JAMES STERLING PITT ARTIST TALK
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
James Sterling Pitt is an American artist whose work is influenced by a traumatic brain injury he sustained in 2007. Here he talks with Professor of Psychology and Neurology Linda Noble and her students at the University of Texas at Austin and is interviewed by Allie Haeusslein, Associate Director at Pier 24 Photography.
About James sterling pitt
JAMES STERLING PITT
Untitled, 2021
acrylic on ceramic and wood
8 x 5½ x 3¼ inches
(JSP202113)
James Sterling Pitt’s artistic process is one of exploring and honoring the often abstract and unknown realms of memories and their emotional counterparts. For many years, Pitt’s artistic practice served as an autobiographical image bank, representing particular memories, places, and sensations. Fleeting sightings and experiences were reinterpreted as two and three dimensional reconstructions; standing as surrogates for images lost during momentary, perceptual shifts. Having suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident over fifteen years ago, this way of working began as a tool to help cope with short-term memory loss and difficulties with language. Through a process of drawing and sculpture, he was able to give form to the less concrete and harder to articulate aspects of the mind, such as something sensed or a fading memory.
James Sterling Pitt (b. 1977, Warwick, New York) earned his BFA from the University of New Mexico and his MFA from Mills College. Pitt’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Boston, and Berlin, and group exhibitions throughout the Bay Area and New York. His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum, and the Blanton Museum of Art.
The artist lives and works in Santa Fe, NM.
