RICHARD PITTS: Creating Art, “Creating Yourself”

 In 3rd grade, Richard Pitts had a secret.  He wanted to be an artist.  The spark was lit by a teacher who became a mentor.  He kept it a secret from his family until he graduated high school.  But after that, his passion for a life in art could not be suppressed.  Some 65 years later, he is still as passionate about making art as he was in 3rd grade.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi everyone, I'm Bud Mitchkin, and welcome to Travel Treasures Across America. It's a series of conversations with people whose work in towns big and small across the United States enriches life for locals and visitors alike. In this episode, we're focusing on public art across America with artist Richard Pitts. Richard Pitts has had more than a few years to think about the power of making art. He's 85 and has been in love with the idea since third grade. As you'll hear, he's eloquent about the subject. And he's as busy as ever with pieces this spring in Knoxville, Tennessee, New Hope, Pennsylvania, Ellicott City, Maryland, and a work on a paper exhibit in Paris. He's a Pennsylvania guy now, in the northeast section of the state, near the New York State border. But Pitt's persona as an artist was really created in the almost 50 years he spent in New York City. You got a few beautiful things behind you there.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Yeah, well, I'm in the middle of my studio. It's uh, should I should I take this and show you?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yeah, why not? Why not? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

So uh this is mostly the painting studio. And I have two big printmaking presses which I do prints. And this is a recent painting, uh, just finished. And so this gives you an idea of the painting studio, and then in here is another room which is a sculpture studio.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

And here's my materials, and here is some uh smaller work. Uh and these are tools and rollers and my welding equipment back there, and uh so you have the Cook's Tour.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

That's beautiful. Now you um you're in Pennsylvania, correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Yeah, it's an area called the Endless Mountains.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So so you have some room for all of this, but when you were uh primarily when you were based in New York, uh New York and space, those two things don't often go together well. So I'm curious, as an artist with all these different uh elements of your artwork, how how did you manage that uh when you were based out of New York?

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Yeah, where's it where there's a will, there's a way. So uh I've had uh early on I had different losses. I lived on the Bowery when the Bowery was really the Bowery. I'm 85 years old.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

So in You were there, no kidding, when the Bowery was the Bowery.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Yeah, so in 1959, when I was there on Fifth Street in the Bowery, it's it's sort of near uh right next to the oldest bar in New York called the Sorley's. Great convenience, great convenience. So, anyhow, uh it was great contrast being on the Bowery at that time because um it's uh it was a test for the eye of the beholder. If you had a vision that tested it.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

How do you mean?

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Well, the contrast in those days the Bowery was the Bowery. There were there was uh it was a uh uh a lot of catastrophes walking around people that were um mostly alcoholics, uh and and it was crowded. And like stepping over my doorstop, uh, there would be a guy laying down. I didn't even question if he was alive or dead, you know. But in the morning he would be gone. So the the test of whatever your your vision was for your life compared to this was great contrast, and it was it was a kind of test.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

How about as an artist? Did it have an effect on you as an artist?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Well, that's what I'm that's what I'm talking about. Um my my idea of an artist at that point was uh it was a a like I got there, I was 19 years old, I was looking for substance. What was the substance in life? That was my basic question, and I had faith in it, and I had great mentors, and in those days in 1959, you could just walk the streets of New York and you got it by osmosis. There was a kind of atmosphere there. So my mentors was uh in Sculpture was a guy named Ruben Cadish, he was best friends with Jackson Pollack, um and uh he he did a mural with David Sakeros in San Francisco that still exists with uh with Philip Gustin, you know. And so these guys were were very substantial guys, and they they were on the street uh of New York City in those days, and where the culture was really happening. In fact, I felt guilty for even going to school. This seems very academic and out of place, but luckily these guys, some of these same guys that I respected were also teaching in the schools in those days.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

So they were your mentors both in an academic sense, but also outside the classroom as well?

