ONLINE: A Conversation with Bisa Butler

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Giovanni Valentine

Interdisciplinary textile artist Bisa Butler in front of her work "The Warmth of Other Sons."

Anyone interested in the fiber arts should explore this multi-day conference from the Center for Design and Material Culture at the UW-Madison School of Human Ecology. Presentations focus on connections between textile making, domestic space, and local environments, historically and now, and include sessions on such of-the-moment crazes as artful mending, embroidery, women in fiber mills, and Scottish wool. The keynote is from the extraordinary quilt portrait artist Bisa Butler, March 18 at 4 pm. The full schedule is here; signups will be coming shortly.

press release: Bisa Butler, an interdisciplinary textile artist whose works showcase personal and historical narratives of African-Americans, will give the Ruth Ketterer Harris Lecture virtually Thursday, March 18. The acclaimed artist, who currently has her first solo museum exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, will share a brief video walk-through of her exhibition to introduce her work, then join in conversation with Gianofer Fields, the Producer-in-Residence at the UW Center for Design and Material Culture.

“Bisa Butler encourages us to think about textiles in new ways,” says Dr. Marina Moskowitz, the Lynn and Gary Mecklenburg Chair in Textiles, Material Culture, and Design and faculty director of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection, which hosts the Harris Lecture series. “Her work draws on rich histories of fabric design, quilt making, portraiture, and even photography (which provides inspiration for her compositions) to tell multi-layered stories, both about her subjects—whether well-known African-Americans such as Frederick Douglass or anonymous figures from found photographs of daily life—and about the capacity of textiles to express history and culture.”

Thursday, March 18, 2021, 4:00 p.m. CT, via Zoom. Tickets: Free, by registration