(gentle instrumental music) - [Shelley] Welcome to Kalamazoo Lively Arts, the show that takes you inside Kalamazoo's vibrant, creative community, and explores the people who breathe life into the arts.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(tape ripping) - [Keith] That's a good, satisfying one.

(groovy music) - Keith Pitts, where are we?

Where have you brought us, here in Kalamazoo?

- I have brought you over to the Edison neighborhood to what is known as the wax factory.

It is a building owned by a gentleman here that has creative space.

Right now, there's two of us in here.

At one point there was up to four or five of us in here.

- Describe the art of Keith Pitts.

- I see myself as a painter, and I'm trying to find different ways to approach painting, so I'm trying to find a way to create paintings, but make specific objects out of paint, that it's not about trying to create a false reality of something through paint.

It's using paint, then just letting paint do what paint does best.

- When did this artistic bug bite you?

- When I was 13, my mom died of cancer, and so what I discovered was, art was kind of a way for me to process and deal with a lot of the trauma and the negative emotions I was going through, and not go through other avenues that often can not end up for the best.

And so it really was something that I often say, saved my life.

And so that really kicked it in gear, if that makes sense.

Like I knew that this was something I was gonna pursue, because it brought so much positivity into my life.

- All right, let's talk current times.

What is your art?

And let's start with this.

- I'm a huge fan of an artist named Robert Rauschenberg, and during the fifties, I believe, created this whole series of red paintings.

So I decided I wanted to kind of do my own version of a red painting.

It's really all about the mark making.

I'm not trying to paint a portrait or a landscape or something that someone can look at, and they can be like, "Oh, that's exactly what that is."

It's more about how can I put together interesting things about paint.

Like this big mark right here is oil paint mixed with marble powder, applied with a palette knife, just put on really thick.

This is a pure paint that I poured in a mold and let it dry over months, and then took it out and painted it with oil paint and then took canvas and created this netting system that hangs down in front of the paint.

Even on the bottom, this is a quote from Rauschenberg that says, "Begin with the possibilities of the material."

And that's kind of what it is.

Again, I'm just trying to see what I could do with the materials.

And so it's just trying to find different approaches to painting.

- Did you know what this would be when you made your first stroke?

- No, no, and I think that's one of the most exciting things about creation and art practice.

Like what I'm researching for my PhD is creativity and how we teach other people to think differently.

And for me, it's seeing where the materials take me.

It kind of becomes a conversation at some point.

Like, I'll do something, the materials will kind of respond in a way, and so I have to adjust to it, and so it really is a journey.

Each painting becomes a journey.

Like sometimes I have ideas of where I want to go, but I never end up exactly where that idea was in my head.

- Describe the work behind you.

- This is a painting that I'm doing.

I like the illusions.

I've always loved kind of the play with the eyes and tricking you where, you're in those moments where you kind of think you're seeing something, you kind of don't.

This image, I ran across it online, the red circle, kind of, if you stare at it long enough, it's supposed to move.

So this is my attempt at doing that.

And so I brought it up to this point, but I have a lot more to work on it, because I don't know if it's working the same.

And I have another one over here that I'm working on because I wanted to see if the blue or the red vibrated more.

So after I cut this, I have to go back, and I want to press all this down, so that the paint doesn't run up underneath and create leaks.

White's an interesting color because we think that it's all the same, but every different white has a different shade.

I like this chalk paint white.

It's really nice because how matte it finishes, but I do like titanium white.

It's just a nice bright white, it's kind of like the white of the art world.

it seems like.

It's spray paint.

The nice thing about that is it dries so fast.

- Gotcha, yeah.

- You know?

But it does kill brain cells, and I'm responsible for my brain cells, not yours.

I wish it would be magical and just everything fall off at once, but... And you can see kind of where it ran underneath and so I'll have to go back in and touch all that up with the black.

(tape ripping) That's a good, satisfying one.

(tape ripping) (upbeat instrumental music) All right, so this should be the last, okay.

