Mixed media, 2025
About this work
Ascension is the final volume in a trilogy that confronts our collective surrender to convenience and consumption. The staircase rises through a manufactured landscape of single-use waste—45 cubic feet of plastic refuse I collected from six Tyler School of Art recycling bins during a three week period (proof of a system addicted to disposability)—leads not to transcendence, but to a quietly damning altar of reconciliation and admonishment.
Kris Pitzer
Sculpture, mixed media, fabrication, Philadelphia
I make art that speaks to contradiction—between beauty and waste, permanence and impermanence, reverence and ruin. My practice sits at the uncomfortable intersection of ecological anxiety, personal vulnerability, and the quiet rituals of making. Whether I’m working in glass, metal, or wood, my work is driven by an urgency to confront the systems we’re complicit in—and the ones we create inside ourselves.