Exhibition: January 27–March 4, 2023 
Gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 12–4 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Performance by John Hitchcock: Friday, January 27, 5:30 p.m., Grunwald Gallery

Opening Reception: Friday, January 27, 6–8 p.m., Grunwald Gallery

Blanket Songs is a multi-media installation and performance by artist and composer John Hitchcock. The artist examines, combines, and reinterprets traditional narratives of the American frontier and indigenous stories to tell the story of “The West.” The installation features neon sculptures, video, prints, fabric works, and objects.

Hitchcock’s artworks are based on his childhood memories and stories of growing up in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma on Comanche tribal lands next to the US field artillery military base Ft. Sill. Many of the images in his work are interpretations of stories told by his Kiowa/Comanche grandparents and/or abstract representations informed by beadwork, land, and culture. The artist’s use of the print medium references its traditional function as a tool for social and political commentary to explore relationships of community, land, and culture. Combining printmaking, music composition, and personal histories, Hitchcock tells a story that is both cultural and personal, meditates on the fragility of life, and examines ideas of identity and representation. 

Born in 1967 in Lawton, Oklahoma, Hitchcock earned his M.F.A. in printmaking and photography at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas and received his B.F.A. from Cameron University, Lawton, Oklahoma. He has been the recipient of The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artistic Innovation and Collaboration grant, New York; Jerome Foundation Grant, Minnesota; the Creative Arts Award and Emily Mead Baldwin Award in the Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin. He is currently an Artist and Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he teaches screen-printing, relief cut, and installation art. 

The exhibition is curated by Leah Kolb, an independent curator and arts consultant. She previously served as the Curator of Exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Wisconsin and is currently working with Short Art Advisory, a firm that provides curatorial and art consulting services to individuals, institutions, and organizations.  

Hitchcock offers a performance in the gallery Friday, January 27 at 5:30 p.m., after which an opening reception takes place from 6–8 p.m.   

Exhibition sponsors:
The exhibition is sponsored by Office of the Vice President for Research at Indiana University.