SPEAKER_02 6:05

Yeah. And so we became friends, we'd drink at bars together, you know, we'd see see each other passing and just say hello, you know. And in those days, anybody would go to anybody's studio. So I would have, you know, a very developed artist in my studio, enjoying himself and seeing what I'm doing, you know. And that that was a kind of glue that was happening in New York, where the artist was the most respected source of art. Later on, that became gallery. They became a gallerist. So the artist had no influence anymore in recommending artists. It was really the gallerist who chose and had a program now of, you know, basically it was the days that opened up uh a different avenue where corporate interest and corporate collecting and money really became an interest. So galleries started choosing artists that they knew they could sell to corporations.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

As a young artist, uh, what did that do for your confidence, knowing that you you could have a uh uh an artist who you really admired be sitting in your studio?

SPEAKER_02 7:25

Yeah, these guys had no qualms about telling you where it was at.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

You know, it was Frank Meaning where it it being your artwork?

SPEAKER_02 7:35

No, being where the whole condition was.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Oh, I see. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Um a lot of these guys very seldom talked about their own work. There was a magazine called It Is. And that described them. They were, they drew they were. That was uh no question about it. They had uh but by that time, you know, this is 1959, 1960s, they were already kind of the abstract expressionists was already waning. So, but it had a powerful um existential kind of um power of attraction for young artists like myself at that time.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

Prior to that, where did your love of art come from?

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Uh that's uh I was a I was a handful as a kid, and I had uh even as a grade schooler, I had a third grade teacher called Mrs. McBride. She took me by the hand and uh told my parents I should come to her house on Saturday and study art.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

In third grade?

SPEAKER_02 8:52

In third grade. So my father took me to the art store with the list that she gave with say oils and turpinoid turpentine in those days, uh, colors and tubes and brushes, a whole list. And I arrived on her uh doorstep with all these supplies and a couple canvases under my arm, and I was in this class that she had of all adults, and uh she would set up a still life and I would start painting, and she was my mentor at it and sort of had a belief that I could do it, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

So God bless her.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

Yeah, so that was after I left, I left her.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Uh and where where is that? Where was that?

SPEAKER_02 9:32

This is in Clifton, New Jersey.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:35

I was uh I was an Army brat, and my father, when he retired, bought a house in Clifton. It was uh the big we had a house where everybody had a ha a new house.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

And everybody could afford it, and everybody was a different nationality on my block. The Caraphilians, the Lamponies, the Cynics, you know, the Bar Talks, and nobody would refer where they came from. They kept it a secret, you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So you're going to class on Saturdays when you're in third grade and enjoying it, or oh, this is just something I have to do?

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Uh it was it was both because I had so much energy at that point. I was going in many directions at once. And part of why they introduced me to art because they knew that's where I concentrated, you know. So, and so I did. I I stayed with her uh for you know that year while I was her student in third grade, and then later I left, and I I made a pact with myself as a third grader that this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

You made that pact in third grade?

SPEAKER_02 10:54

In third grade.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Wow, what kept you?

SPEAKER_02 10:58

And then I was uh I kept it a secret because nobody understood art in those days. They would say, oh, that's that's nice, that's a hobby, you know, and uh you're going to West Point, kid. You know, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

And is that spoken or unspoken to you by your parents in your home? You're going to West Point.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Both. It was it was uh it was mainly an assumption, everybody to, you know. You go to school, you you they make you sign up early on, whether you're going to take a general course, uh college prep course, or business course, right? Those are the three choices you had. So, and then whatever you chose, that was it. You know, you had that curriculum for the four years of high school.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

And so was there ever a conversation once you get a little bit older, maybe high school, of no, art is not just my hobby, it's it's what I want to do.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

No, I kept it a secret until I graduated, and then I went to Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts on High Street. And it was uh that was a preparation for the Bowery. But I it was I had great teachers there because New York was their uh pool for hiring teachers. So you had all these great people that were from post-war New York, come from Europe. And so I had Bauhaus teachers, uh great advertising guys in the advertising world that really know the business, you know. And uh so it was a great exposure.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Are you confident at that point or in those early years as a young man that this is gonna work? That you uh that you you being an artist, this is gonna work. I have some talent and it's gonna work.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

I had no idea. Absolutely no idea. I I just knew I wanted to be in the arts. I heard a lot of stuff about it, you know. Fragments here, fragments there, all sort of uh romantic and great, you know. Tell you the truth, but my idea was to have a penthouse on Fifth Avenue overlooking with Playboy bunnies running around and an easel.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

There you go. Oh, with an easel. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

And then one day I'm walking out of class for lunch in Newark, and Katie just is holding up uh a book of Jato paintings, and said, This is a man and an artist of integrity. It stopped me cold, changed my life right there.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

And you knew it right on the spot.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

I knew it right on the spot.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

How so?