So you can see it needs touch up, but I mean, this is basically the thing, and when it goes on the diagonal, so I'll touch up all these load pieces, I'll scrape it off and then paint over it with black and then I'll see what I want to do next.

It bounces?

Good.

- And how important is it for an artist to find his or her niche, to find the true you, stick with it and believe in it.

- Discovering your voice, for me, has been one of the biggest challenges for artists.

Like, for so many years, I thought that I needed to improve myself technically, which, I've always had the technical skills.

I've been building those and I'm constantly building those, but what I didn't have was, I didn't have the theory behind it, not just like artistic theory.

I'm talking about like social theory, theory about what it means to exist, theories about what this is that all of us are a part of.

When I started finding these theories that kind of opened up my way of thinking, it allowed me to discover more of my voice.

What is it that I have to say about the world?

Because if I'm just making art to hang on a wall for... To be pretty, not that that's bad, that serves a function, but I can use art for a much more interesting approach.

Like what is it?

What am I saying?

Like for this, so much of it is just trying to get people to stop.

Like I think about walking through a museum.

When I walk through a museum, there's a lot of art that I see and I'm like, "Okay, I understand what that is.

I understand what that is, I understand what that is."

But the pieces that make me stop and pull me in a direction that I wasn't going, across the gallery, to look at it, actually does something different, because it makes me pause in my assumptions.

It makes me pause in my rushing through my daily life, and I actually have to be there in the moment and look at what is actually in front of my face.

And that to me is so much more powerful.

This type of art doesn't exist elsewhere.

It's not a mimicry, and all it's doing for me is asking you to stop, look at it, and consider painting in a different way.

- [Shelley] Talk more about the process itself.

- I'm a very process oriented person, but the process isn't always the same.

and I think that that comes out of my theater background.

Theater is the only place that you'll find people who are developing a process and they stick to it, then they throw it out, and they start from scratch again.

And so my process kind of sometimes acts that way, like a painting like this, the illusion painting, I have kind of an understanding, like I'm finding some kind of visual illusion that I find interested, and so I build towards it.

So that's one process.

A process like this is, I build a canvas, I put the canvas up on it, I look at it, I paint it red, then I put another thing of red down, I look at it some more.

Then I draw a square in there with pencil, and I'm like, what?

How do I wanna paint this?

This is a completely different process.

I became interested in this color.

There's this color called Yves Klein blue.

So Yves Klein was an artist, and when I add a binder to it, it darkens it and you lose that vibrancy.

So I did a small painting where I drilled a hole and put powder pigment and trapped it behind plexiglass, and then I decided to make a big one, and when we moved to Kalamazoo, all the pigment fell out, right?

And so I was upset at first because I had this beautiful blue dot.

Then I realized what I actually had was a painting that's always constantly changing.

It will never be the same in two locations, because even from moving it from over there to hanging it up just right before our interview, has made micro shifts in the powdered pigment.

So these paintings, I've made a couple of these paintings so far, are always constantly in the process of becoming, they're always shifting.

And so all of these are different processes for me.

- What is it about Kalamazoo that draws artists?

- I think Kalamazoo has a weirdness to it, you know?

Which I really like.

Like just the way Kalamazoo is set up, like it has multiple universities in it, which I always think is good.

It has this great mix, I think, of like different socioeconomic levels.

It's not set up on a grid.

This may seem weird, but I lived in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin and that was very suburban.

Everything was gridded out, everything was clean.

Kalamazoo, it doesn't have that.

It twists, it turns.

I find stuff that I never expected to find.

And I think from an artistic point of view, that to me is so meaningful.

- So someone wants to be a Keith Pitts, where do we start?

What's my resource?

- First thing I would do is, stop trying to be me and start trying to be yourself.

Like, that took me years to learn, years.

I'm 49 and I feel like it's only been since 45 on that I really have settled into who I am.

