It is the power of pause that artist Keith Pitts pursues in his work – to create that moment that stops the viewer in his or her tracks, to step closer, observe longer, to examine and understand. Arguably, no piece of art Pitts has created has brought about more pause than his year-long project to mark mass shootings in the United States. Pitts is an adjunct art instructor at Western Michigan University’s Gwen Frostic School of Art.
“Back in 2022, the idea for the project came during the pandemic,” Pitts says. “I started making a painting a day where I was experimenting with the idea of minimalism and what I could do within that … I started to realize, what if I took this process of using a painting as a recording mechanism, as a way of marking when events were happening. I applied it to something that I thought really needed to have more visibility.”
When Pitts looked around at what issue needed more attention and needed to be addressed far beyond how much it was being addressed—gun violence rose to the top. When he began creating a painting to mark each event, however, he quickly realized this would be much more than one a day. On January 1st, he had to paint eight paintings. He used small canvases, 8” by 8”, and covered them with red paint for the eight minutes it usually took first responders to arrive at the shooting.
“I started thinking of them as kind of a wake, like you would have a public viewing of a body,” Pitts says.
One measure of how Pitts judges the success of artwork on exhibit is whether it causes the viewer to stop in their tracks and pause to take a closer look.
“I often think about the idea of pause,” he says. “Even in writing, coming out of being a theater person … the idea of pause is huge in art. Especially in 2024, when information is bombarding us so fast—how do we get people to slow down, just stop, and be in silence? The most amazing experience I have had in galleries, especially if I have been there before … all of a sudden, something catches my eye and it pulls me off of that direction I was going, because I need to take a look at it closer.”
Pitts taught for seven years as a professor at Columbia College Chicago and worked as a freelance designer in the Chicago Theatre Community prior to coming to Western Michigan University. His years working as a professional scenic and costume designer in theater have given him a unique skill set to bring to his studio practice.
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