Lillian Pitt | |
---|---|
Born | 1944 (age 78–79) Warm Springs Reservation, Oregon |
Nationality | Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, American |
Education | Mt. Hood Community College |
Known for | Mask-making, ceramics, and mixed media |
Website | lillianpitt |
Lillian Pitt (born 1944) is a Native American artist from the Columbia River Plateau region of the Pacific Northwest. Her Native American name is Wak'amu (camas root), chosen because it represents a "stubborn plant that won't let go of the earth", referring to the long periods of time she spent wandering the hills during her childhood. [1] Pitt is primarily known for her sculpting and mixed media artistry, which focuses on 12,000 years of Native American history and tradition of the Columbia River region. [2]
Pitt, who is Wasco and Yakama, was born and grew up on the Warm Springs Reservation in 1944. Later, after graduating from Madras High School, she moved to Portland, Oregon, in the early 1960s. Due to a back issue, she decided to take art classes at Mount Hood Community College and practice designing ceramic masks in 1981. Some of her early influences included the sculptor and painter R.C. Gorman (Navajo Nation) and Japanese mask-making and ceramic practices such as Raku and Anagama. [3]
Lillian Pitt is also known for her iconography, in which she works to identify ancestral Columbia River petroglyphs in order to affirm the Indigenous presence in the region. Pitt is skilled in reanimating ancient images illustrated on rocks. And in the 1990s, she experimented with several mediums, including precious metals to create jewelry, bronze masks, and sculptures. She has also collaborated with the Pendleton Woolen Mills to create blankets representing the Columbia River legends and petroglyphs. [2]
In 2000, the Army Corps of Engineers commissioned her to create bronze plaques on petroglyph imagery for Columbia River tribal fishing sites, which were flooded by a dam. During the same year, she was awarded a fellowship from Portland's Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center to create large-scale bronze sculptures. She had also started several public arts projects in the early 2000s, in collaboration with artists such as Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Gail Tremblay (Onondaga/Mi'kmaq), and Elizabeth Woody (Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama), who is also her niece.
Pitt is a significant partner of the Confluence Project, a collaborative effort of Pacific Northwest tribes that stretches 450 miles from near the mouth of the Columbia River to the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake River in Idaho. Renowned artist Maya Lin, civic groups from Washington and Oregon, and other artists, architects, and landscape designers have also participated. Pitt designed a Welcome Gate for the river side of the Land bridge that reachers oars inset with glass masks honoring Chinook women. [4]
The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state.
Chinookan peoples include several groups of Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States who speak the Chinookan languages. Since at least 4000 BCE Chinookan peoples have resided along the Lower and Middle Columbia River (Wimahl) from the river's gorge downstream (west) to the river's mouth, and along adjacent portions of the coasts, from Tillamook Head of present-day Oregon in the south, north to Willapa Bay in southwest Washington. In 1805 the Lewis and Clark Expedition encountered the Chinook Tribe on the lower Columbia.
Walla Walla, Walawalałáma, sometimes Walúulapam, are a Sahaptin indigenous people of the Northwest Plateau. The duplication in their name expresses the diminutive form. The name Walla Walla is translated several ways but most often as "many waters".
The Multnomah are a tribe of Chinookan people who live in the area of Portland, Oregon, in the United States. Multnomah villages were located throughout the Portland basin and on both sides of the Columbia River. The Multnomah speak a dialect of the Upper Chinookan language in the Oregon Penutian family.
The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American tribe who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States, along the Umatilla and Columbia rivers.
The Klickitat River is a tributary of the Columbia River, nearly 96 miles (154 km) long, in south-central Washington in the United States. It drains a rugged plateau area on the eastern side of the Cascade Range northeast of Portland, Oregon. In 1986, 10 miles (16 km) of the river were designated Wild and Scenic from the confluence with Wheeler Creek, near the town of Pitt, to the confluence with the Columbia River.
Celilo Falls was a tribal fishing area on the Columbia River, just east of the Cascade Mountains, on what is today the border between the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington. The name refers to a series of cascades and waterfalls on the river, as well as to the native settlements and trading villages that existed there in various configurations for 15,000 years. Celilo was the oldest continuously inhabited community on the North American continent until 1957, when the falls and nearby settlements were submerged by the construction of The Dalles Dam. In 2019, there were calls by tribal leaders to restore the falls.
The Yakima War (1855–1858), also referred to as the Yakima Native American War of 1855 or the Plateau War, was a conflict between the United States and the Yakama, a Sahaptian-speaking people of the Northwest Plateau, then part of Washington Territory, and the tribal allies of each. It primarily took place in the southern interior of present-day Washington. Isolated battles in western Washington and the northern Inland Empire were sometimes separately referred to as the Puget Sound War and the Palouse War, respectively.
The Mitchell Museum of the American Indian is a museum in Evanston, Illinois that focuses exclusively on the history, culture and arts of North American native peoples. It is a Core Member of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, a consortium of 25 ethnic museums and cultural centres in Chicago.
The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic Santa Fe Federal Building, a landmark Pueblo Revival building listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Federal Building. The museum houses the National Collection of Contemporary Indian Art, with more than 7,000 items.
Wasco-Wishram are two closely related Chinook Indian tribes from the Columbia River in Oregon. Today the tribes are part of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs living in the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon and Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation living in the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington.
The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is a recognized Native American tribe made of three tribes who put together a confederation. They live on and govern the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of Oregon.
Upper Chinook, endonym Kiksht, also known as Columbia Chinook, and Wasco-Wishram after its last surviving dialect, is a recently extinct language of the US Pacific Northwest. It had 69 speakers in 1990, of whom 7 were monolingual: five Wasco and two Wishram. In 2001, there were five remaining speakers of Wasco.
Gail Tremblay was an American writer and artist from Washington State. She is well known for having woven baskets from film strips that depict stereotypical subject matter of Native Americans, such as Western movies and anthropological documentaries. She received a Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 2001.
The visual arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes Central America and Greenland. The Siberian Yupiit, who have great cultural overlap with Native Alaskan Yupiit, are also included.
Elizabeth Woody is an American Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama artist, author, and educator. In March 2016, she was the first Native American to be named poet laureate of Oregon by Governor Kate Brown.
Fifteenmile Creek is a 54-mile (87 km) long tributary of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Oregon. It drains 373 square miles (966 km2) of Hood River and Wasco counties. Arising in the Cascade Range near Mount Hood, it flows northeast then west to its confluence with the Columbia near The Dalles.
Salmon Cycle Marker is a 2005 sculpture by Ken MacKintosh and Lillian Pitt, installed outside Portland State University's Native American Student and Community Center, in the U.S. state of Oregon.
Pat Courtney Gold was a Wasco Native fiber artist and basket weaver from the Columbia River area of Oregon. She graduated with a BA in mathematics and physics from Whitman College and worked as a mathematician-computer specialist before beginning her career in basket weaving. Gold harvested traditional plant fibers to use in her work—including Dogbane, cattail, sedge grass, red cedar bark and tree roots. Her pieces often reflected the natural world along the Columbia River, mixing traditional motifs such as condors and sturgeon with contemporary figures like airplanes. Gold also became an environmental and cultural educator, helping to spread knowledge of her ancestral heritage and basketry skills.
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