Cornell professor Jolene Rickard places my work, and that of three other Haudenosaunee artists, in terms of “the deployment of tradition as strategic cultural resistance.”
A nice review of a group show in Winnipeg that was kind enough to include me.
Segment from Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Art Beat program, featuring an overview of my work. Click here to see it.
Marie Watt addressed her Seneca Nation heritage in this show, titled “Marker,” with sculptures that riffed on the native American practice of tying fabric strips around trees and other landmarks to denote trails and water sources.
Emmanuel College professor Cynthia Fowler evaluates my work and that of Nadia Myre and Bonnie Devine in terms of our application of tradition craft methods in contemporary art.
‘New American Voices” is the kind of exhibition we have come to expect from the Fabric Workshop and Museum, in that it features a relatively few large, sometimes complex, works. Three of the five featured artists represent minorities – two are American Indian and one is Latino – and consequently offer a less-familiar cultural bias.
Step out of the elevator onto the 30th floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower and you’ll encounter a wall of porcelain light bulbs, an installation by Yuki Nakamura. This is one of seven art installations commissioned with Seattle City Light 1 Percent for Art funds and administered by the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Sited in elevator lobbies on seven floors (28-30 and 33-36) occupied by the utility, the exhibit’s audience is mainly Seattle City Light employees, whose work provides the theme.
Marie Watt’s work contains its own thanks, in the stories of the donated wool blankets she uses to create her fabric, wood, and metal sculptures.
Stop by the Artspace Gallery and see if you can figure out how the 15-foot-high column of folded blankets keeps from falling over. The piece is part of Marie Watt’s new show, “Blanket Stories.”
Over the history of the Oregon Biennial, the Portland Art Museum learned that it’s impossible to please everyone. When the museum announced that it would eschew the ever-divisive Biennial for the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards, the prospect of a show that would whittle down its participants to five artists and expand its geographical reach to include Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming in addition to Oregon hardly seemed like the solution. Yes, it would provide visitors with a richer experience, allowing them to dig more deeply into the work of a handful of artists. But it would also shift the focus from homegrown talent. (In fact, only one of the five finalists, Marie Watt, is an Oregonian; the rest hail from Washington.)