Recovering Perfectionist
By Olivia Bertino
Staff Writer
South Dakota roots run deep for artist Caitlin Pisha. It’s her connection to the midwest and her family’s history in the sandhills that inspires her work. By combining elements of folk art and kitsch using a wide variety of materials, Pisha hopes to capture the beauty and whimsy of life on the plains.
Caitlin Pisha
“ It's where I grew up. It’s where I'm from, you know? And I love it here,” Pisha said.
Her style relies on mixed media, including watercolor, clay, acrylics, embroidery and whatever else she can get her hands on.
“ It kind of depends on what I’m in the mood for,” Pisha said. “There are so many different constraints that you're working with with art. I like watercolor when I'm low on time because I don't have to worry about cleanup. I like embroidery when I want to have something to sit and do that's more meditative.”
Pisha grew up on a cattle ranch in Martin, S.D., that was started by her great grandfather. She and her two siblings were always artsy. When she was in elementary school, Pisha’s mom unboxed some of her old art supplies from college and let her and her siblings play with the colored pencils and drawing paper. It was her mother and her grandmother that taught her to embroider, too.
“It's really connected to identity and place,” Pisha said. “That was one of the reasons why I started gravitating towards embroidery too, because there was a kind of maternal connection to my mom and my grandma that I really enjoyed.”
By the time she got to high school, Pisha thought that she might be able to make art her career.
“I just kind of went for it,” Pisha said.
Pisha studied art at South Dakota State University and settled in Sioux Falls. After some time working in marketing doing graphic design, she decided it was time that she worked for herself. As a day job, Pisha’s graphic design work allows her to cover her needs. But her personal art is where her style really shines.
“Stargazer,” a piece from Caitlin Pisha’s series, Becoming Whole
“I do freelance graphic design and that's very structured and procedural and I love that,” Pisha said. “I need that, and I also need the play. That's sort of my way of getting both of those.”
Because Pisha’s day job is a more methodical design process, she tends to let her art and her ideas lead when it comes to her creative work.
“ A lot of it's just play, like it'll start with an idea,” Pisha said. “I have a drawer that's all of my experiments that have gone haywire, but like I use those as inspiration for the next thing.”
It was one of those random ideas that led Pisha to the idea for her jackalope sculptures. She just received a grant from the South Dakota Arts Council to learn more about clay creation and hone her skills, and she’s currently working on a special version of the jackalope sculpture for the Sioux Falls Art Council, who commissioned her to create nine to give out as awards for the organization’s 2025 Awards in the Arts event.
“ I love the Midwest and sort of kitschy folk art, and so I've started doing jackalopes but sort of taking my own twist on them in terms of style,” Pisha said.
In one of her ongoing series, “Becoming Whole,” she incorporates Scandinavian folk crafts with her mixture of media. The pieces include plains landscapes and the plants and animals that live there.
“ Children's book illustration has always been really interesting to me,” Pisha said. “I love story and narrative and just like really deep, feminine work.”
As Pisha’s art creeps into her work life, she’s also had to come up with ways to balance her creativity with creating pieces that she can monetize. For her, she said she has to shut off the part of her brain that’s thinking about selling a piece of art despite knowing that her time and talents have value.
“Gold Dragonfly,” a piece from Caitlin Pisha’s series, Becoming Whole
“ It’s the anticipation of trying to conform yourself to something that somebody would want,” Pisha said. “ I'm trying to be a recovering perfectionist rather than a perfectionist.”
For now, Pisha enjoys her balance between freelance graphic design and art. She doesn’t have any plans to stop taking clients in favor of doing art full time.
“I don't know what the future holds, but right now, the balance is so good because they help each other,” Pisha said. “I love my clients. I'm really excited about the body of work that I'm building. The next aspirational step is continuing to flesh out my body of work.”
Find out more about Caitlin Pisha and her work at caitlinpishaart.com.