Marie Watt: Heart in the Sky

With Heart in the Sky, Oregon-based artist Marie Watt (Seneca, born 1979) breaks down barriers of traditional art experiences. The exhibition includes the artist’s monumental silver cloud forms made from jingles (rolled tobacco tin lids). The jingles are normally used in regalia for a Jingle Dress Dance meant to heal the community, Watt uses them to densely adorn the hovering clouds. She invites us to touch, hold, and move the clouds to activate their healing sounds.

Alongside the clouds is a large neon work composed of the names of the thirteen moons that mark a year for the Seneca and other Haudenosaunee tribes, illuminating the space with a soft glow of significant markers for harvest, celebration, or ceremony.

Through the healing sound of floating clouds or the soft glow of thirteen moons, Marie Watt: Heart in The Sky offers us an opportunity for shared connection and collective dreaming. We just have to keep looking up.

Marie Watt (Seneca, b. 1967). Sky Dances Light (Chorus) XIX, 2023-24. Tin jingles, polyester twill tape, polyester mesh, and steel, 60 x 48 x 48”. Courtesy of the artist and Marc Straus Gallery. © Marie Watt