Wisconsin Indigenous Artists at Portrait Society Gallery

The Native American stewardship at UW–Madison’s art department is honored in “Four Directions, One Community.”

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Stewards of the land, the Ho-Chunk had been living on the shores of Lakes Mendota and Monona for thousands of years. But in 1832, the HoChunk signed a treaty with the United States that forced them from their land and unleashed an onslaught of ethnic cleansing for decades to come. Despite the violence, the Ho-Chunk either refused to leave or returned eagerly. The treaty granted settlers access to their once sacred Four Lakes region, and UW–Madison was erected in 1848. Later becoming a land grant university, the University further ceded some 240,000 acres of land from the Ho-Chunk after Congress passed legislation in 1862 to establish a network of universities around the country dedicated to agriculture and mechanics—thus the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences was born.

But it was UW-Madison’s art department that began reckoning with this sinister colonial history, championing Indigenous art, education and mentorship starting in the 1950s. Now showing at Portrait Society Gallery on the fifth floor of the Marshall Building, “Four Directions, One Community” is a multigenerational show of Madison faculty and students  exhibiting an array of traditional motifs with contemporary touches that speak to the indigenous experience across time and space. 

Gibson Byrd was the first Native faculty member in the art department, the spearhead of further Indigenous involvement. When Byrd began at the university, it was 1955, the aftermath of ethnic cleansing still stung, and Indigeneity was not in vogue. To be hidden, not to be prideful of. His Man Eating Hamburger (1956) pictures a terra cotta skinned man biting out of a simply rendered yet quintessentially American symbol, the hamburger. The man looks the viewer straight in the eye, almost like we caught him in the act. The piece speaks to assimilation, almost shame, yet acceptance.

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There is an eerie sense to the piece, no blue sky to color the background, a yellow greyness that creeps the haunting of colonial impact into the scene. Yet his adjacent piece, The Presence (1990), brings a gentleness to a uniquely Midwestern landscape. The bluffs of a kettle sit in the distance of an open field under puffy white clouds in the baby blue sky. It’s a lens of beauty and respect on these glacial lands that imbues this piece with a serenity Indignity holds in homeland. 

Organic Wood Sculpture

The show flows into Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), a sculpture artist working in delicate organic wood pieces that render hard materials into gentle delicate works of balance and harmony. Rejected from UW–Milwaukee, Lowe went on to graduate from UW–Madison, eventually getting a master’s degree and becoming a professor in the art department thanks to Byrd’s recruitment. Together the two stewarded further Indigenous recruitment for both faculty and students. Mimicking the natural world in which they are derived, Lowe’s pieces sit in staunch presence with a delicate grace, like Native people on these lands for time immemorial.

Tom Jones was brought into the department for photography, showing a couple of conglomerate pieces of digital prints and beadwork panels. The prints capture various native plants printed in vibrant reliefs that resemble a combination of a digital negatives and cyanotype. Capturing the intricate textures of plants in a display of honor and awe at their natural perfection. Accompanied by a monochromatically paired panel of beadwork sitting regally between the flora panels. Taking traditional Indigenous symbols and materials and rendering them in a simple, contemporary flare. 

John Hitchcock’s sculpture floating on the wall above, Ceremonial (Speaking with Each Other) (2025), hangs two of the classic woven, fold-up lawn chairs that Hitchcock connotes with his times at PowWows and his grandparents sitting in their chairs. Ribbons hang long and weave the chairs together, one pink for his grandmother, one blue for his grandfather, passed on now, but an ode to them, their connection still entwined in the afterlife above. It is a peaceful meditation on the remembrance of family and personal history. His multi-layered screenprints further this mission.

In his “Soundscape Series,” Hitchcock creates the chaos and visual noise from growing up next to the U.S. field artillery military base Fort Sill on land in what we now call Oklahoma. Living next to swaths of land dedicated to detonating different artillery for the military, Hitchcock captures the audible experience visually, the noise ringing and chaos of those conditions, a constant reminder of the imperial beast next door. While integrating symbols of Native beadwork in the pointillism layer, one of the many neon screen-printed layers. Instilling a sense of boom, shatter, explosion. 

Deep Red Fibers

Contemporaries of the program like Dakota Mace has large, scanned chemigrams dyed with cochineal. Derived from the cochineal insect scales, the dye colors fibers a deep red. Mace’s pieces show sweeping black textural scapes over the cochineal red background, the series speaking to the missing and murdered indigenous women both remembered and forgotten throughout American colonialism. The two pieces are ethereal, haunting, yet retain a beauty that honors the spirits of these women. Sarah Ann McRae uses cyanotype and taped offline work that integrates native symbology of landforms and weavings that render elegant compositions of interconnectedness and relationship.   

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The show entwines deeply philosophical reflections on material and process with the lived experience of Indigenous life. Bringing forth the deep sense of connection each of the artists has with the land, their materials and processes, with their family and personal history across generations. The works of both legends and contemporaries weave together a beautiful story of the rise of Indigenous artists out of the ruins of colonial rule. It’s an honorable showcase for UW–Madison to have such respected and honored folk mentoring the generations of today, guiding the department in a direction rooted in Native relationship with the land. 

“Four Directions, One Community” runs through December 27 at Portrait Society Gallery, 207 E. Buffalo St., Suite 526.