When she is satisfied with her arrangement, she sews the pieces into place with a long-armed sewing machine, adding detail and texture with thread. The figure or figures are added to background fabrics, batting and a backing cloth. “The crowds just went wild for Michelle Obama’s style, and so Vlisco created two commemorative patterns, ‘Michelle Obama’s Shoes’ and ‘Michelle Obama’s Bag.’” With this textile choice, she created a connection between intrepid early Black female academics and the pioneering Black first lady.Īs she builds up her compositions, Butler says, she uses a lot of pins and “little taps” of glue to keep the pieces of fabric in place.
“That fabric was printed in 2009 after the Obamas visited Ghana,” Butler says. The woman on the far right of the composition wears a skirt cut from a Vlisco fabric called “Michelle’s Shoes.” Fabrics in West and Central Africa sometimes celebrate current events or social trends. On the sleeve of the woman at center right, made from a different Vlisco fabric, another bird flies out of its cage.īisa Butler, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, 2019, cotton, silk, wool, velvet, and thread, 50” x 129,” Minneapolis Museum of Art. (Mary Jane Patterson is believed to have been the first Black woman to receive a bachelor’s degree when she graduated from Oberlin College in 1862.) There is one on the hat of the woman seated at the far left, taken from a Vlisco pattern called “Speed Bird,” which represents freedom, prosperity, and transition. “ caged bird sings of freedom,” Angelou wrote in the poem, and birds in flight are a repeating symbol in this quilt, which depicts students from the first generations of Black women allowed to pursue a higher education in the United States. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (2019), titled after the poem by Maya Angelou, Butler worked from a late-19th-century photo of four Black women college students seated on the steps of a building at Atlanta University. Sometimes Butler chooses fabric from her father’s homeland of Ghana. These cottons feature striking color combinations and patterns, and many have symbolic meanings. She often uses Vlisco, a brand of Dutch wax cotton (wax is used in the dyeing process) that is especially popular in West Africa. Photo courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery.īutler’s fabric choices can likewise convey messages. “If I’m doing somebody who is considered powerful or a leader, I might use a base of red, and then all the colors that go on top of that are interacting with that red.”īisa Butler, The Princess, 2018, cotton, silk, and thread, 46” x 70,” private collection. She always keeps color symbolism in mind. Using the drawing as a pattern, she cuts shapes out of different fabrics, including upholstery cloth, velvet, lace, silk chiffon, tulle, organza, and gabardine.
“It ends up looking like a topographic map with these lines all over it,” she says. For example, her I Am Not Your Negro (2019), its title an homage to writer James Baldwin, is based on a found Depression-era photograph of an unidentified man in Greenville, Mississippi.īutler enlarges the photo onto paper and outlines areas of light and dark. Some are of famous people (last year she sewed a quilt called Forever to honor actor Chadwick Boseman), some of family (her first quilt depicted her mother’s parents on their wedding day), some of unnamed subjects.
Photo courtesy of the artist and Claire Oliver Gallery.Įach of Butler’s vividly colored quilts starts with a photograph or photographs, preferably black-and-white ones. Bisa Butler, I Am Not Your Negro, 2019, cotton, silk, wool, velvet, and thread, 79” x 60,” private collection.
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