Four Directions

                One Community

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Emily Arthur, Jami Balicki, Gibson Byrd, John Hitchcock, Truman Lowe,

Tom Jones, Dakota Mace, and Sarah McRae 

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Reception: Saturday, November 15, 5 to 8 p.m. 

On view: through December 27, 2025

Hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. 

 

Portrait Society Gallery is thrilled to announce a new exhibition, Four Directions One Community, opening with a reception on Saturday, November 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. and continuing through December 27, 2025. The reception is free and all are welcome. The artists will be present to informally discuss their work. Reception includes appetizers and beverages. 

 

This group exhibition presents Native artists who have taught at or studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison art department. It is a little known fact that for generations, UW-Madison has been a nexus for education, support, and mentorship of Indigenous artists. Long before the contemporary art world began to notice and champion this work, Native professors such as Gibson Byrd (1923-2002) (Shawnee), who taught from 1955 to 1985, and Truman Lowe (1944-2019) (Ho-Chunk), who taught from 1975 until his death in 2019, were attracting Native artists from around the country. In addition to the art department, in 1972 the university founded an American Indian & Indigenous Studies (AIIS) department to focus on the his­tory, cul­ture, lan­guages, and expe­ri­ences of Indigenous peo­ples. 

 

This exhibition presents work by Emily Arthur, Jami Balicki, Gibson Byrd, John Hitchcock, Truman Lowe, Tom Jones, Dakota Mace, and Sarah McRae — artists actively engaged in the contemporary art world. Many of the artists are presenting new bodies of work. It was co-organized by Dr. Sarah Anne Stolte, Associate Professor of Art History at Edgewood University, Madison. 

 

The work in the exhibition centers on reclaiming, preserving, defining, sharing and celebrating Indigenous perspectives. Central to the exhibition is John Hitchcock's “Ceremonial (Pow-wow ribbon chair),"  a reflection on the past, present and the future of indigeneity. 

 

He states that, “The pow-wow chair is a functional object that is commonly used at American Indian dances, celebrations and ceremonies to provide support, comfort, and inclusion.  The ribbon pow-wow chairs are adorned with bright colorful silk ribbon to signify celebration and survival. Ascending upwards, they transcend beyond a functional chair to a metaphorical presence that represent our indigenous present and future, while looking to our past and the spirit of our people who have guided us.  Ceremonial honors the perseverance and power of our ancestors and elders. They have given us the tools to survive in this settler colonial society. It’s about reclaiming indigenous perspectives and space.”

 

Gibson Byrd (1923-2002) (Shawnee) was the first Native professor at UW-Madison. Byrd began teaching at UW-Madison in 1955. He retired due to Parkinson’s disease in 1985, and was then Professor Emeritus until his death in 2002. He is known for landscape and figurative paintings that employ dream-like subtleties and atmospheric effects, as well as social commentary. "Four Directions One Community" presents three paintings by Byrd, including an early work from 1956, executed shortly after he arrived in Madison. The painting, most likely a self-portrait, depicts Byrd eating a hamburger against the background of a rural setting. While no commentary or interpretation exists regarding this work, the hamburger is a symbol of American post-war efficiency and mass consumption. Byrd depicts himself taking a bite, then looking outward, defiant, yet caught in the act. The painting might speak of the competing dynamics of assimilation versus cultural preservation. While we will not know what Byrd intended, it is an intriguing, humorously mysterious, and singular work. 

 

Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk) is an internationally known, award-winning artist who has been a  professor of photography at UW-Madison since 2005. For this exhibition, he is launching a new body of work, "Xaawį nagira waakšik hó į / Plants give us life" (2025). In this series, Jones is contemplating how plant knowledge is passed down through families or is directly gifted to an individual through fasting or dreams. Jones commented that, "My grandfather would ask me to go along to help him pick medicine and this continues to be a lifelong learning process for me. The plant specimens in this series document the plants and medicines of Kyrgyzstan while at the Nomadic Art Camp exchange.” 

 

Other artists included in the exhibition, such as Emily Arthur, Truman Lowe, Dakota Mace, Jami Balicki, and Sarah McRae, each contemplate Native histories, practices, and symbols through intricate interactions between materials, form, and image.