Bisa Butler

Sponsored by Accuquilt!  Sign up for the Black Women Stitch quarterly newsletter!    Check out our merch here  Leave a BACKSTITCH message and tell us about your favorite episode.  Join the Black Women Stitch Patreon Amazon Store Lisa Woolfork Lisa Woolfork is an associate professor of English specializing in African American literature and culture. Her teaching and research explore Black women writers, Black identity, trauma theory, and American slavery. She is the founder of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. She is also the host/producer of Stitch Please, a weekly audio podcast that centers on Black women, girls, and femmes in sewing. In the summer of 2017, she actively resisted the white supremacist marches in her community, Charlottesville, Virginia. The city became a symbol of lethal resurging white supremacist violence. She remains active in a variety of university and community initiatives, including the Community Engaged Scholars program. She believes in the power of creative liberation. Bisa Butler Bisa Butler is an award winning African American textile artist known for her vibrantly stunning larger than life sized quilted portraits that captivate viewers around the world. Formally trained, Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree and it was during this time that she began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques. She then went on to earn a Master’s in Art from Montclair State University in 2005. While in the process of obtaining her Master’s degree, Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art.  “As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts ever since.” After working as a high school art teacher for thirteen years, Butler was awarded a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in 2002 and exhibited in Switzerland during Art Basel with the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. Many institutions and museums have acquired Butler’s work including the Art Institute of Chicago for a solo exhibition, The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Insights from this episode:Why it’s important to uplift and encourage each other, starting with the children in our livesHow Bisa uses her art to affirm the dignity of historical figuresThe process of researching historical figures and time periods to accurately portray them through artHow different colors play into the meaning expressed in her artHow Bisa infuses her quilts with the music she’s listening to as she createsWhat happens when you stop starting with ‘white’ as a defaultInsights into the difference between studying art education (teaching people how to make art) vs. learning how to make art yourself Quotes from the show:“I’m always seeking for truth and to find those essential truth elements about Black people.” – Bisa Butler, Stitch Please, Episode #200“I have had people ask me, people who don’t necessarily look like us so they don’t have a full understanding, ‘I notice that you make all of your subjects look...