Bisa Butler: In the Studio (Quilting for the Culture)

[Music] my name is bisa Butler and I am an artist who uses textiles to create quilted artworks I would say that I was an artist from the very beginning I was the kid who was always coloring drawing scribbling just like all the other preschoolers only difference was that when other kids ran off to do other things I still continued to draw my mother's side is african-american and they're from New Orleans Louisiana and my father's side is from Ghana West Africa and I was raised in New Jersey so that combination of like this these different cultures all coming together and one household it influenced me in a way that I was surrounded by art all the time I was an art major at Howard University and Howard University had a strong influence on my outlook on art it informed me because there was a really strong tradition there was one thing to teach your students how to construct a painting how to compose an interesting composition but how do you define an african-american culture and what is it that separates us but makes us stronger and better my professors were part of a group called Africa bruh and most of them came from Africa over tradition they even went so far as to throw out the paint palette that you would use it was called the Bulls arts or the European arts tradition using white to light in your artwork that was unacceptable so we were all like what is this like that was just a total total flipping of ideas even had assignments where usually when you started painting your canvases white you think about a white canvas bed assignments where the canvas was black and now you paint on that like so they wanted to sort of flip that and say literally this is a colored and black Sensibility and the palette that we used were colors that you would see more in African art or an African fabric bright orange bright yellow crimson red intense blue and that color palette was called the kool-aid colors and the kool-aid yes they were African colors but there was always like that acknowledgment that this is an African American thing and this is a new thing and that affects me a lot to this day I'm not doing it on purpose when you look at my art you're gonna see you know those kool-aid colors still you're gonna see that bright crimson red and for a million yellow and as blue like you're gonna see these in ten shades and those are the colors that I'm drawn to to this day one of the founders of the of Africa was Jeff Donaldson who was the Dean of Fine Arts at Howard so he's taking his Africa verse in civility and bring it directly into finance as a Dean you're the one who sets the mission and part of that mission was like you have a responsibility to educate your people you have a responsibility to have your people always be shown in a positive light I still maintain that I never want my artwork to show my people in a bad light we are people who've come a long way we do struggle still there's still a lot of social ills that are affecting my people so I want to address that but I also don't want this paternalistic view like oh poor them I'm not interested in that I'm more interested in seeing look what we can do [Music] now that I'm working full-time I meet a lot of other full-time artists and I see that how much of a responsibility you have as an artist you are the reflection of our times so whether you're a writer or a dancer filmmaker painter sculptor you're reflecting the times that you live in and after you're gone that all that is left is that reflection [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Katonah Museum of Art

Views: 16,576

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Id: 4w8TYRQrBlo

Length: 5min 52sec (352 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020