Stewart is Executive Director, curator, chief bottle washer and a Founder of Area 405 

AREA 405 and Oliver Street Studios is an ongoing big project to which I have dedicated my life since 2001.  It is a 66,000 square foot building of which I am part owner and filled with over 40 artists, a gallery where I am director /sole employee, and where I have built our home.
My first curatorial endeavor was in 1995, working with over 25 artists in a huge space. I was still new to Baltimore, coming here on a whim after traveling around the world for 2 years to begin making art again and the belief that there was space in which to make it.
I didn't know it then, but I now realize the aspect of creating through curating and building community is intrinsically a part of who I am and my way of making.
I feel very strongly about the ability to encourage others to create work and be a catalyst for things to happen.  AREA 405 and Oliver Street Studios is the platform I have created where this happens. 
I want to thank some very special folks for reminding me that this is part of my practice as much as the sculptures and drawings and installations, for sometimes, when water is all around us, we don't know we are swimming.

About AREA 405
AREA 405 is a 7000 square foot artist run space located started in 2003. It is located in a 169 year-old artist-owned warehouse within Baltimore's Station North Arts and Entertainment District where I am committed to showcasing and strengthening the vitality of the arts community within Baltimore and more . 
The preserved industrial character of our warehouse provides a particular and distinctive setting for exhibitions as well as extensive studio space for the artists who create here (Oliver Street Studios) and The Station North Tool Library. 

AREA 405's mission continues to be to produce, present and promote arts and cultural programming by offering a space for experimentation and collaboration with artists from Baltimore and beyond. AREA 405 also collaborates with scores of cultural and community organizations, raising awareness about and funds for many causes, groups and individuals throughout the region and from around the world since opening its doors in 2003.
Area 405 is an Artist Run space and I'm grateful for being able to have the autonomy to craft a space that is so big and yet incredibly nimble.

These installations are smaller and often need to be experienced from different perspectives to get the whole story. I have again used family heirlooms, objects and ephemera along with contemporary upholstery material, vinyl, steel, and other objects to create environments, performances and individual small works that evoke humor, nostalgia, whimsy, mystery and a little sadness in their own fleeting moments.

Each title is found by searching through books -some of which are over 200 years old- that were written in and were owned by my ancestors.

Descriptive Information about Centennial of the Everyday
Centennial of the Everyday is a year long collaborative project by artists Stewart Watson and Lauren Frances Adams. 7 people connected to Gadsby’s Tavern Museum were found and interviewed, with a special emphasis on working with women and people of color. Their personal stories of place and family history connect to broader themes of belonging, work, identity, and genealogy. Each interview resulted in creating a sculptural installation in the ballroom.
In 1917, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased this room’s decorative woodwork and installed it in their American Wing. Here, the artists acknowledge the centennial of its acquisition by using furniture borrowed from the interviewees. The room is staged similar to how The Met uses the “Alexandria Ballroom” as a staged backdrop for fine domestic furnishings of the Federal period.
A Particular Provenance is a reference to the provenance, or origin and record of ownership, of museum objects. Often, museums lack the details about the individual who owned or made the object because of the absence of historical documentation. By actively including living, everyday people, the viewer is invited to investigate these sculptural storytelling portraits for visual clues related to each individual’s identity (such as their favorite flora, their profession, or their hobbies) and their personal connection to Gadsby’s Tavern Museum.
Lauren Frances Adams and Stewart Watson's collaborative immersive work was featured throughout Gadsby's Tavern Museum in Alexandria, VA from May 2017- September 2017.

Images courtesy Vince Lupo

"3Story Stories" and "GoodNight MoonLight NightLight" are two projects that have been part of my ongoing commitment to literacy and the citizens of Baltimore City. 
3Story Stories resides on The Wonderground, a series of 8 vacant lots I adopted through the Adopt-A-Lot program for our community several years ago.  The installation is a set of three padded, seats created to look like oversized marble steps, and a rotating library created as three row houses each has books for a certain group, children, young adult and adults, and are curated to be a diverse selection of readings representative of our neighborhood and encouraging intergenerational reading.
To date, through 3 Story Stories, we have been able to encourage multiple community readings, dozens of impromptu readings and I have been able to distribute over 1300 meaningful books thus far into our community.  This project is made possible by Lots Alive, a grant program of the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts and the Baltimore Office of Sustainability . 

