Bisa Butler facts for kids

Bisa Butler (born Mailissa Yamba Butler in 1973) is an American artist who creates amazing quilts. Her art has changed how people see quilting, turning it from a craft into a form of fine art. She is famous for her bright, colorful quilted portraits that celebrate Black life. She shows both everyday people and important historical figures.

Bisa Butler's quilts are now in many famous museums. These include the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2020, she even made quilt covers for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue. Her unique quilts are very popular, with a long waiting list for people who want to buy them.

Early Life and Education

Bisa Butler, whose full name is Mailissa Yamba Butler, was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1973. She grew up in South Orange and finished high school in 1991. Her mother was a French teacher from New Orleans, and her father, who was born in Ghana, became a college president. Bisa was the youngest of four children. Her older sister couldn't say "Mailissa" when Bisa was born, so she called her "Ba-Bisa," which became "Bisa." Bisa's love for art started very early; she won an art contest when she was just four years old.

Discovering Her Art Style

Bisa Butler went to Howard University and studied fine art. She learned about famous Black artists like Romare Bearden and Elizabeth Catlett. She first studied painting, but she didn't feel a strong connection to it. Instead, she started making collages with fabric on canvas.

Later, she earned a master's degree in art education from Montclair State University in 2004. There, she took a class on Fiber Art, which changed everything for her. She had watched her mother and grandmother sew when she was a child, and they taught her. After that class, she made a quilt for her grandmother. She has been quilting ever since.

For a school project, Bisa made a quilt that looked like her grandmother's wedding photo. This piece, called "Francis and Violette," was special. Both Bisa and her professor realized she had created a completely new way of quilting.

How She Creates Her Art

Bisa Butler uses different kinds of fabrics in her quilts, not just cotton. She uses silk, chiffon, lace, and wool. She gets these fabrics from leftover pieces her mother and grandmother used for fashion. She layers these fabrics to create light, shadow, and shape, just like a painter uses colors.

She mostly makes portraits of people. These include her family and friends, people who remind her of them, and famous African American figures. She loves how the different fabrics look when layered, making her quilts look like paintings.

Besides being an artist, Bisa Butler taught art in the Newark Public Schools for more than ten years. Today, she lives and works in West Orange, New Jersey.

Bisa Butler's Artistry

Patternmaster (2023), a portrait of Octavia E. Butler at the National Portrait Gallery

Bisa Butler's main goal with her quilts is to "tell stories that may have been forgotten." She often uses special fabrics like kente cloth and African wax printed fabrics in her quilts. This means her subjects are "decorated with and made up of the cloth of our ancestors."

Inspiration and Colors

Butler's quilts are inspired by a long tradition of African American quilting. She explains that African Americans have been quilting for a long time, often using small scraps of fabric to make warm blankets. Her own quilts are like this tradition, but she uses African fabrics from Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. She has also been inspired by the fabric art of Faith Ringgold.

Bisa Butler often uses bright, jewel-toned colors for skin tones instead of realistic ones. These colors help show the emotions of the people in her quilts. She uses colors similar to those from the Black Power art movement. This helps capture the "soul and energy" of the person she is showing. At Howard University, she was guided by artists from a group called AfriCOBRA. Their bright, colorful style and goal to show positive images of Black Americans can be seen in Butler's art.

Subjects of Her Portraits

Her quilts often show famous people from Black history. Some of these include Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, and Josephine Baker. Butler carefully chooses different patterned fabrics to match the subject's life. Sometimes she even uses fabrics that the person might have worn. For example, her portrait of Nina Simone uses cotton, silk, velvet, and netting. Her portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat is made with leather, cotton, and old denim.

Besides famous figures, Butler also creates art featuring everyday, unknown African Americans. She bases these on old photographs she finds. She feels a connection to these nameless people and their stories. She wants to bring their photos to the front so people see that "ordinary folks" also deserve attention.

Her art pieces are often life-sized. This helps viewers feel like they are having a conversation with the figures in the quilts, as most figures look directly into the viewer's eyes.

Notable Works

Her large quilt, Harlem Hellfighters, was bought by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This quilt is her biggest one yet, measuring about 11 by 13 feet. It shows nine life-sized figures. The photograph she used for this work was a black and white picture from 1919 of the 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hellfighters, from World War I. Butler says her work helps these heroes be seen in public spaces. This way, their brave actions become part of America's fight for freedom.

In 2021, the Pérez Art Museum Miami bought her work Black is King.

Popularity and Recognition

By 2019, Bisa Butler already had a waiting list for her custom-made quilts that was several years long. This was even before her first solo museum show and before she became widely known. Her quilts have sold for high prices at auctions. For example, in 2021, one of her quilts, Nandi and Natalie (Friends) (2007), sold for $75,000 USD. This was much more than expected.

She has also been asked to create covers for many magazines. These include the Fall 2020 cover of Juxtapoz and the March 2020 Time magazine cover honoring Wangari Maathai. She also made the 2020 Time magazine "Person of the Year" image of Porche Bennett-Bey. Her art has also been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) for their "Juneteenth Artist Showcase."

Exhibitions

Bisa Butler's art has been shown in many places. In 2018, she showed her work at EXPO Chicago. In February 2019, her quilts were part of The Art of Jazz exhibition for Black History Month in Morristown, New Jersey. Her art is also in art books and on popular websites. In 2019, she was a finalist for the Burke Prize from the Museum of Art and Design.

Her first solo museum exhibition, called Bisa Butler: Portraits, was put together by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Katonah Museum of Art. It opened in March 2020. Even though it closed temporarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was extended until October 2020.

From May 2022 to April 2023, Butler's quilt Harlem Hellfighters was shown at the Renwick Gallery in an exhibition called "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World." This show highlighted modern American craft.

From November 2022 to March 2023, the Skirball Cultural Center had an exhibition called "Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories." This show featured works by over forty artists, including Bisa Butler.

In May and June 2023, the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery showed Butler's quilt exhibition: "The World Is Yours."

Public Collections

Bisa Butler's quilts are part of the permanent collections in many museums, meaning they are always there for people to see. Some of these include:

• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• Art Institute of Chicago, IL
• Newark Museum of Art, NJ
• Orlando Museum of Art, FL
• Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO
• Mount Holyoke Art Museum, Hadley, MA
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
• 21c Museum of Art, Louisville, KY
• Toledo Museum of Art, OH
• Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL

See also

• Stephen Towns
• Faith Ringold
• Sheila Hicks
• Carolyn Mazloomi
• Diedrick Brackens
• Michael James