Marie Watt Studio

Sleep and Sleeplessness

This work started by observing a stone that belonged to the photographer and rockhound Terry Toedtemeier. The stone was pitted, worn and fragile; its holes suggested a sieve, passageway, or web. The process by which it eroded relates to those thoughts that keep me up at night; items undone, the foot in my mouth, apologies, questions that need answers and the desire to be a better human. A clock with a blurry red digital face stares at me, and I try not to stare back or it might wake me further.

I continue to be struck by Edvard Munch’s self-portrait Between the Clock and the Bed, because I know that space well. Jasper Johns did a painting by the same title and in it the bookends, clock and bed flank a ghostly figure. Johns’ hatch marks echo the bedspread in the Munch painting. I have come to see some similarities between these marks and the cornhusks, which brought me to working with modular forms.

I am particularly drawn to the human stories and rituals implicit in everyday objects. Made familiar by use and scaled to the body, they often go unnoticed, but make me think about the relationship between part and whole; I wish to capture this sense of familiarity in the objects I make.

In drawing, I am drawn to the way the crowquill pen makes marks. Quiet, irregular, delicate, plotting, they relate to a tradition of craftsmen: illustrators, cartographers, draftsmen, and calligraphers. My work explores the overlap between art and craft, process and object, and nature and man.