A Conversation with Artist Marie Watt

The University of San Diego, in partnership with Jordan D. Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation in Portland, Oregon, is proud to present a major, traveling retrospective — Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt Selections from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation — the newest exhibition at the University Galleries.

University Galleries’ mission is to provide the community with direct access to the finest pieces artists have created. All programs at University Galleries are free. The University Galleries is home to: the Hoehn Family Galleries and the Hoehn Print Study Room in Founders Hall; the David W. May American Indian Gallery and the Humanities Center Gallery, both located in Saints Tekakwitha and Serra Hall; and the Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Gallery in the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice.

The exhibition opens on Feb. 4, 2022. A conversation with artist Marie Watt will take place at 5 p.m. on Feb. 16, in the French Parlor in Founders Hall, adjacent to the Hoehn Family Galleries.

The exhibition runs through May 13, 2022, in three locations on campus: the Hoehn Family Galleries, the David W. May American Indian Gallery, and in the exhibition space in the newly renovated Copley Library.

Marie Watt, USD’s Knapp Chair of Liberal Arts, is an American artist. She’s an enrolled member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and also has German-Scot ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Iroquois protofeminism and Indigenous teachings. Watt is proud to share this free exhibition with the local community — and to connect with students, faculty and the local Native American community.

In her work, Watt explores the intersection of history, community and storytelling. Through collaborative actions, she instigates multigenerational and cross-disciplinary conversations, which she hopes might create a conversation, as well as a lens, through which people may understand and connect to place, to one another and to the universe.

Storywork is a comprehensive look at Watt’s 30-year career, including more than 60 original prints spanning her graduate student days at Yale University to her thriving studio practice in Portland, Oregon.

“Storywork grew out of the opportunity to reflect on the continual thread of printmaking and collaboration in my practice,” Marie Watt says. “The more I consider social engagement, the more I believe printmaking embodies what I value in the process of making conversation with others. In the community, that is a print studio, something beyond oneself is realized. It is not just what is inscribed on the page, it is the active energy, conversation and exchange, with master printers, fellow artists, and community that is imprinted upon a humble piece of paper.”

Storywork represents the first occasion that Watt’s career-long fascination with etching, lithography, and woodblock printing will receive the full curatorial recognition it deserves. Watt’s pieces frequently combine contemporary texts and imagery from traditional Native sources.  Watt’s original graphics will be shown alongside her “blanket stacks” and large-scale textiles, all of which are being lent from the extraordinary holdings of Jordan Schnitzer and the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.

The exhibition is the culmination of several years of collaboration between the artist, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation and University Galleries at the University of San Diego.

The exhibition is accompanied by an interview with Marie Watt by USD’s Derrick Cartwright, PhD, director of University Galleries, as well as a 192-page fully-illustrated catalog, with scholarly essays by John P. Murphy (Vassar College) and Jolene Rickard (Cornell University), as well as a brief appreciation of Watt’s significance by Schnitzer.

After its inaugural display at the University of San Diego, Storywork: The Prints of Marie Watt will travel with some variation to: Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; the Krannert Art Museum at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; the Art Museum at West Virginia University, Morgantown; and the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento.

Information on the exhibition, catalog, public programs and Watt’s residency can be found on the websites of the University Galleries, as well as The Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation.

— USD News Center