Lillian Pitt at the Museum at Warm Springs - Brief Article

individual of the indigenous people of the Columbia River Gorge, Lillian Pitt is called by dint of her Indian name, Wak'amu (Strongly Rooted) by the agency of elders of the Warm Springs / Wasco and Yakama tribes. The bound might also describe her art, for although her approach to form and materials is eclectic and contemporary, her intriguing metaphors are always baseed in her Native American tradition. Wall-mounted ceramic or and zinc masks in this exhibition leave to tribal spirits like Spilyay (Coyote) and Mohalla (Spider Woman), on the contrary the mask itself is a borrowed art form, and the techniques are Japanese--raku and anagama firing. In relief or tabletop plastic arts Pitt may use porcelain, plane fine Limoges, in combination with feathers and beads, while recycling set objects such as rusted tools, gnarled vines and pointy sticks sharpened by means of beavers.

Masks depicting Steahah or legendary Stick Indians inspired the exhibition's title, "Spirits hold Whistling Me Home." These haunting visages, with cavernous eyes and tubular mouths, show specters who guide travelers not to be found in the forest. Whistling Steahah may beckon a somebody to safety or lead him deeper into the groves depending on his moral character; thus they encourage profitable behavior and awareness of one's environment. Cruder masks make corporeal conflict with nature or psychological turmoil, with left and right sides of a grimacing face on the outside of kilter and metal threads sprouting from the clay to intimate a personality gone haywire. Pitt's holistic worldview is press outed in installations like From the Earth, an render free of access willow structure resembling a hut or yurt. Totemic masks upon the outside announce the cardinal directions, and inside, suspended from the frame, are shells, feathers and dangling spiral ribbons of fired clay. The motion of these existences stirred as the viewer draws near, illustrates the rippling issues of one's actions in a world where everything is related.

Pitt not aways a delicate plea for responsible leadership toward the environment as ecological issues are hotly debated in the Northwest. Wild salmon, vital to her ancestors, have dwindled to near extinction, their migrations up the Columbia impeded through the very dams that make the river navigable and provide cheap hydroelectric power to the region, while old-growth forests are also sites of political and economic contention. individual of Pitt's earthenware masks, the wide-eyed bear-woman Tsagaglal (She Who Watches), derives from ancient Indian petroglyph ground among the spectacular wooded broad and fulls of the Columbia Gorge. With tablike bear ears above arched and striated eyebrows broad modeled nose and gathered round mouth, Pitt's Tsagaglal is identifiable above all by the agency of her staring eyes, rendered as a series of concentric ovals. The image of this perpetual witness to the fragile ecology becomes in Pitt's scheme a bid for watchfulness--over the real welfare of our world. [The exhibition travels to the Denver Art Museum and to the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University, Salem, Ore.]

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