Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt

Multimedia artist Marie Watt is a storyteller. As a member of the Seneca Nation with German-Scots ancestry, her stories draw from Native and non-Native traditions: Greco-Roman myth, pop music and Pop art, Indigenous oral narratives, Star Wars, and Star Trek.Over the course of her career, Watt has told her stories through prints. The collaborative printmaking process allows her to build community through art and storytelling that is personal, cultural, and universal. Storywork includes over sixty artworks that trace three decades of Watt’s career, focusing on her collaborations with Master Printers at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, the Tamarind Institute, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. In the UMFA’s special exhibition galleries, this print retrospective is accompanied by her monumental blanket stacks, hanging textiles, and sculptures that also bring these stories to life.As a Klamath elder once told her: “My story changes when I know your story.”