Find those people that you look towards their work and it speaks to you, and then figure out what it is about that work, and start figuring out how you can do it for yourself.

That's a huge step, and just keep doing it.

And just because you make one thing doesn't mean that it has to be perfect.

Just because you make something that isn't successful doesn't mean that it's not a learning opportunity.

Like, I make more things that I do not like, than things that I like.

You know, one, I don't control what other people see in it, so they may like something that I don't like, but I have to sometimes work through all those things that I don't like, to get to a place where I need to be to make the one thing that I find is successful.

- Thank you for bringing the material to Kalamazoo, Keith.

- Oh yeah, absolutely.

(welding torch buzzing) (machine whirring) (upbeat instrumental music) - I think of myself as a fabricator.

I am generally working from designs, almost always digitally designed on the computer.

And then I take those designs and I realize them in metal and wood, sometimes fabric, but that fabrication sort of encompasses all kind of new materials, cut to form and machined into your design.

I went into college studying music and classics and I was kind of all over the place.

And then a friend brought me into the sculpture studio and spent a few minutes teaching me welding, and I was kind of blown away.

I'd always been interested in art, but that kind of sealed the deal and I started taking classes right away.

- So how did you get to be so good to where you are today?

- I studied at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota.

After undergraduate study, I went on and lived in Minneapolis and San Francisco and worked as an artist assistant and also someone who kind of set up multimedia displays.

- And what would define a piece called a sculpture?

- Ha!

That is a good question.

You know, I think sculpture has expanded and contracted a lot over the years in terms of how it's defined.

I think that there really aren't rules or boundaries to it, because there isn't a specific material associated with it.

You know, traditionally bronze and wood and stone were big, but now it's literally everything.

And the more kind of creative you can get with like pulling unexpected materials in, the more likely you are to get attention.

So there's no boundary in terms of material.

Three dimensionality is a fairly core constituent to the way people think about sculpture.

I think it typically is something that prioritizes movement.

You know, it's sort of essential that you are active while you're experiencing it.

So that's how I think about sculpture, but a lot of different definitions.

- All right, let's do the elephant in the room.

- Yeah.

- What are you working on now?

- What am I working on?

This piece is intended for public display.

This is called "The Maintenance of Simplicity."

And this is a work that's gonna be about eight feet tall.

It's COR-TEN steel, so it's a weathering steel that won't corrode very fast.

And it's kind of inspired from industrial forms, kind of the industrial shoreline of Michigan.

Also, it's meant to kind of create a little bit of a furniture like matrices, that people can explore and try to figure out how to interact with.

So it's kind of a little abstract, a little representational.

- So where do you start, at the drawing board?

And then how do you put the pieces together?

- I do always start drawing.

Sometimes pen and paper.

I find that's the freest kind of space to think, once I really dial in what I think this thing is gonna be, I move to the computer, and then that's a really useful tool for composing really precise things.

This process involves creating patterns on the computer, cutting them from steel and then aligning them.

And there's... Because there's so many kind of intersecting pieces, there's really a small tolerance.

They have to be less than a millimeter apart.

So it becomes a puzzle piece that you kind of put together afterwards according to that pattern that you make on a computer.

So that's the kind of beginning process.

And then that gets you just to welding and grinding and that part of the execution.

These pieces come back from the laser cutter and they're... Kind of come back like this, I don't really have to clean 'em up very much, and then there's just kind of a process of assembly where I use magnets in an orientation like that.

And I'll line up the pieces like so, and I can get those edges, you know, if there's a 10th of a millimeter between them, that's a pretty big gap.

So I line 'em up like that, and then I can go in and put tack welds along that line.

These are just kind of example pieces, but this is a piece that's gonna end up on the sculpture.

I can weld an edge of that.

Now these are actually really easy welds because that corner, the way they line up, creates a natural kind of valley for the filler material.

So that part of it's not a huge struggle.

Okay, welding.

(welding torch buzzing) You should get a nice little bit of a shiny bead on the edge of that.

