Tacoma Art Museum, US Library of Congress, United States Department of State, United States Embassy in Ghana, and most recently in the United States Embassy in Pakistan.

She is highly sought as a visiting artist and lecturer. Watt earned a BS in Speech Communications and Art from Willamette University and a MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University School of Art. In between she matriculated at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture on a full fellowship in Maine, and received her AFA in Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico.