PRIMAL FORMS, a new series of carved metal and wood sculptures, reflects Kit Schweitzer’s long fascination with various cultures, including African, Celtic, Chinese, Islamic, Japanese, Maori, New Guinean, Scythian, and Northwest and Southwest American Indian—all of which have developed elaborate ornamental styles. His own highly distinctive design vocabulary evokes and pays homage to these people.

 

As a full-time professional sculptor and second-generation Arizona artist, Kit thrives on making things. He has created ceramic, metal and ferro-concrete sculpture and fountains; built his own foundry; cast glass, bronze and other metals; printed and painted; made jewelry; and carved stone. He designs and fabricates many of his own tools. For his own use, he builds boats, telescopes, and musical instruments. Kit’s architectural acumen is evident in the geodesic domes and straw bale buildings he has constructed. Now on “permanent sabbatical,” he continues to explore many media and forms.

 

Kit Schweitzer received his MFA in ceramics from Arizona State University in 1971 and a BA in anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1966. He and his family moved to Arizona in 1946, after his parents studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art. They worked on a cattle ranch in Patagonia to fulfill a cowboying dream. By 1947 the family had moved to Tucson, first to a home on Tyndall in the city’s center and later to a tiny rural cabin off Anklam Road in the Tucson Mountains. Kit’s mother, the artist Mac Schweitzer, achieved acclaim as one of the Tucson art scene’s “Early Moderns”; she died in 1962. Kit’s father, John, studied anthropology, worked as a graphic artist, and later taught French at Oklahoma State University. A painter and printmaker, he now lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his wife Marjorie.