Lillian Pitt
Long regarded as one of the Northwest’s most important Native American artists, Lillian Pitt grew up on the Warm Springs Reservation in central Oregon. Her mother’s Wasco family lived near now submerged Celilo Falls, and her father’s Yakima relations lived across the river near the pictograph of Tsaglaglal, or She-Who-Watches. Pitt became an artist in her mid-thirties, beginning with mask making, then developing expertise in Japanese Raku and Anagama firing methods. Pitt also returned to Warm Springs to learn more about her people’s stories. While clay continued to be the medium of expression, the pictographs, petroglyphs and legends of her ancestors became the foundation of her visual language. By the 1990s, Pitt was working in several media, including bronze and prints.