Having suffered a traumatic brain injury many years ago, Jamie Sterling Pitt developed an artistic practice that served as an autobiographical image bank, representing memories, places, and sensations and reinterpreting these experiences in the form of two- and three-dimensional reconstructions. This process became a tool to help cope with his short-term memory loss and difficulties with language. Through drawing and sculpture, he is able to give form to the less concrete and harder to articulate aspects of the mind, such as something sensed or a fading memory. Recently he has used a combination of wood, ceramic, acrylic, and glaze in his work. “I am interested in a visual ambiguity to material where it is not abundantly clear what is made of wood and what is made of clay. This allows for contemplation of both material and the interior space of one of the forms in what related to both the body and architecture.”
During his residency at HCCC, he plans to explore functionality and use his studio to create sculptural furniture and play with sight lines and space. He hopes visitors will be encouraged to use and activate his works with their bodies.
Originally from New York, Pitt earned his BFA from the University of New Mexico and his MFA from Mills College. He currently lives and works in Houston, TX, and Santa Fe, NM. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, New Mexico, and Berlin, and in group exhibitions at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MI, and the Schneider Museum of Art is Ashland, OR, as well as throughout the Bay Area and New York. Most recently, his work was shown in dialogue with JB Blunk at Blunk Space and solo exhibitions at Ratio 3, San Francisco, and Seven Sisters, Houston. His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Blanton Museum, Austin, TX; and the Berkeley Art Museum.
Jamie’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Laura Babka.