Goodnight MoonLight NightLight was created for a weekend installation in Baltimore's inner harbor during the Baltimore Book Festival. The tent was called the Story Share and was a project of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts. It featured a giant moon night light whose LED lights would morph and change and peaceful reading space created with dozens of stripes of fabric meant to evoke spines of a book. There were beanbags and pillows and poufs and rugs, all in an otherwise ordinary tent. Books were donated, shared and swapped as well as several scheduled readings were organized throughout the weekend. this will be an annual project.

2016-current 

This is a body of work I made and installed in a 6 week timeframe for an exhibition at The Walters Art Museum. It was all new work and part of a continuing series predominantly focused on using the collection of stuff my family has accumulated and subsequently left in my care over the past 200 years.

The title of each of the works in "follmers fourth defluxion" is derived from passages in books that have been entrusted to me, each having been written in by its owners, my ancestors.
Arthur's New Juvenile Library, Maggy's Baby, 1852, first belonged to Alfred
The Golden Gift , A Wreath of Gems, 1849 first belonged to Mary
Who is My Neighbor, or The Wilson Family, 1852 first belonged to Alfred
Pictures for Our Darlings, 1876, first belonged to Willie
Philadelphia Cookbook, A Manual of Home Economies 1886, first belonged to Mary
The Poetical Works of Robert Burns, 1883, first belonged to Aunt Edith
The School Dictionary; or Expositor of the English Language, 1812 first belonged to Elizabeth

Truth is subjective and I have uncovered a future tale of what this stuff can mean. I hope as I continue to understand how to make room for history and my own genetic predisposition to possession while I make work that consumes the underwhelming historical artifacts my family painstakingly preserved to keep itself remembered I am honoring it.

Investigating the ordinary, or an indefatigable search for comfort.

follmers fourth defluxion is a story, an installation, my collective unconscious past and an opportunity to delve into the way I investigate before and find room for it in my next.

title:“You see before you.” said the old man to him, “ the Way of Life and the Road to Destruction. Choose, now, which you will walk in.”

media:
5 knives steel & bone,
great grandfather William N Watson's chicken cup,
Portrait of Curtis Bruce Watson, my great great grandfather, (b 1839 d 1872),
Portrait of Mary Nagle Watson, my great great grandmother, (b 1842 d 1929),
silver plated fork 1866- a wedding gift MEW, that was rather chewed ( the other 5 are currently in use at the Watson/Vose household, 4 steel & bone forks, the copy of the list 1862,
great great grandmother Watson's 11 linen luncheon napkins 1866 given for her wedding - used by me often - 1 ruined by HE washing machine 2013.
spiny lacy antimacassar handmade,
The Feather Stitched “W” (red),
great great grandparents ledgers 1860-1880 don't you wish you could read them?,
great grandfather's winning pullet cup 1912,
great grandmother Mary Louise Bastress's napkin ring ( b 1867 d 1947),
Wilhelm Friedrich Nagle's chair 1820,
My great great great great grandfather's mother of pearl cane topper circa 1820, tassel,
receipts for moving c 1860,
fabric, polyfill, thread, steel, vinyl, gimp, magic, jute strapping, staples, glue, hardware
size of the wall construction : 120” x 245”x 70” variable

title: The Pudding of Long Ago
media:
great great grandfather Bastress' (b 1838 d 1915) trunk, BBW's Army Uniforms wool 1919, silk day dress worn by great great grandmother Watson 1866, great great grandfather's velvet wedding vests 1866,
3 of my grandfather's cotton shirts 1948, 5 of my father's Korean War era US Lieutenant uniforms, my high school graduation dress 1986, CB's gold & enamel cuff links, various bonnets, silks, gloves, lace, bloomers, and other random stuff circa 1870, vinyl, leather, thread, tassels, casters
size 30" x 30" x 50"

title: “Set a chair, Jenny, for the gentlemen” said she to the child.
the valuable walnut chair from Milton that my grandmother( b 1892, d 1991) gave to me six times between 1982 and 1985,
ratcheting straps, steel, fabric, polyfill, vinyl, gimp, bedazzlings, tacks
15 feet 11 feet 11 feet approximately

title: Has your gran-ma's pock-et Bunch o' keys and mo-ney? Spool o' thread and thim-ble? Can-dy made o' ho-ney?

