Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home:
The Work of Lillian Pitt

Artist Statement

My early work began as a playful interaction with clay. I learned to push, build, take away, and add clay to create mask forms. My main concern was to create a discernible face. I did not know other people who made clay masks. I knew few other potters or artists when I began to sculpt with clay, and did not have the courage to ask the few I did know how to make a strong nose or eyes that matched. I was thrilled when I received a book about Mexican masks from R.C. Gorman. Even though the masks in the book were made of wood decorated with various other materials, the spontaneity of design that did not sacrifice power to beauty gave me a basis for understanding the mask form.

At this early stage in my career I enjoyed learning about the techniques of hand built ceramic sculpture by translating mask forms from books of Northwest Coast and Alaskan art into clay, but it bothered me that my work was not really mine, that it was inspired by different groups of people that had specific reasons for creating the images in their work. I felt that I needed to make work that represented my own culture and who I am. At age thirty-six, the question of my own identity and ancestry was very important to me, but I still had a lot to learn about my own history. I had always thought I was from Warm Springs and that my family lived there forever. Little did I know.

I went home to Warm Springs and talked to my elder, Lucinda Smith and Cecilia Totus a friend of hers from Washington. I asked them both to tell me what they knew of my parents and grandparents and where they came from. That afternoon changed my life. I came away with stories about my great grandparent on the Washington side of the Columbia River and my mother’s people on the Oregon side. I learned that my people had a 10,000 year history of living in the Columbia River Gorge! I returned to my Portland studio empowered with such a profound sense of identity that I felt privileged to begin making images in clay of the pictographs, petroglyphs, and legendary beings of my ancestral home.

The emphasis of my work is on how one’s culture and history influence their art. It reflects events that are going on in my life or that move me. I enjoy naming pieces with my family Indian names, Y-uten, Timmex, Mohalla, Wa soox site, Kimsa, Yowan-swickt, or after places, tribes, and animals like Simnasho, Tenino, and nusux.

Lillian Pitt

Portland, Oregon, June 1999

Exhibition Statement

Lillian Pitt is a Native American artist whose work is deeply influenced by her roots in the Warm Springs/Wasco and Yakima customs. Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home featured an engaging selection of masks, totems, and ceramic baskets. Pitt works in a variety of materials which range from ceramics, to bronze to mixed media.

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