SPEAKER_02 13:51

It just struck me that I was that's what I was looking for, something of real depth, right? Otherwise, I would have been very happy in a shiny car riding around.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

So, and and and I would guess him holding up the book that did not include the image of the Fifth Avenue penthouse with the Playboy Bunnies running around.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Yeah, that that's uh kind of superseded it right there.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah. Well, sometimes that happens. Is there a point in your career as you get rolling that your family comes around? And oh, you know what? Okay, we see it. We understand it.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

My family was kind of secretive about what they thought of me because they were, I think they were kind of afraid of me, uh or afraid for me. Uh that I was interested in arts, they didn't know if I was into drugs or what, right? And they because it was such a foreign idea to them. My father was a, you know, he was a career soldier, so we traveled a lot as a kid, right, when I was young. And uh so uh, but he was very kind about it. He uh he said one nice thing to me, you know, you he was very he he just loved me as a father, you know. I was very lucky and he expressed it. And he said, you know, uh, whatever you're gonna decide, I know you're gonna be the best.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Gotta love that.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

So fast forward to today, and we see in your in your room there, we see painting and we see sculpture and and other types of work. Is it clear to you when you have an idea? Oh, this idea should be a sculpture, this idea should be a painting, this idea should be something else.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, whatever that choice was, I passed that up a long time ago. I don't even remember making that decision. Um I was I was m mostly like in New York City, I was there for 40, you know, 45, 48 years steady.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

I was basically a painter. So I came to sculpture late. I didn't really get I always did sculpture, uh, even in the 60s, but it wasn't like the commitment that I have now about it. It was um and what I was after, bud, was uh it wasn't like sculpture or painting. It was beyond description. I wanted something, I wasn't trying to describe anything, I wanted a presence. So I chased that presence from here to there. I must say artists I've I've I've grew to really, you know, artists are very competitive with each other. Uh but I I grew also to love artists. There they're uh they are true initiates. And when you're talking to an artist, you're talking to a real initiate. He knows already. It's like a an initiate in a looking at a religious icon. You have to be an initiate from that religion in order to really get the shock of what that icon represents. It shocks you into all the values and qualities that that icon represents or that saint represents. Um interesting story, like the um Aborigines in Australia. There was an interview of like the three or four last Aborigines that were truly from their culture when they actually had a culture isolated from civilization, and they were teaching these young people who had Aboriginal uh heritage, but they were they were from the cities at this point, and they were telling they were doing artwork, and they were telling the interviewers that uh unfortunately these are not initiates, so the culture dies here. So the wonderful thing about New York, I met all these artists, all initiates. It was like fertile.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Do you recall the first piece of sculpture that you did for a public art exhibition?

SPEAKER_02 18:32

For a public art exhibition? I did a sculpture in the 60s that was collected by the Smith College Museum. I don't know if that's public, but it wasn't intended to be public.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

And the sculpture I do I do now was never intended to be public art per se. It was just work in my studio, and I I have a huge farm, so I put it out in the pasture. Uh I don't have because I, you know, after I'm 85, I have a lot of work. I have no place to put it. So I run out of wall space a long time ago. So um I have a barn full of uh artworks, uh which I'm very happy about that I have this beautiful storage space, you know. But uh my work was is is done in the studio, like I I think I mentioned to you, I don't really do commissions.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Right.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

It's a little bit I I have a lot of respect for these guys that go out there. They they have to be engineers, they have to be salesmen, they have to be, they have to talk to uh a committee, they have to, you know, and to me that would be like too much like art by committee. I can't do it, you know. So I I enjoy the luxury of just working in my studio, and I've been able to afford to do that, uh, luckily. Um and luckily I was born into a do-it-yourself generation, you know. So when I arrived on the boundary as a young guy, I had friends, they were all artists, we'd all drink, talk, you know, through wee hours of the morning. We'd help each other get work, you know, house painting, carpentry. And then I got a little teaching job at the uh teaching arts and crafts, unbelievably, on a street called Pitt Street in uh in uh the Lower East Side. And one day walking from work, I decided I looked at this storefront on the Bowery, and I said, you know what? I'm gonna rent that storefront and start a gallery. So I did. It was the furry called the First Street Galleries, First Street and the Bowery. It still exists today, it's not in the same place anymore. Now the Bowery is pretty fancy. It's uh it's a Chase Bank building now. But it does exist in Chelsea. I'm not a member of it anymore. Uh but I'm a member of other uh artist run situations, so I was exposed to a lot of artist run situations.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

But your artwork, even though you're not uh uh seeking commissions, has been shown in in public settings, yes?

