Connecting Community and Culture Through Art: A Look At Obama Presidential Center Artist Marie Watt

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. 

Virginia Shore, of Shore Art Advisory LLC, curated the artist commissions on behalf of the Center, and the collaboration by Marie and Nick will join more than 25 additional site-specific works, ranging from monumental sculptures to intimate murals and immersive environments. The result is what organizers describe as a bold, multidisciplinary arts program that will animate nearly every corner of the Center, inside and out. 

The piece unites the creators for the first time in a celebration of Indigenous and Black traditions that blend each of their signature styles. Nick, best known for his soundscapes, will incorporate textiles with elements of movement and sound “constructed of hand-strung, beaded
shoelaces, woven with memory-steeped patterns and colors.” 

“Nick Cave's work is very impactful in so many different ways,” said Marie. I'm really struck by the stories that he tells, his use of materials, and the way he engages community through movement and dance and music and working with other creatives.”. 

As Marie and Nick work on their respective portions of the piece, they check in with each other, while also giving each other the room to innovate. 

“It's an ‘I trust you; you trust me thing,’” quipped Marie.

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.  

She has installations currently at the Marc Straus Gallery in New York City, and one at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum in Portland. In September, Marie was the recipient of the Heinz Award for the Arts, an annual award given by the Heinz Foundation to leaders in art, economics, and the environment. 

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.

“I feel like as humans, we have something in common with magpies and other kinds of animals, where we are drawn to light and shiny things,” explains Marie.

Marie’s work on “This Land, Shared Sky” also incorporates mirrored compositional elements that celebrate – literally and figuratively – the idea of community and sound. She recounted one of her inspirations for the piece being Marvin’s Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and the idea of “twinning language” – the repetition of words – a call and response.

I love how he calls out ‘mother, mother, brother, brother, sister, sister.’ And I thought, ‘Well, in an Indigenous way, that call continues.’ And it actually would be, you know, ‘uncle uncle’ and ‘grandmother grandmother’ and ‘auntie auntie’ as well as ‘lake lake’ and ‘deer deer’ and ‘turtle turtle’,…It's really talking about our connectedness and our relatedness to one another, but it's also about casting an urgent message further in space.” 

The idea of connectedness and unity, two ideas she says are foundational to her work, also underscore why she decided to work with the Obama Presidential Center.

“The Obama Presidential Center is not just a museum, it’s a cultural center and a place where stories are shared and new stories are made. It's a place for multi-generational communities to meet up and gather. It's a story that I really wanted to be a part of, and I see it, in many ways, it's sort of a legacy project,” she said. 

Marie also said that the significance is not lost on her that she, a Native American, and Nick, who is Black, will have a space on the Obama Presidential Center campus — 19.3 acres designed to encourage visitors to reflect on their own ability to bring change home. 

“Historically, at least for Native communities, our work has been positioned in anthropology museums and collections and shown in a way that doesn't reflect the innovation, dynamism, evolution, and change that is inherent to being creative,” remarked Marie. “I think it’s important to have work at the Obama Presidential Center and reach a broader audience. I mean the work has always existed, right? It's just the doors haven't always been open.” 

As the installation of “This Land, Shared Sky” draws near, Marie is excited about seeing the work she and Nick are creating come together.  She said she remains centered on the purpose of not only her work with Nick, but of art in general.  

“I'm really interested in the intersection of art and life,” she said. “I want people to be able to sit with what Nick and I have made and feel a connection to it and how the story changes the longer one stays with it. But truthfully, I'm interested in the stories that people will share after being in that space.”