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Kaku

Kaku, 2014, John Hitchcock (American/Comanche/Kiowa, born 1967), from the portfolio Drawn from the McClung Museum, Screenprint, Gift of the artist, 2015.1.15.

This colorful print by indigenous artist John Hitchcock was made in reponse to an Ojibwa apron in the museum’s collections for the past exhibition, Drawn from the McClung Museum.

Hitchcock notes, “The Comanche word kaku can be translated as ‘grandmother.’ My Kaku, Peggy Joy “Pohoxicut” Reid, was a beadwork artist and tribal singer who lived on Comanche tribal lands in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma. As a child, she asked me to design floral patterns and geometric shapes for her beadwork designs. This is how I learned how to draw.

The floral patterns from the Great Lakes Tribes of the Midwest deeply influenced the Southern Plains. I chose the beaded Ojibwa Apron because of this history and encoded memory of pattern, symbolism, color, and abstraction. My recent work often includes interpretations of stories told by my grandparents and abstract representations influenced by beadwork, land, and culture.”