John Hitchcock credits his grandmother with planting an artistic seed in him.
“My grandmother, my kaku, the Comanche word for grandmother, was a beadwork artist, and as a little kid I grew up learning about design and shape and imagination and color from her,” Hitchcock said. “I would sit at the table, and she’d scatter her beads on the table, and she’d hand me a piece of paper, which was usually a part of a paper bag, and she’d say, ‘I want you to draw.’”
She would task him with sketching different items in the house. As he grew up, he realized this early exposure to art and strong support system pushed him to pursue his career in the visual arts.
His work will appear in an all-new collection of print works that just opened at Bowling Green State University.
Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, which is on the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon, and has been home to a collection of Indigenous art since the early 1990s, has shared 40 print works by various Native American artists with BGSU, spanning from the 1960s to now, for an exhibition titled Giving VOICE: Native American Printmaking from Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts. The free exhibit is open through Nov. 6 in the Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery.
Karl Davis is the executive director of the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.
“Crow’s Shadow was founded in 1992 by a local artist named James Lavadour. It was really started as a place for Native American artists,” he said. “In the late ‘90s we really shifted focus to printmaking in general, built out a studio, hired a master printer, and started our artists in residence program.”
Robin Reisenfeld, an independent curator and fine art consultant, curated the exhibition at BGSU, selecting each piece to illustrate how Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts acts as a platform for Indigenous artists to create work of self-representation.
“While there exists several fine art printmaking workshops across the United States, as far as I know and my colleagues as well are aware, Crow’s Shadow is the only one located on Indigenous land,” Reisenfeld said. “Right now we're in a moment where Indigenous art is really taking off. It’s really thriving and it’s exciting to see as well.”
The collection will display the versatility of print art, bringing historical and contemporary pieces together for the public to view.
When asked what her intentions were in choosing these print works from Indigenous artists, Reisenfeld said she had two purposes.
“To showcase the prints themselves, of course, and to introduce audiences to the breadth of perspectives that Native American artists bring to printmaking,” Reisenfeld said. “I selected 19 artists who range in age and background.”
Hitchcock, an artist and professor of art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said that being a part of this show is exciting, as it gives him an opportunity to stand next to the impressive work that comes out of the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.
“There’s an incredible list of artists that are in the exhibition and to be alongside them is so important, having that representation,” Hitchcock said.
He uses the print medium to comment on social and political issues, exploring his own relationship with native communities, land, and culture.
“My grandmother is Comanche; Numunuh is what we go by. And I grew up on Comanche tribal land,” Hitchcock said. “Right across from where I grew up was Fort Sill, which is the largest field artillery training base in the United States. It’s also known for its relationship with Indigenous culture.”
Having grown up in Oklahoma, Hitchcock bases much of his work off of childhood memories from the Wichita Mountains, focusing on his heritage and the stories told by his Kiowa and Comanche grandparents.
His work is among the many pieces by artists with an Indigenous background that illustrates the connection many native people have with the earth and the land they grew up on. According to Reisenfeld, this connection to the earth and ancestral land is often what sets Indigenous art apart from the others.
“There’s really no ‘one thing’ that you can say is Indigenous art, but on the other hand, a lot of this work is very much informed by a kind of world view by native people’s deep sense of place and the historical role the land has played in shaping their identity,” Reisenfeld said.
Lavadour, one of the original founders of the Crow’s Shadow Institute, will also have art in the gallery in Bowling Green.
“I’m excited about the work he’s been doing. The work I selected, four works, consisted of these landscape compositions that are informed, inspired by his identification with the land and the area where he lived and grew up,” Reisenfeld said.
Hitchcock is scheduled to give an artist talk at BGSU's Fine Arts Building in Room 204 at 7 p.m. Nov. 3. He'll discuss his art and background.
“Being an educator at a university, it’s been amazing to be able to do this, do the work I do but also the educational components of that are strong,” Hitchcock said.
There will be a reception following the talk, giving students and visitors a chance to discuss Hitchcock’s work with him. Reisenfeld will also be doing a curators talk at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. The talk will be located in the Dorothy Uber Bryan Gallery, alongside the work on display.
Contact Shayleigh Frank at sfrank@theblade.com.
First Published October 1, 2022, 12:30 p.m.
