'Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt'

Marie Watt's sculptural blanket series works are profound, powerful and eye-catching. Huge, towering pillars of folded and stacked blankets, installed inside or outside, some curving and hooking into shapes, others a simple column. University of San Diego will show a mid-career retrospective this month of the artist, who is an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and who draws on Iroquois and indigenous histories and influence in her work. But rather than her sculptural works, they're focusing on her remarkable career in printmaking. The exhibition is called "Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt," pulling from the collections of the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation.

Many of her prints served as sketches or designs for larger installations, but stand alone as works of art. In her printmaking, Watt has collaborated with the Tamarind workshop, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology and more. While many of Watt's shows have included some of her printmaking, and while this USD show will also include some of her striking sculptures, this exhibition will be the first to feature her printmaking as the primary focus.
—Read the full selection in '5 works of art to see in San Diego in February,' Julia Dixon Evans, KPBS

Marie Watt

From the gallery:
Marie Watt (Seneca, b. 1967) is one of the country’s most celebrated contemporary artists whose work draws on personal experience, indigenous traditions, proto-feminism, mythology and art history. Drawing on the collections of the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation and the University of San Diego, Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt will present a mid-career retrospective of Watt’s work as a printmaker, accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Over the course of her career, residencies at the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the Tamarind Institute have afforded Watt the opportunity to collaborate with master printers in producing ambitious print series. Whether working in lithography, woodcut, or etching, the medium of print has served for Watt as a laboratory for large-scale pieces and concepts. In each of her prints Watt demonstrates a tactile appreciation for the particular qualities of wood, copper, or stone, aiming to achieve in her words a “familiarity and intimacy” with the material that adds a layer of thematic resonance to her work.

This exhibition is presented by Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation in partnership with the University of San Diego.

Releated events:
Watt will also be in residence at USD as one of the Humanities Center’s Knapp Chair of Liberal Arts, starting with a public lecture on February 16th.
Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022 at 5 p.m.
French Parlor, Founders Hall

Related links:
USD University Galleries on Instagram
Marie Watt
University of San Diego gallery information