1859 Sept | Oct 2012_opt

Local Habit
artist in residence
RIG S
R G P S
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“I wasn’t able to learn my Indian languages because my father, who knew
five, had them beaten out of him, physically and emotionally, at a school for
Indians,” Pitt says.
When Pitt was in sixth grade, her father moved the family to Madras,
hoping to distance his children from the cigarettes and drinking on the
reservation. In town, however, Pitt felt the sting of racism. She recalls that
one of her high school teachers repeatedly told racist jokes about Indians in
class. “I was trying to balance the truth my parents spoke into my soul—
‘you’re smart, so work hard, don’t let your people down’—with the
expectation from others that because you’re Indian, you must
be lazy and a drunk,” she says. “So, I hated school, drank and
smoked. I played hooky, swimming in the farmers’ irrigation
canals, dreaming of being an Olympic swimmer, like
Esther Williams.”
Skimming by with just enough credits to graduate, Pitt
high-tailed it to Portland. For the next twenty years she
worked as a hair stylist.
It wasn’t until she was in her 30s that Pitt would make a
series of decisions that would define her life as an artist. She
enrolled at Mt. Hood Community College, majoring in mental
health and human services and graduating with a 3.8 GPA. “I finally
discovered I actually had a brain,” she laughs. Secondly, she signed up
for a ceramics class. It became an instant obsession. “I would literally
run from mental health class to ceramics,” Pitt says jubilantly. “It was love
at first touch. I loved the way the clay felt and smelled. I studied it, even
dreamt about it.”
Perhaps the most defining moment came one year later in 1982, when
she attended a book-signing by Navajo Indian artist R. C. Gorman. She still
can’t believe she walked up to the man The New York Times called “the Picasso
of American Indian Art,” told him that she was an artist, then handed
him Polaroid pictures of her first ceramic masks.
He asked her the price of her five masks. Pitt told him they were $100
each. “But this one,” she said, “is $110.”
“Why $110?” asked Gorman.
“Because … I like it,” she recalls, with laughter. “That was the extent of my
marketing. He bought two, and now I was a professional artist.” Today her
ceramic masks fetch up to $4,000.
Gorman eventually became a mentor for Pitt, recommending
her work to prestigious galleries in Santa Fe,
L.A. and San Francisco. One day, while visiting his Taos
estate, she was stunned to see her masks hanging not
far from his collections of Picasso, Monet, Chagall,
Renoir and a Warhol painting of Gorman himself.
Inspired, Pitt returned to her elders at Warm
Springs, soaking up the traditions and legends she
missed as a child. She Who Watches, a symbol of female
wisdom and prosperity and a petroglyph still
standing sentinel in the Columbia Gorge, was transformational
for Pitt. “It was like finding myself,” she recalls.
“She Who Watches has been there for a thousand years. She
gave me a sense of power that no one can ever take away.”
Now Pitt passes down those stories, through her art. Little
Wak’amu has become a legend among her people, but her work is
no longer just about the art. Increasingly, you can find Pitt visiting students
at the tiny Celilo Village. Like her elders, she passes down stories and
traditions of a rich heritage. “We have a wonderful history of survival,” she
says. “We’re a tough bunch. We aren’t going away, and we can express that
through art.”
0 1859 oregon's mAgAzine SEPT OCT 2012