A Look at Obama Presidential Center Artist Marie Watt
Dive into the dynamic world of artist Marie Watt and her collaboration with Nick Cave for the Obama Presidential Center.
[Excerpt from Stories on The Obama Foundation website. View full article at www.obama.org]
Marie Watt’s work invites people to look, listen and feel. She’s the creator of Blanket Stories — sculptures made of hundreds of blankets thrifted and given to her by friends — and Sky Dances Light – a hanging installation made of tin jingles that celebrate the Ojibwa legacy of the Jingle Dress Dance — and now she’s one of the Obama Presidential Center’s newest artists.
“I want to make tactile and interactive work that invites people to engage with it in a way that reflects the way art really is in the world,” said Marie. “Having active physical engagement is, in a way, how we experience art in the spaces where we live, the spaces where we dance, or the spaces where we listen to music.”
Her newest work, entitled “This Land, Shared Sky,” is a collaboration with Chicago-based sculptor Nick Cave, and will be on permanent display in the main lobby at the Obama Presidential Center, set to open in 2026.
The prolific Portland, Oregon-based artist has spent more than two decades creating works that bridge history, culture, and community. She studied at Yale University and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and tells stories drawn from her familial history as a member of the Turtle Clan of the Seneca Nation and the lives of the communities she’s built across America.
For “This Land, Shared Sky,” Marie is working on sculptural jingle elements: In a recent virtual walk-through of her studio, Marie detailed the history of tin jingles, which historically come from tobacco can lids and then are shaped into cones. The Jingle Dress Dance began as a healing ritual in the Ojibwe tribe, during the influenza pandemic of 1918 and is continues to be danced today at powwows.
“I was really struck by the story of the jingle dress…a grandfather who was a medicine person, had this dream where he was instructed to attach tin jingles to a dress that was to be danced around a sick child.. And it was the sound of the jingles that helped this young girl heal.
“We know the medicine worked because then that dance was shared with other tribal communities.” Marie reflected. “I am interested in how materials are embedded with stories and was drawn to using the jingle to share this history in a different space.
Marie hopes her work will create a cacophony of light and sound at the Center. As an artist, she’s struck by how jingles reflect the light wherever they are, and draw people to them.
