Star People
The high point of the summer for me was the Lillian Pitt exhibition “Celestial Ancestors” at the Stonington Gallery (125 South Jackson St–August 2024).
I have known Lillian for many years, since way back when she visited Washington State University while I was teaching there in the mid-1980s. I bought a pair of her earrings that I still cherish!
Along the years I have acquired prints, a Stick mask in ceramic, and a small standing Shadow Spirit in ceramic. I first wrote about her when she had a major exhibition at the Warm Springs Museum in 1999, an article published in Art Papers Magazine and my book, Art and Politics Now.
Pitt has created many series of works. In “Celestial Ancestors,” she introduces the Star People:
In Native American legends, the Star People are often associated with advanced knowledge, spiritual insight, and the ability to traverse space and time. They are seen as benevolent helpers whose wisdom has been passed down from generation to generation. In some traditions, the Star People are revered as ancestors. In others, they are regarded as beings who came to Earth to teach humans essential skills of sustenance, such as planting and healing. Alternatively, they may be seen as guides who assist individuals in finding their way home.
These stories hold a special place in my heart, and it brings me great comfort to have a skilled sculptor, Ben Dye, bring my version of the Star People to life.
~ Lillian Pitt
As we enter the gallery, we immediately encounter a large red glass mask of the iconic Tsagaglal (“she who watches”) who benevolently presides over all of the star people. Tsagaglal is an actual petroglyph on the Columbia River and has been Lillian Pitt’s lodestar for decades. Behind her, six feet tall painted steel sculptures of Star People based on outlines and patterns, rather than a solid form, lead us through the exhibition with titles like Pondering his Direction and Protected from the Dawn.
On the back wall hangs a smaller Tsagaglal. Facing walls include clusters of other Star People, each one offering us a different mood through a specific title. Many are painted on fragments of wood, a new material for Pitt with the color alone suggesting the title. For example, Star Person After Visiting Hawaii’s Hot Spots, has some pink striations; Star Person Fully Dressed for the Big Dance suggests an elegant outfit with an edge of bark as a wrap! They are almost miraculous, I felt guided and comforted as I looked at them. There is both humor and reverence in these works.
The exhibition also includes some of her jewelry in various media, including jasmine rings and silver earrings, blown glass with embedded imagery, and a large Spirit Watcher, with huge feathers surrounding his head, and a painted raku face. He reminds me of the great headdresses worn by youth at a recent Powwow here. Stick Indians have been a subject for Pitt for many years and this large figure seems to be the grandfather all those smaller Stick Indian masks, much larger and more dominating.
One of the wonders of Lillian Pitt’s work is that she is constantly evolving with new media and subjects, even as all of her work is unified by her particular view of the world. Barry Lopez expressed it beautifully in the catalog of her exhibition Spirits Keep Whistling Me Home (1999):
One of the hardest things to hold together in modern American culture–a rice paper house in a hurricane–is a community founded in memory, in imagination, in moral relations with the land. Lillian’s Pitt’s work tells us at least one woman among us won’t quit. She hasn’t given up, And so each of us gazing at her work has a place in the community of which she is a working part We’re standing together because of Lillian.
~Susan Platt, PhD
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