Before earning her MFA from Yale, Marie Watt, of Seneca descent, studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, one of the venues lor her traveling exhibition Blanket Stories: Ladder. Its centerpiece was a group of 8-fool sculptures, the most imposing of which, Three Sisters (Cousin Rose, Sky Woman, Four Pelts, and All My Relations), 2004, consists of three looming stacks of folded wool blankets, each rising from a wood dais an the way to the ceiling. Watt – who could be called the anti-Andre – has taken what’s flat and horizontal and, through repetition and accumulation, given it verticality and height. In its impressive ascent, one of the stacks assumes a dancing, serpentine pose; the bodily associations are evocative, as are alusions to Native American culture – specifically, the importance of the woven blanket as an object of status and trade, or sale to whites. But Watt’s blankets are all ordinary plaids, stripes or solids, with borders of satin, selvage or fringe. She collected them far and wide; inventory tags occasionally poke out of the stack, bearing her notes in red ink on condition, color, binding, pattern.