Often, we hear the story of human impacts on buffalo. But a new mural at the Plains Indian Museum in Cody centers the national mammal and explores how they interact with other species and the environment.
It’s a work that also teaches us respect for the power of wild animals, says John Hitchcock, one of the artists who created the piece.
Hitchcock collaborated with artist Emily Arthur, who drew the deer and birds of prey in the mural, and the Plains Indian Museum. The work is part of the Buffalo Nation exhibition at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
The 42-by-16 foot mural that was installed in July takes up an entire wall in the Plains Indian Museum.
Penelope Johnson and Fifi Lipscomb hammered paper cutouts of red-tailed hawks into the sky section of the mural. This part is painted royal blue to indicate nighttime. The birds of prey in the mural soar through constellations. They are screenprinted, giving them varying shades of red and pink.
In the lower part of the mural that’s painted pale blue, pink buffalo march through black trees and green ducks. A black and white buffalo skull sits in the center. Dragonflies, butterflies and birds emanate out of it.
Hitchcock is an artist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches printmaking and screenprinting. He is an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and has Comanche and Northern European heritage. He’s also a musician.
“I've been playing music since I was probably 15 years old. And I've been playing in several bands, all the way from speed metal to country and Western, to folk and now Americana folk music,” he said.
Sound is often part of Hitchcock’s art installations. While he was in Cody creating the mural, he composed a song that expressed the mural sonically.
John Hitchcock: I'm letting the work speak to me and thinking about tones and sound and how they can reference back to shape. One of the things about printmaking in particular, which I teach, is it's all about layers. And music is the same thing.
I think about if you have one component you put up or an object, such as this large buffalo here, and then we have Emily Arthur's deer that's up at the top part. The waterbirds that are referencing the Kiowa Comanche culture that I come from. The horn toad, also the frogs, too.
Then they're speaking to each other. Once they start to speak to each other and have this conversation, then you have another buffalo pop up and another one, and so it becomes a chorus. So there's a chorus happening and the layers are starting to happen.
Then if you think about a blue bird, water bird, that's flying through, that's giving another sound to it, then you have multiples. You have 20 black dragonflies flying through. Then those become a symphony of notes, and so all of these objects that are placed on the wall become a complete composition.
Plains Indian Museum Interim Curator Hunter Old Elk: And I think it's really interesting. I don't know if John meant that, but at one point over this week, he's like, ‘I feel like a conductor. I feel like I'm conducting a symphony of birds and a symphony of art.’ He said that just in passing, and it may have been a really intimate moment for him, but that was really impactful for myself to understand the vision.
With us, it was really important to center the story of buffalo and to really tell that story in reference to its impact to other species.
Here in Cody, Wyoming and in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, we were at the epicenter of its loss, right? In this region, you saw buffalo dwindle down to the hundreds, and then to see that conservation impact. But people rarely talk about the significance of when the buffalo was lost: What it did to the habitat?
I think what's really interesting is when we're telling that story and we can highlight this story of conservation. We can also see it in the art that was created.
When John and I were talking about color and composition, he wanted to do sort of unexpected colors. A lot of times, you see buffalo and they're true to their color. They're brown and they're dark colors. But here you're seeing pink buffalo.
JH: Future buffalo.
HOE: Future buffalo.
JH: They're resilient in their strength and their power, and they will continue to move forward.
HOE: I just want the message to come across that it's our social responsibility to recognize that when they're healthy, our environments are healthy. When their environments are threatened, all environments are threatened. That is the story that is ultimately uplifting. And I think when we're talking in terms of generations, that is a generational responsibility. It's not just ours.
