Marie Watt

Fellowship Artist

Fellowship: Into The Fray (2005)

Cultural Affiliation: Seneca, Turtle Clan

Watt graduated from Willamette University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science in Speech Communications and Art, and the Institute of American Indian Arts with an Associate of Fine Arts in Museum Studies in 1992. In 1996, she received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. She was a printmaking resident at Crow’s Shadow Institute in 2003, 2005, and again in 2011; an Oregon Arts Commission Visual Artist Fellow in 2004; and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow in 2006. Watt was commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011 to create a site-specific fourteen-foot tall column of wool blankets from around the world, titled Blanket Stories: Matriarch, Guardian and Seven Generations. In 2016, she was commissioned by the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program to create a permanent sculpture installation in Islamabad, Pakistan. Presently, she is a professor at Portland Community College. Watt creates mixed media sculptures and installation pieces that employ natural materials or utilitarian objects such as blankets and felt, to explore history and how it relates to memory.