John Hitchcock's colorful and message-filled prints are now showing at the Komechak Art gallery at Benedictine University. It is an exciting exhibition which speaks about a number of topics near and dear to the artist's concerns about the environment, Man's attack upon the Earth and respect for one's heritage. Hitchcock, a native of Oklahoma who now resides in Madison, Wisconsin, has embarked upon a long-standing message about his heritage as a Native American (of Comanche descent).
His quirky group of owls, cows, deer, birds and buffalo project a lot of soul, but the flip side of these portraits is that they don't always appear to be living creatures. The radioactive horse is electric yellow-green and the buffalo skull portrait is a ghostly charcoal- gray. The clusters of cows skulls and wide-eyed owls sear through the viewer as they show us their struggle to survive outside environmental and human attacks.
The inclusion of helicopters, tanks, and bombs come from his experiences hearing testing at Fort Sill, which ran along his family's tribal lands. The flatness and outlined hollowness of the shapes in contrast to his hand-drawn animals is intentional, and help s us see the abstractness of the military versus the liveliness of Mother nature.
Hitchcock’s artwork is deeply informed by his personal biography and family history. He grew up in western Oklahoma on Comanche tribal lands in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma next to Ft Sill, a US field artillery military base. Fort Sill was originally established in 1869 to wage battles against American Indians.
Hitchcock’s current artwork consists of mythological hybrid creatures (buffalo, wolf, boar, deer, moose) and military weaponry (tanks and helicopters) based on his childhood memories. He depicts stylized skulls of animal heads - buffalo, horse, and deer—that represent departed family members, and are linked to American Indian folklore passed down through his ancestors. The work reflects on communities and traditions disrupted by war and cultural genocide. This exhibition is held in conjunction with the university's Social Justice Teach-In for March.
Hitchcock is currently Professor and Associate Dean of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin at Madison where he teaches screenprinting, relief cut and installation.
Awards:
Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant
The American Photography Institute
Jerome Foundation grant
National Graduate Seminar Fellowship at New York University
Tisch School of Arts
Vilas Associate Grant at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Artist in Residence at the American Cultural Center in Shanghai, China and the Venice printmaking Studio, in Venice, Italy