media:
EZ teether rubber 1931, vinyl, tassel, thread
Willie's toddler glass 1868
Watson family chair parts circa 1880
horn mustache comb circa 1850
an important shooter 1895, glass
eyebrow comb circa 1880
civil war hymn book book that weathered the 1889 flood
Altered photographs of my great grandparents, great uncle, and great great uncle, great great grandparents, 23karat gold leaf
book given to Mary E Nagle in 1852, then annotated for young ladies 1922 by her before she died
dirt from 1300 20th Ave, gathered, 1986, 23 karat gold
casters from family furniture that I might still own
Photographs of the family furniture I have deconstructed and some that were saved from the axe
oh and my great grandfather's saw i used to cut up the chairs
and a few other things I've not yet described here but you may just want to look for
144" x 252" x 160" variable

title: SIR, oe'r a gill I gat your card
media:
parts of the Nagle leather trunk from 1876 I cherished, correspondence between family members 1862-1978, random legal documents that I am keeping safe for something, for now, vinyl, gimp, polyfil, glue, thread
24" x 22" x 22"

title: Turn it over, and see how comical it looks; everything appears to have lost its gravity.
media:
My great, great, great, grandfather's chair with writing on the bottom "Nagle 184-",
paint made from burning one of my great, great grandfather's chairs along with ancestral letters, receipts & documents
acrylic matte medium, steel, felt, hardware
wall painted with paint made from burned chair and letters is 144" x 112", wooden chair is about the size of an upside down chair at a jaunty angle

title: The little knot of which he was the head and front, wherein he was supreme
media:
My great great grandfather's bow-tie 1871,
my great great great grandmother's mirror 1852,
fabric from the wedding dresses of grandmother 1926, my great, great, grandmother 1866, Me 1999,
steel, poly-fil, thread, vinyl, tassels, hardware
33" x 5" x 65"

you can see the bowtie on your neck in the hand mirror, but you cannot see your face.
As to the addition of mirror, I felt this was a way to place yourself within the timeline of the work. Either you look in the mirror as just a mirror, check your teeth and miss the point, or you find the object that relates to the time and you connect with that, and then you no longer can see yourself in the mirror and only see the object "worn" on you.
my bio if you wish to read it...
 Stewart Watson was born in Pennsylvania in 1968. She received her BFA in sculpture from the Pennsylvania State University in 1991. For the two years after graduation, she worked and traveled in Greece, Egypt, Kenya, and throughout East and Southeast Asia, returning to the United States, choosing Baltimore as her home. She returned to school in 2007 to The University of Maryland where she became a first time parent, was an Anne Truitt Scholar, Daniel Nicholson Olkhe Award winner, a teacher, and received her MFA in 2010.

She has received individual artist grants from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2011, 2007, and 2001, two 2016 individual artist grants from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, a 2016-2017 grant from Alexandria Office of Arts, Alexandria, VA, and is the winner of the 2010 Sadat Art for Peace Prize. Recent exhibitions include the 2014 Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalists at The Walters Art Museum, Marian Boesky Gallery, (New York, NY), UNCP A.D. Gallery, (Pembroke, NC), and solo exhibitions at The Contemporary, (Baltimore, MD) and McDaniel College, (Westminster, MD), artist panels at the Kreeger Museum and The Baltimore Museum of Art and a residency at the Digital Fabrication Residency (Easton, MD). She teaches at The Maryland Institute College of Art.

Her work has been featured in publications including the inaugural print magazine BmoreArt a Journal of Art + Ideas (2015), Baltimore Magazine ( October 2016),  OutPost Journal (2012), Citypaper, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and blogs ArtFCity, BmoreArt and HaHa Magazine.

Watson is an artist, a parent, a partner, a curator, an educator, a volunteer, and community advocate, serving on several regional boards and organizations. She is the Executive Director and curator of AREA 405, a 7000 square foot exhibition and event space she co-founded in 2003. She is co-owner, founder, and president of Oliver Street Studios, established in 2002, a 66,000 square foot warehouse in the heart of Baltimore City. Oliver Street Studios has grown from a vacant building into an artistic and community anchor for the Station North Arts & Entertainment District. It now serves as studios for 45 artists, a gallery, a tool library,  and home to Watson, her artist husband, their dogs, cat, and son.

The degeneration of Watson's spine has lead to years of surgeries, procedures, metal rods, chronic pain and a perpetual longing for relief. This genetic quirk or hereditary flaw could be a repercussion of family possessions and the weight of obsession leading to the need to balance, lift, prop, strap, truss, buffer, embellish, stuff, cushion and pad objects and spaces - ever searching for that perfect place to settle.

