The character arc of Bisa Butler
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born Mailissa Yamba Butler in 1973 in Orange, New Jersey, the youngest of four, to a French teacher from New Orleans and a father born in Ghana who became a college president. Her older sister could not say her name and shortened it to Bisa. Between then and now sit a high school diploma in 1991, a fine art degree from Howard University in painting, a medium she says she never really connected with, a master's in art education in 2005, a fibre art class, a quilt made for her grandmother on her deathbed, more than a decade teaching art in Newark public schools, a first solo museum exhibition in 2020, and a quilt eleven feet by thirteen acquired by the Smithsonian. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Drag along the line to move, pinch or use the buttons to look closer. Tap the line to pluck it, or any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Bisa Butler?
Her degree was in painting. She never connected with it.
Her mother is a French teacher from New Orleans and her father, born in Ghana, was a college president. She was the youngest of four, and got her name because her older sister could not pronounce Mailissa and shortened it. She graduated from high school in New Jersey in 1991 and went to Howard University, where she majored in fine art, studied under a run of significant Black artists and was mentored by members of an artists' collective whose bright palette and positive images of Black Americans are still visible in her work.
Her degree was in painting, and she has said she never really connected with the medium. She did start working with fabric, making collages on canvas. She went on to a master's in art education, finished in 2005, and there she took a fibre art class. She had always watched her mother and her grandmother sew. She made a quilt for her grandmother on her deathbed, replicating her grandmother's wedding photograph in fabric. When she presented the piece, both she and her professor recognised it as an entirely new form of quilting.
Alongside the work she taught art in Newark public schools for more than a decade. What she makes are life size portraits in cloth, built from photographs and sketches and vivid traditional textiles, often kente cloth and African wax prints, so that her subjects are made up of the cloth of their ancestors. She works in bright jewel tones rather than representational colours for skin, using colour to carry what a person was rather than what shade they were.
Some of her subjects are famous: a poet, a baseball player, an abolitionist, a singer, a painter. Each is built from fabrics chosen to match that particular life, sometimes including clothing the subject actually wore. Many more of them are nobody the history books name, taken from found photographs, and she has said she wants to bring as many of those unnamed people to the front as she can, so that ordinary folks are seen as deserving of a spotlight too. Everything is life scale, so the figures look the viewer in the eye.
She was a prize finalist in 2019. Her first solo museum exhibition opened in March 2020 and closed when the pandemic shut the building, and was extended to October when it could reopen. That year she was commissioned to quilt cover images for a magazine, including for its person of the year issue and its hundred women of the year issue. Her largest quilt, roughly eleven feet by thirteen and made of nine life sized figures from a 1919 photograph of a Black infantry regiment, was acquired by the Smithsonian. Her work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a long list of others. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
The moments
Bisa Butler's timeline.
The 1970s
Born in New Jersey
Everyday. A name given by a sister who could not manage the real one.
The 1990s
High school, then Howard
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Taught by people whose names are on museum walls.
A degree in the wrong medium
Setback, and it changed everything. Trained in the thing that was not hers, and she knew it.
The 2000s
Painting, or the fabric
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: go with the cloth, taken, or keep painting. She is credited with creating a new genre of quilting. Her largest quilt was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and her work is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and many others.
A quilt for her grandmother
Milestone, and it changed everything. Made for one dying woman, and it was the whole answer.
Teaching, for over a decade
Everyday, and it changed her direction. Ten years of school art rooms while the work went on at home.
The 2010s
The art world notices
Milestone, and it changed her direction. Thirteen years after the first quilt, the reviews start.
The 2020s
Her first show, then shut
Setback, and it changed everything. The first solo show of her life, open for days, then dark.
A magazine in cloth
Milestone, and it changed everything. A national magazine cover, sewn rather than photographed.
Eleven feet by thirteen
Milestone, and it changed everything. Nine men from a 1919 photograph, life sized, in colour at last.
The Smithsonian hangs it
Milestone, and it changed her direction. On the wall of a national museum, for the best part of a year.
The World Is Yours
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A gallery show of her own, in New York.
She made one thing for one person who was dying, and it turned out to be a new way of making art. What she set moving is a room where a nameless face from an old photograph is eleven feet tall, in kente cloth, looking straight back at whoever came to see it.
In her words
Quotes by Bisa Butler
My work is to continue to lift them up in history so they can be seen in public spaces, where their heroic sacrifices become part of the American quest to fight against oppression and for freedom.
People will see these ordinary folks as deserving of a spotlight too.
What others wrote
Book about Bisa Butler
- 2020
Bisa Butler: Portraits
by Erica Warren
The catalogue of her first solo museum exhibition, published for the Art Institute of Chicago. About her work rather than by her.
Your turn
Every line draws a unique story.
Hers is a degree in the wrong medium, a decade of teaching, and one quilt made for a dying woman that turned out to be the whole answer. Yours is already further along than you think, and drawing it takes about five minutes.
Bisa Butler: frequently asked questions
What people ask about her line.
What is Bisa Butler's character arc?
What art does Bisa Butler make?
Where is Bisa Butler's work held?
What is Bisa Butler's Harlem Hellfighters?
Did Bisa Butler teach?
What happened to Bisa Butler's first solo museum show?
Where does this timeline of Bisa Butler's life come from?
More character arcs
Lives that rhyme with her.
Sources
- Bisa Butler, English Wikipedia biography.
- Art Institute of Chicago and Katonah Museum of Art exhibition record, Bisa Butler: Portraits, 2020.
- Smithsonian American Art Museum acquisition record for Harlem Hellfighters, Renwick Gallery fiftieth anniversary campaign.
- Her artist statement and interviews, for the quotations below.
- No Wikiquote page exists for her.
- Butler, on the Harlem Hellfighters quilt.
- Butler, on her portraits of unnamed subjects from found photographs.