WS Chronicle

By Felecia Piggott-Long, Ph.D.

Friends, family members and art enthusiasts crowded the Southern Idiom Gallery at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 26, for the opening reception of WaveWorks, featuring interdisciplinary artist Jaeson Pitt. This audiovisual project is an ongoing series of collages and musical compositions associated with his electronic music alias WorldSSS.

“I’ve been working on WaveWorks since 2015. It’s inspired by waves as we know them as a force in the ocean. Also frequency and vibrations. Tying in music, spirituality, and energy and bringing life and art together as a force,” Pitt said. “Music is a form of energy that ties in with the art.  It eventuates art. Music deals with frequencies and vibrations which I recreate in physical form on paper through WaveWorks!”

Pitt has done several exhibits, but he considers this exhibit at SECCA very special for various reasons.

“I grew up in Winston-Salem, and it has always been a dream of mine to be showcased at SECCA,” Pitt said. “Being featured as a fine arts artist is confirmation that I’m on my purpose, and hard work and dedication does eventually pay off.”

Pitt, known to family and friends as “Jae,” has been working as an artist throughout his life. Now 40 years old, Pitt began his art journey with drawing for long hours in his bedroom or at his parent’s business after school. At first, his major goal was to master comics, pop culture icons and sports heroes. Later, he dallied with painting and making ceramics, playing with the potentials of fiber and learning dark-room photography from local art spots like the Sawtooth Center in downtown Winston-Salem.

Having attended Moore Alternative School, Summit School, and R. J. Reynolds High School, where he graduated in 2000, Pitt gained awards and recognition for his natural ability and his desire to be engaged in his craft. His mother, Elaine Pitt, nurtured his talent by exposing him to various art museums, galleries and diverse art practices. 

Before he was in high school, he landed a job at the Arts Council of Winston-Salem’s Artiva Program. There Pitt worked with a group of young muralists who painted murals depicting ideas regarding the millennium. He developed more artistic interests when he worked with photographer Michael Cunningham and studied art and design at North Carolina State University, where he specialized in textile design through a new honors program named for Annie Albers, renowned textile artist.

When he returned to Winston-Salem, he worked at the family business, The Chronicle, with graphic design, layout, advertising, photography, editing, and writing. He enrolled at Winston-Salem State University to focus on a degree in computer arts and taught visual art at a charter school and a public school. These experiences prepared him for his current exhibition.

This collection comes from his art and design studio label, WorldSpectacular. The mediums Pitt employs for this exhibition include collaged works on paper, audio recordings which comprise an aural and visual abstraction, or portrayal of the artist’s interpretations of energy > frequencies > vibrations > sound > and music. His father, Ernie Pitt, was fascinated when he discovered that Jaeson was using newsprint as a major medium in this exhibit.

“I kept looking at the colored paper that the art was contrasting with. The unique color of the paper let me know that Jaeson was using newsprint for his foundation. As a newspaper publisher for so many years, I was very impressed with his selection of materials,” Ernie Pitt said.

Kelli Younger, a friend and art enthusiast, was very impressed with Pitt’s color combinations.

“I appreciate the depths of color. For some reason, I love triangles in art, and I see several triangles among the colorful, clean lines,” Younger said.

Latresha Davis proudly displayed her tennis shoes that Pitt designed. They were black and white with splashes of colorful vibrations.

 “He goes beyond just visual art. He designs lamp shades, pillows, bookbags, luggage, and so many other useful items,” Davis said.

In this project, Pitt seeks to capture the depths of linear waveforms as a two-dimensional vibe. By using traditional art and design elements, such as line, texture, value, color, shape, and form, and the addition of numbers, Pitt attempts to depict energy as abstracted waves and waveforms that capture light, time, emotions, thought, and experiences, as omnipresent moving and static objects that are constantly in flux. Pitt’s interdisciplinary methodology incorporates ideologies for film, fine arts, design, and music making in connection with improvisation, synthesis, composition, arrangement, pitch, timbre, drum programming, layering, layout, rhythm and mathematics.

Pitt can be reached by social media at worldsss on Instagram.