Through luxurious fabrics, chosen to evoke the perception of a well-appointed living rooms and the memories rarely enjoyed, Watson manifests the uncomfortable perfection of the nineteenth century lifestyle through remnants of her kin's obsession with the past. Drawn into anonymous portraiture and reliquaries that immortalize and elevate the relationships she has with deceased members of her family, elevated to levels of tumultuous reverence. With over two centuries of objects that have been kept in boxes and passed down without regard for usefulness or beauty yet marked with names and dates and data only for posterity’s sake, the value has been affixed and the value has been bestowed from the family connection rather than practicality, market worth, or even demand from existing family members as there are few left to fight over the mountainous remains.

Her family furnishings and preserved relics have been kept as vital artifacts that inform her as she researches the generations of genealogical data and grapples with ancestral acquaintances and the contemporary conundrum of acquisition through each new work she makes. Now, nostalgia, humor and this delicate interdependence are critical aspects of what she makes and through which, she consumes her own history. 

These are an ongoing series of familial investigations as I explore the hundreds and thousands of items from my family collection. I am getting to know more of my ancestors one by one through this work and project intimate aspects of their lives to the viewer commenting upon the passage of time, loss, and how we remember and are remembered.

Over the last 20 years many of my site specific sculptures and installations started with written proposals for specific exhibition spaces. From there I ask questions that are answered in the fabrication of new work for each show.

As family or species, so much of what we are is similar that only a tiny bit makes us unique. These slight yet all important differences interest me. Genealogy, genetics and items — from photographs to furnishings — preserved as family artifacts inform me as I uncover generations of ancestors through each new sculptural environment.

There is a tension in the viewer’s perception that comes from my attraction to opposites and from the way materials are manipulates; where balance, prop, drop, decay and remain. Moments of tension, nostalgia, humor and interdependence are revealed in the precariousness of each site specific installation; as though both the physical and metaphorical home are on the verge of going from idyllic to chaotic, pushed to it’s limit by uncertainty, a family row, or of a natural disaster.

The furniture for "Bergere", "Allegheny Mountains", and "If I found it in the photograph" are all family pieces that were passed down to me. Each is researched by family verbal history, photographic information, and actual writing pertaining to lineage on the furniture that identifies where things came from. These furnishings are significant for their age and family ownership, not for their value or usefulness in contemporary settings. At this time, this was a new aspect of the work I was just beginning to figure out by actually using, deconstructing and repurposing the pieces to continue a dialog with and about genealogy and object.

Time and decay. Balance and suspense. Humor and family. Pain and propping. Dropping and arching. Failing and succeeding.
Objects are balanced or prodded in ways that accentuate the parlous nature of elements in space. Some seem to defy gravity, while others revel in its existence.
Honesty in presentation and material remains vital to my work. There are no secret hangers keeping the work from toppling over. The precariousness is real as is the potential for a kinetic event.

This work really was about engaging with the public and beginning to draw them into my work in a new way. I began to share my personal narrative more openly, became lighter and more playful in the way I worked with material, while subtlety layering in gravitas content.

Guinea fowl feather tests and beginning genetic ideas and installations 
I was thinking about the relationship of guinea fowls and the scientists who use them in genetics testing. I was noting the distinct patterns of each feather, reflecting on each being unique yet similar enough to others. Combined, the feathers form the whole bird. Each feather maintains it’s difference, it’s uniqueness, yet still part of a singular bird.

The idea of uniqueness, yet being part of a whole became increasingly important as I was going through fertility treatments, actually getting pregnant, and becoming a mother, becoming part of something unique, collective, and bigger than myself.

I also liked how feathers were actually light rather than heavy, making them a convenient antethetical metaphor for what I was going through. 

"Alas! how few of us are able to accomplish as much as this apparently senseless oyster, which has actually converted a curse into a blessing, and changed a trial into a treasure!”

2018

custom designed textile, family items including ; 46star American flag (1906), portrait of Bobby (1932 RB Watson), Great Grandfather’s letters to my Grandfather( 1918), Grandfather’s WW1 uniform hats, PRR sink (1920), child’s wash stand (1900), rope bed(1830), spinning wheel (1880), the highchair (1870), a list of my father’s beer tasting notes(1986), book and box of personal items(1860-1931) my ancestral photographs (1890) steel, velvet, vinyl, tassels, gimp, thread, cotter pin, graph tape

this was an opportunity to revisit the carte de visite and cabinet cards for portraiture by creating a selfie station using objects from my family as well as a faux backdrop similar to those in the portraits of my family featured on the nearby wall. I used graph tape to connect each person to a particular matriarch in my family.

Title taken from Ettie's Leaves from Nature Story-Book 1892 Vol III, by Mrs M A B Kelly

#RemarkableSpecimen @stew_artwatson