Totem

Watt gathers blankets and other textiles from group sewing circles and open calls and incorporates them into her Blanket Stories sculptures. Many of the blankets are accompanied by a tag on which owners write their ancestral and personal stories. Watt sees her role as a custodian of the blankets’ stories and the communities that they come from, folding and stacking the blankets into tower-like forms. This piece is among the first that Watt cast in bronze, combining hard, cold metal with soft, warm textiles, both speaking to permanence and history in different ways.