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Yeah, I cities like up and down the coast put out a call for sculpture, public sculpture. And anybody can enter that. They're not right they're not really commissions.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

So I enter that kind of calls. So, you know, like right now I have about eighteen pieces out there, you know, in different towns, uh up and down the coast. So so I've been doing that for a number of years now.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

And from your experience with that, what is, at the risk of asking a j j general question, what is the importance to towns, big and small, of public art?

SPEAKER_02 22:13

Well, what I they asked me that. They asked me that same question.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

So sorry to ask the same question as everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

I try to to give it a a kind of stature, the answer. So I said the sculpture makes a place important until the place makes the sculpture important.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Okay. You had me on the first part. The second part so the sculpture makes the place important. Let's see if I get this. The sculpture makes the place important.

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Because there's something different about the place now, that it has this beautiful piece of art there.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Yeah, I mean we could elaborate on that, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

And then once people know that there's art there, then it becomes a place that people go to, not even knowing, going in what the specific art's going to be, but oh, there must be something good there because that place is the place known for public art.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Something along those lines? Yeah, it becomes a place. It's like if you think of the Lincoln Memorial, okay, uh, that made that place very important. If you ever read the book uh on its installation day and all that stuff, it was a big, a big uh whoopy-do. But um it did make that place important, and all the politicians wanted to be part of it.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

But now uh it's Washington, D.C. that makes that piece important.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. You have 18 pieces out right now.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

So some places have two of my pieces, you know.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Are there areas or markets that you you're always in every year, they want a piece of yours?

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Well, they have a call. And sometimes I'm accepted right in a row, and sometimes I'm not, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

So are there particular places that you know of that where you've been like year after year after year?

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Yeah, Dixon City in Maryland. I've been there pretty much uh I'm scared time is flying. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

We'll say several years.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Several years, right.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Uh any other places come to mind?

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Salisbury. Salisbury was the first place I showed. And it was uh it was a kind of uh a lark. I just did it, right? Uh then there is a uh there are a couple websites that just have calls for sculpture listed that one could reference.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

And when that happens, when they want a piece of yours, how does that work in terms of the logistics of it and getting the piece there?

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Yeah, well, the the artist usually does that.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

And the artist and the and the artist is given an honorarium for it. Uh and different cities pay different amounts for that. Um it's nothing you can make a real living on, but you could maybe eke out, you know, the expenses.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

So you're responsible for getting the art from your place in Pennsylvania to wherever it's going. Um and uh well, from your experience in doing it, has that all always gone swimmingly, or are there uh things along the way that you need to worry about?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

If you look at the whole picture, it it does work out. Um for example, Dixon City, uh, Maryland, I I have three sculptures there now. And and they pay $3,000 each. So and they only have it for one year.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

So that is worth doing, because I can and then one of the sculptures is kept, they've been uh over four years now, and so they give me a stipend every year for that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

How about the process of doing it? At the risk of uh using an old uh sculpture term, the process of schlepping the um the piece of art to these places.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

Is that uh that just comes with the territory and well I'm an army brat, so I'm used to traveling.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

All right.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

So I put it into my van and sometime and I sometime I haul a trailer behind it if it's if I'm taking two or three sculptures and do it all at once, right? So that makes it that sort of cuts it, you know, cuts a little slack in what the expenses are.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Well, I'm not worried about expenses, but uh I'm curious about you know, when you first do that, do you have to learn how to do that? You know, actually getting the art to the place, and do you have to get advice from people how best to do that and how, shall we say, best to uh avoid potholes?

