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 grant from the Office of Arts and Humanities, 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), 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, home to Watson, her artist husband, their Great Danes, and their son.