PDX CONTEMPORARY ART is pleased to present A Shared Horizon (Western Door), an exhibition of new work by Marie Watt.

Central to the exhibition is a nearly 26-foot-long neon sculpture. Sharing the same title as the show, A Shared Horizon (Western Door), consists of groupings of double words which relate to the West and Northwest. The repetition is connected to the history of call and response and suggests a sense of urgency. Placed low to the ground, the resplendent neon reflects onto the walls and pools onto the floor. This project draws from the poetry of Joy Harjo’s “Singing Everything” and particularly the phenomenological experience of the enveloping light, color, and sounds that embody a sunrise or sunset and the space between on the horizon.

The exhibition will also feature two drawings reflecting the neon's text. Also included are a steel I-beam sculpture, a print made at Wingate Studio, and two large-scale textile works made from reclaimed blankets— a material Watt often uses to make reference to human stories, both individual and communal. She recognizes blankets as objects that are remarkable in their ability to be both commonplace and deeply personal, bearing significance beyond their simple utilitarian design.

Marie Watt is an American artist and citizen of the Seneca Nation with German-Scot ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Iroquois protofeminism, and Indigenous teachings; in it, she explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. Through collaborative actions she instigates multigenerational and cross-disciplinary conversations that might create a lens and conversation for understanding connectedness to place, one another, and the universe.

Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also has degrees from Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts; and in 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Willamette University.

She has attended residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Vermont Studio Center; and has received fellowships from Anonymous Was a Woman, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Harpo Foundation, The Ford Family Foundation, and the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, among others.

Watt serves on the board for VoCA (Voices in Contemporary Art) and on the Native Advisory Committee at the Portland Art Museum, and in 2020 became a member of the Board of Trustees at the Portland Art Museum. She is a fan of Crow’s Shadow, an Indigenous-founded printmaking institute located on the homelands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, as well as Portland Community College.

Selected collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and Renwick Gallery, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Portland Art Museum. She has been represented by PDX CONTEMPORARY ART in Portland, Oregon since 1999.

Hours: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm