Renowned interdisciplinary artist Marie Watt (Seneca Nation) believes that when people’s hands are busy, conversation and stories begin to flow.
In 2019, Watt led five community sewing circles at the Peabody Essex Museum. The sewers stitched evocative words and phrases on reclaimed blanket fragments – song lyrics, poetry from former United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Muscogee [Creek] Nation), the names of Seneca clan animals and English translations of local Indigenous place names. Over the next several months, Watt developed Companion Species: Cosmos, Sunrise, Flint, a piece currently on view in PEM’s combined Native American and American exhibition On This Ground: Being and Belonging in America.
Watt is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians and also has German-Scot ancestry. The artist’s interest in storytelling and community building was just one of the many reasons Karen Kramer, PEM’s Stuart W. and Elizabeth F. Pratt Curator of Native American and Oceanic Art and Culture, had always wanted to work with her. Kramer first became aware of Watt’s textile works nearly 20 years ago in an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. “From her smaller hand-stitched pieces and large wall tapestries to her tall stacks of blankets and room-sized installations, her dazzling work beckons you closer and asks you to engage with the dialogue she cultivates,” Kramer wrote in a 2019 Connected blog post.
Watt is the recipient of this year’s PEM Prize, awarded to artists (selected by a committee of museum leadership and supporters) whose work explores the catalytic intersection of creativity and civic engagement. The idea to create an art prize that amplifies the museum's commitment to living artists to the museum's community engagement efforts sprang from Trevor Smith, PEM’s Associate Director–Multisensory Experience and Curator of the Present Tense. Along with a cash award, the PEM Prize recipient receives the opportunity to collaborate with the museum on a project.
While each project assumes a different form, PEM Prize awardees (individuals or groups) all strive to deepen our global cultural connections, ignite our imaginations and inspire us to action. The inaugural recipient of the PEM Prize was multidisciplinary Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa.
Carlos Garaicoa. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM.
For Watt’s PEM Prize project, Salem community members and other visitors are invited to help create a cloud-like sculpture from tin jingles, to be unveiled during the 16th annual Salem Arts Festival. Watt will be returning to PEM for the unveiling of the community project on Saturday, June 8, when museum admission will be free to all visitors as part of the arts fest and the PEM Prize Opening Day.
The creation of Watt’s jingle sculpture series, which includes 24 works and counting, began in 2022. This is the first of Watt’s jingle sculptures to be created through community engagement, said Dakotah Fitzhugh, the manager of Watt’s studio in Portland, Oregon. It’s important that the sculptures “are activated by interaction with each other and interaction with the people around them. The idea that people can touch them and listen to the healing sound is integral to the artwork,” said Fitzhugh.
Watt’s jingle sculptures are composed of polyester mesh, steel and thousands of the small metal cones that also adorn regalia worn in Jingle Dances. The jingles used in Watt’s work are factory-rolled; historically, women made these decorations from the circular lids of tobacco canisters. Jingle dancing originated as a healing ritual in an Ojibwe community during the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918. Dancers’ movements activate the tinkling sound of the tiny chimes, setting their medicinal properties into motion. Watt’s biomorphic forms respond to movement in a similar way as they hang suspended, shifting and stirring.
As part of the PEM Prize Opening Day celebration on June 8, visitors will have the opportunity to dance with the finished jingle sculptures and activate them through touch and movement, as well as hear from Watt about her work and inspiration. Participants can catch a Jingle Dance performance by world champion dancer Acosia Red Elk (member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla, and Nez Perce and Colville) and join the Salem-based Thursday Poets to hear their original works of ekphrasis – poetry that vividly describes a work of art – based on their experience with the jingle sculptures.
Jingles for the sculpture. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM.
Members of the public can add a jingle to the sculpture during open museum days from Saturday, May 11 through Friday, June 7. Local students, members of the PEM Prize Committee and the press, guests from the Creative Collective and members of the Sisterhood of Salem meetup for women business owners have already helped kick off the collaborative project.
Jingles for the sculpture. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM.
Students from Salem’s Collins Middle School came to PEM for a presentation on the jingle sculpture as part of their place-based learning immersion program that aims “to create an enjoyable, inspiring experience to meet the students where they are as whole beings,” said the school’s Innovation Manager Elena Rodriguez-DePaul.
Leah Hopkins (Narragansett) spoke to the students in PEM’s Morse Auditorium about the story of the jingles and showed them her own hand-beaded regalia. Hopkins is the manager of Museum Education and Programs at Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and a cultural and land-based educator. Pointing to beads stitched on velvet in motifs of flowers, strawberries and shells, she explained how her Jingle Dance regalia holds teachings such as wisdom and integrity. She spoke of how the influenza pandemic of 1918 devastated Indigenous communities. When a young woman was so sick with the flu that she could barely stand, Hopkins recounted, her father made her a dress with deer toes that rattled, making the sound of the spirit coming to Earth or going home through the Milky Way. “We know the consequences for our elders and everyone around us — our lives changed,” she said, referring to the more recent pandemic in 2020.
Leah Hopkins gives a jingle dress dance presentation for Collins Middle School students. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM.
Hopkins explained that the weight of the regalia is experienced in many ways, much more than merely physically. She described the sensory feel of walking in her dress and compared the sound of the rattling jingles to the healing sound of rain. “You dance for all those who need healing,” she said.
Leah Hopkins gives a jingle dress dance presentation for Collins Middle School students. Photo by Kathy Tarantola/PEM.
Then, Jonathan Perry, a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, Aquinnah, and a singer, dancer and artist, drummed and called to the spirit world while jingle dancer Hailey-Jade Araujo (Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa), danced with meticulous footwork and raised her eagle feather fan to catch the spirit. After the moving dance, the students asked questions about Araujo’s red dress (made by her mother) and about the eagle feather in her hair. Eagles are powerful beings and will fly right into a thunderstorm, explained Perry, who has been an educational collaborator at PEM for more than two decades. Dancers wear their feathers as a conduit for prayer. He also explained that the drum was considered a living elder and a heartbeat. He encouraged the students in the audience to never stop dancing throughout their lives: “It’s good for your body. It’s powerful. If you want to be good at sports and be healthy, dancing is key.”
Outside the auditorium, the students lined up to take turns adding the silvery tin jingles to the cloud sculpture. “I think it was really inspiring, where she comes from,” said Rayan, an eighth grader, of Araujo’s performance. “Her colors really shine. She really likes her identity.”
“Inspiring” was repeated by three enthusiastic eighth-grade girls. “And they go deeper than just the design,” one said of the Jingle Dance regalia.
The next day, many more students from Collins Middle School were scheduled to visit PEM, place a jingle and learn about the healing power found in community. “Many hands in our PEM community will help construct this jingle cloud sculpture,” said Kramer. “Through the collective art-making experience, Watt reminds us that —much like the 'butterfly effect' in nature — we all have the power to contribute small actions that can influence the future and help bring healing.”
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