Bisa Butler - Quilting As Art

This episode explores Bisa Butler’s fascinating journey, which began with her getting a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at Howard University. Realizing painting was not her passion, she went on to Montclair University to pursue a Master's in Teaching. It was there, while making a quilt in her first-ever fibers class, that she had an artistic epiphany; she realized she could do what she loved, express her creativity in a way that moved her deeply, and tell the countless untold stories of African Americans.

Each pivotal step in her journey is described in fascinating detail. She talks about learning to sew from her grandmother; a black woman, and wife of an Emissary, who found herself transported to Morocco. She and her husband had to attend many formal events, and since they couldn’t afford to buy the refined clothing one was required to wear, her grandmother would pore through fashion magazines and create replicas of designer outfits. The scraps of fibers and fabrics from those outfits can be seen in Bisa’s portraits of her grandmother and grandfather. She explains how using little bits of their lives helped inform her work.

Butler describes her work as “excavating the soul, where her own spirit has a conversation with someone who has long passed. The process begins with a portrait. By gazing into the eyes of her subject and really looking at the lines, creases, scars, and the expression in their eyes, she can ‘hear’ their unspoken story. She spoke of the improvisational nature of private quilts and their ability to tell the personal experiences of her people (21:20 – 24:21).

As she details her journey through galleries and museums, Butler recounts the bias that was shown towards artists who use cloth in their art. But through all the rejections and dismissals, she kept at it, slow and steady, until her work was exhibited at the Seraleli Gallery in New York. From that moment, her work began getting accepted at more galleries and museums.

Her latest fiber and fabric creation, The Storm, the Whirlwind, and the Earthquake features a life-sized representation of abolitionist and social reformer Fredrick Douglass whose magnetic gaze pulled her in. This piece is a powerful example of how Butler’s painterly textiles convey a sense of shared humanity. It is currently on exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art.

Her textile creations are also being exhibited in the European Painting Gallery Space at the Art Institute of Chicago through September 6, 2021. This is the first time a living artist has been showcased in this space. Her work is also featured in Dress Up, Speak Up: Regalia and Resistance at the 21C Museum Hotel in Cincinnati, Ohio.

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