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Yeah, well, I'm a handy guy. I can do stuff, you know. Even at my age, I can still do stuff. So um, you know, as a kid I did lots of carpentry and construction work, and you know, uh and I came from uh a whole generation, like I said, of kind of do-it-yourself people.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:44

The most important about the most important thing about do-it-yourself people is I realized down the line is um, and I taught many years, so um I would say uh you know to to my students, uh, what are you worried about? The miracle has already happened, you know. And uh so relax and just get to work, you know. And then I would say, um this is the realization, is for me personally, art is has all the great things we all talk about, cultural values, and but really for me it's like uh uh you're creating yourself. That's that's the great thing about it.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

You mentioned that you were a teacher, right? How important is the idea of teaching art in schools?

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Well, I've seen many teachers, many different artists, and I was lucky to have great teachers. And when they came in to to had an artist, uh I'll give you a real example by the way. His name was Ernie Briggs. He was a Clifford Still advocate, and he would come in and and really just talk. He never never talked about artwork, but he would talk about current events and what's going on and what and it it was to take a stance, he he was teaching how to take a stance in the face of the unknown. And that's the kind of art that he was involved with. And uh to some degree, I think all artists face that every time they stretch a canvas or pull out some materials for a sculpture. Uh that's why I say to do a commission, I would have to be an actor and pretend I know what I'm doing. I don't have any idea what I'm doing that way. And I don't want to. I want the results to be unpredictable.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

After all these years of doing it, though, when you have a blank canvas, is there confidence, because you've done it before, that something and something good is going to present itself, or is there still, even after all these years, a level of doubt of is this going to work out on this canvas or not?

SPEAKER_02 30:28

That's a great question, but that is the uh essence of the whole thing. Because it's it's not about style. I'm not looking for a style. I'm looking for that experience at the end, that presence. And that presence is beyond style, beyond and every mark you make, whether it's a welding mark or a mark on canvas, you you I ask that has potential. What is that potential? And so I follow that kind of idea rather than a schematic or a plan. I do, I have done a lot of drawing in my life, you know, life drawing from the model, uh, a lot of print making, uh, drawings for prints, you know that. And um drawing is one of the basics of the language. You know, art is a is an esoteric language if you're not really involved with it, you know. And every artist has access to that language. Uh so to keep that language alive, your question proposes how do you keep that language alive? And not end up what I'm doing box after box after box, you know.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Have you been blessed to see the reaction of people either looking at the public art that you've created or uh outside or in galleries? And what is that experience like? You create something, you work at it, you work at it, then you put it out into the world, and then others have their opinion of it, and and you have to kind of let go at a certain point. All right, now it's it's the world to see what they see in it.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Yeah, that that brings up another great question. The in my search for what substance is substance is the viewer. The that experience is reinterpreted, my experience of it, whatever I feel is the presence, is now out there. Somebody else sees it, you may have a different interpretation, but he has its own it has its own life that way, and goes on to another period, and you have ten people look at it, you have ten different interpretations, you know. But that's part of that's part of the whole excitement and renewal and renewal of uh, you know, it's um art is truth to power, not political power necessarily, but to power of your own preconceptions. And it kind of seduces you, it kind of brings you in another place without uh insulting you. And some people get insulted by art, you know, when it does that to them.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Or I would imagine you have to resist the notion of saying to these people who are looking at it and have their own interpretation, no, no, no, no, let me tell you what the correct interpretation of that is.

SPEAKER_02 34:13

I never I would never do that. And people would do that to me though, like you're they would tell me what it's about. So uh I don't mind that uh because I see that that's their interpretation. And uh um like in teaching, I didn't I didn't teach art. I opened doors, you know, that if you want to go this way, it's and that's how I was taught. People open doors for me. Uh there's a wonderful doorway story I have about the Metropolitan. They have an Egyptian uh section, and they have a little segment of a gallery, a real Egyptian gallery that was part of the inside of a pyramid or a tomb. And you go into this walkway with you know, there's paintings on the wall, and at the end of the walkway is a doorway, but it's a painted doorway, it doesn't open. It's it's a doorway for the spirits. And I said, what a great metaphor for painting.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Richard, this has been an absolute pleasure, a real pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Well, thanks, bud.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Just wonderful. And um, I so appreciate your time today.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Yeah, thank you very much. Nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Artist Richard Pitts. You can learn more about his work at his website, Richard Pitts. That's two T's, RichardPitts.com. I'm Bud Mishkin. Thanks for listening to this episode of Travel Treasures Across America.