I have to share an amazing exhibit currently at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Salem that my Salem Art Group visited on Wednesday. The exhibit is titled Lodge and is the creation of Marie Watt. Here is what the Museum's web site says about the exhibit:
Marie Watt is a nationally recognized Portland mixed media artist whose work explores human stories and ritual implicit in everyday objects. Organized by Willamette anthropology professor Rebecca Dobkins, the exhibition will feature a range of work from the past decade, including portrait blankets of Jim Thorpe, Ira Hays, Susan B. Anthony and Joseph Beuys. Work also includes stacked blanket sculptures and “Engine,” a felt cave-like structure that honors the act of storytelling and the storytellers in the artist's life.
Marie was recently on Oregon Art Beat and you can view the segment here.
The exhibit is poignant as those who donated blankets filled out a tag telling the story behind the blanket. One of the stories was of a man who was sent to numerous concentration camps during World War II and his tags told the story of how he obtained the blanket and kept it all these years, gratefully donating it to Marie for this exhibit.
Here are some photos of the stacked blanket sculptures.
And then there is the cave, Engine, made of felted wool. We removed our shoes and entered, but just a peek . . . you're going to want to see it for yourself.
The exhibit will be in Salem through April 1, then it will travel to the Tacoma Art Museum for an exhibit that will run from June 23-October 7, 2012, so there are a couple of opportunities to experience this show.
4 comments:
Hey! Thanks so much for sharing this - it looks like an amazing exhibit!
i'm so glad you wrote aabout this. A month or two ago, there was an ongoing quilting bee w/ volunteers at Greenbaum's in the back classroom: women sewing satin bindings onto grey woolen quilts as fast as they could!
When asked what they were doing, they said it was for an art show at the Hallie Ford. WHAT? What could blankets possibly have to do with art? They said the blankets they were working on would be donated to the homeless shelters afterward (I think).
I kind of 'mysteried' on that for awhile, then it went off my radar screen. Now--here it is! Thank you for bringing it to light. I'm gonna have to get there and check it. Have A gREAT WeeKENd, FrieND!
Glad to see you included a photo of me napping beneath the felted stalactites while the storyteller was spinning his "yarns"!
Very cool...thanks for taking and showing pictures. This might need to be one of my artist dates :)
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