(machine whirring) (upbeat instrumental music) Bit of a fight.

So this is actually about 1/3rd of this finished piece.

So this has another two sections that kind of come out like this.

This mass in the center is the largest kind of single volume, but then there's these kind of more structural elements that... Little bit inspired from like the undersides of a dock or some kind of scaffolding, so.

This process came out of working with photography.

So for many years, I was making these kind of faceted small forms out of laminated photographs.

And those are quite thin, so I never had to think about material thickness, but they lined up edge to edge, and then I would join them together with an adhesive.

That translated very well to steel, except that there's a material thickness involved.

So now you have to draw the thing with a little bit of an eighth inch or 3/16ths of an inch punch out, which really will, after it telegraphs across the piece, really affect the shape of the piece a lot.

So this is derived from that photographic process, but adjusted for the material.

In terms of my pieces coming out of a digital design focus, I would say a hundred percent of my works go through that step.

Now wood, when I do woodworking, there's a lot more conversation with wood because it can kind of talk back, right?

It's got a lot of its own character and you've gotta work a little bit more flexibly with that.

So that process is different when I'm doing large scale wood stuff.

- Moments of bliss, finding your zen, does it happen?

- I think composition stage is your maximum energy time, right?

For me, when I'm figuring out how this thing is gonna be shaped, and that's real stressful, right?

That's real up and down and pulling your hair out, but finally kind of euphoric when you get there.

And then, you know, you send these things off to get cut and you come back and you've got a thousand pieces in front of you and you're like, "I just get to put this puzzle together for the next two months."

I think that's what I'm kind of most excited about.

It's like you've got lots of work ahead of you and you can just kind of dig into it.

And it sounds weird.

I feel the same way when I'm kind of grinding these things, that seems like the most tedious part of it, but when you're kind of grinding and cleaning, you're just in the moment.

You're just focused on that little part of the piece and you're not struggling mentally at all.

So sometimes that's a little moment of zen, yeah.

- When you have your professor hat on, what are your students learning?

- You know, it's always kind of two tracks that you're developing simultaneously.

I try to give them kind of conceptual puzzles or kind of ideas to explore their own direction.

And I usually pair that with some, just kind of technical offering, so that, you know, I don't really prioritize one or the other very heavily.

They kind of develop alongside each other.

You know, that gives them time to like work on their ideas.

I find that students need some weeks to figure out what they're trying to say and while they're doing that, they're learning cutting, welding, grinding, casting.

I think also, you know, a big part of teaching sculpture is, people realizing just kind of the inherent poetics of materials.

And people I think are often... Students are often surprised to realize that they kind of have a built-in sense of these materials 'cause they're encountering them every day.

But I think a student that can really put the kind of poetics of materials together in a way that tells stories within the work, and helps with their ideas, is a indicator of a sculptor.

- How is Kalamazoo as a backdrop for displaying art and having these opportunities?

- I mean, it's a really nice place to make.

I moved here from New York.

I'd lived in China and San Francisco for 10 years prior to that.

Always in really big cities.

And you know, those offer that kind of art scene that's bubbling all the time.

And that's awesome, but being an artist in that environment can be super challenging.

Having a space to make, moving stuff around, having your own time.

Kalamazoo's an awesome place to kind of step back a little bit and have that space to work.

Also, I mean there's a really rich art scene here, right?

There's a lot of depth to the creative community here.

So there's no shortage of other makers to kind of bounce your ideas off of.

- Your hands ever get tired?

- Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, I've taken my hands outta commission on pieces, so yeah, that's a fight too, but you move around, you adapt and find new ways to work.

- Nice job.

Congratulations on your work.

- Thank you.

(upbeat instrumental music) - Thank you so much for watching.

There's also more to explore with Kalamazoo Lively Arts on YouTube, Instagram, and wgvu.org.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Support for Kalamazoo Lively Arts is provided by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, helping to build and enrich the cultural life of greater Kalamazoo.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music)