Bisa Butler

Bisa Butler (born c. 1975) is an American fiber artist known for her quilted portraits and designs celebrating black life. She has exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and other venues.[1][2]

Bisa Butler
Bornc. 1975
Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
Alma materHoward University
Montclair State University
Known forFiber art, quilt art

Life and career

She was born in Orange, New Jersey, grew up in South Orange, and graduated from Columbia High School in 1991.[3] She majored in Fine Art at Howard University, where she studied the work of Romare Bearden and attended lectures by prominent black artists such as Lois Mailou Jones. While pursuing a master's degree, she took a Fiber Art class that inspired her choice of quilting as an artistic medium. She said in an interview, "As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been quilting ever since."[2]

Butler earned a master's degree in Art Education from Montclair State University in 2004.[4] She taught art in the Newark Public Schools.[2] She now lives and works in Orange, NJ .[5]

Butler typically works in bright jewel tones rather than representational color.[5] Her quilts often feature portraits of famous figures in black history, such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jackie Robinson, and Josephine Baker. She uses a variety of patterned fabrics, which she carefully selects to reflect the subject's life, sometimes using clothing worn by the subject. Her portrait of Nina Simone, for example, is made of cotton, silk, velvet, and netting, while that of Jean-Michel Basquiat is made of leather, cotton, and vintage denim.[1]

She has exhibited widely. In 2018 she exhibited at EXPO Chicago and was praised in Newcity[6] and the Chicago Reader.[7] In February 2019 her work was included along with that of Romare Bearden in The Art of Jazz, a Black History Month exhibition in Morristown, New Jersey.[8] Butler's quilts are featured in art books such as Journey of Hope: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama (2010)[9] and Collaborations: Two Decades of African American Art : Hearne Fine Art 1988-2008 (2008),[10] and on websites such as Blavity [1] and Colossal.[5] In 2019, she was a finalist for the Museum of Art and Design's Burke Prize.[11] A solo exhibition of her work will be held at the Katonah Museum of Art from March 15 to June 14, 2020.[12]

References
  1. "These gorgeous quilts celebrating black life will blow your mind". Blavity. February 23, 2017.
  2. "Bisa Butler: Artist Bio". Black Prism.
  3. "Bisa Butler: Quilt Artist Extraordinaire". The Village Green. March 12, 2015.
  4. "'The People Could Fly: Royalty Without the Riches,' an Exhibition of the Quilts of Bisa Butler". The Brooklyn Reader. January 12, 2016.
  5. "Colorful Quilts by Bisa Butler use African Fabrics to Form Nuanced Portraits". Colossal. February 21, 2019.
  6. "EXPO Chicago 2018: Critic's Picks". Newcity. October 2, 2018.
  7. "Expo Chicago 2018: See it now". Chicago Reader. September 29, 2018.
  8. "'The Art of Jazz' celebrates Black History Month, and several causes, in Morristown". Morristown Green. February 23, 2019.
  9. Mazloomi, Carolyn L. (2010). Journey of Hope: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama. Voyageur Press. pp. 36–40. ISBN 9780760339350.
  10. Hearne, Archie, III (2008). Collaborations: Two Decades of African American Art : Hearne Fine Art 1988-2008. University of Arkansas Press. pp. 10–11. ISBN 9781607251309.
  11. "Burke Prize 2019". Museum of Art and Design. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
  12. "Upcoming Exhibitions". Katonah Museum of Art. Archived from the original on September 7, 2019. Retrieved September 7, 2019.
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