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Blankets

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Marie Watt is of Seneca background, but grew up in the Northwest, and graduated from Willamette University in 1990. She also has art degrees from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and Yale University. This print is part of Watt's "Blanket Series," which includes both prints and multidimensional constructions made out of second-hand woolen blankets. Blankets are everyday objects that in both historical and contemporary Native American life have taken on richly symbolic meanings. Blankets were trade items in early contact with Euro-Americans, sometimes carrying disease but also a medium for the transfer of design ideas. Today, blankets are given at ritual occasions such as honoring events, funerals, weddings, and births. In discussing her work, Watt has said: I am particularly drawn to the human stories and rituals implicit in everyday objects. Made familiar by use and scaled to the body, they often go unnoticed, but make me think about the relationship between part and whole; I wish to capture this sense of familiarity in the objects I make. In drawing, I am drawn to the way the crow quill pen makes marks. Quiet, irregular, delicate, plotting, they relate to a tradition of craftsmen: illustrators, cartographers, draftsmen, and calligraphers. My work explores the overlap between art and craft, process and object, and nature and man.

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