Susan Pitt's concern for psychological explorations of the female psyche has been a vital force behind her career for over 25 years. This can be seen in Crocus, one of her early films which is a surrealist exploration into female sexuality, as well as in Asparagus, a classic that explores subliminal imagery of the feminine dream, and in her most recent film Joy Street, her chef d'oeuvre that relates issues of depression and healing.

Suzan Pitt's Joy Street.

For many years, Pitt has been merging the female psyche to her personal creative projects in such areas as painting, performance art, and theater design, as well as animation. One might say that she is a Renaissance woman. While the deep dark depths of the psychology of being are rarely brought out in animation, Pitt can, in this respect, be associated with pioneer animator Winsor McCay. His early comic strip/film Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend probed inner world dreams as masterpieces of whimsy, imagination, wit and nightmares, depicting human fears and delusions. With films full of observations and insights, both McCay and Pitt aimed to give relevance to their characters. Pitt has often criticized the animation business as avoiding the main goal of story telling, which is having something relevant to say.

An Eerie Doll House
Susan Pitt grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and relates much of her imagery to an eerie doll house found in an attic of an old house, where she would climb dark stairs to get to this miniature, imaginary world. This doll house became her own private theater, where she created stories which later influenced her films.

Suzan Pitt's Joy Street.

Pitt's creative career began at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where in 1965 she received her BFA in Painting. Like many of her generation, she began filmmaking with a hand held 8mm camera; transferring some 200 drawings onto film. One of her early pieces in 16mm Bowl, Theater, Garden, Marble Game made use of cutout images arranged in a semiabstract form. A recipient of many grants and an avid teacher, she began her most important formative years with the completion of Crocus, a surrealistic study and an ode to the feminine dream and the natural world. Many of her films were developed in collaboration with her students, a fact which Pitt considers an important part of her artistic development. The success of such early films as A City Trip, Jefferson Circus Songs and Cels, made with students at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, brought her recognition and gave her the experience needed to produce larger projects.

Asparagus is the now classic film that secured Pitt's reputation as a major American animator. After taking four years to make, Asparagus, completed in 1979, won awards around the world, including First Prize at the Oberhausen Film Festival in Germany and awards at Ann Arbor, Baltimore and Atlanta Film Festivals in the US. Designed like a Pandora's box, the film opens up the depth of Pitt's own inner psyche, merging sensual and surrealistic imagery in the form of a Freudian dream. Focusing on erotic metaphors and intellectual references, she makes this matted-cel work a visionary masterpiece.