Tag: potraits

Bisa Butler: Textile art inspired by vintage photographs of African Americans

Daughter of the Dust
**there is no paint on this artwork**
Cotton, silk, wool, velvet and suede

Butler, a formally trained African American artist of Ghanaian heritage, broaches the dividing line between creating with paints on canvas and creating with fiber by fashioning magnificent quilts and elevating a medium hitherto designated as craft into one that is clearly high art. While quilts have historically been isolated in the history of art as the products of working women, Butler’s work not only acknowledges this tradition, but also reinvents it. Continuing with an aesthetic set in motion by artists such as Romare Bearden and Faith Ringgold, Butler forges an individual and expressive signature style that draws upon her own cultural background and experiences.

Dear Mama (detail): quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon

Her emergence as a quilt artist began humbly when, as a result of a fiber arts class taken at Howard University, she constructed a quilt for her dying grandmother mainly as a means of comfort. As a child Butler had often spent time poring over black and white photographs with her grandmother, who told her stories about the people in each one. This experience of creating narrative and identity informs her quilts. The vibrant portraits of African American life and the tales the quilts tell are largely based on photographs from which Butler takes inspiration. She creates a story around each image, and, in her choice of fabrics, she uses texture, color and the cultural origin of the cloth as part of a personal iconography that makes statements about society and identity. African painted cotton and mud cloth tells the story of her ancestral homeland, vintage lace and aged satin might demonstrate the delicacy and refinement of times past while multi-colored organza and layered netting can convey a story of someone colorful and multifaceted.The constructed nature of the work with its reliance on piecing and stitching acknowledges the traditions of needlework normally associated with women and domesticity. Butler subverts this notion through her choice of motifs, embellishments, patterning and scale, all drawn from African textiles.What results are stunning works that transform family memories and cultural practices into works of social statement.

The Mighty Gents
The Equestrian: quilted and appliquéd cotton, wool and chiffon

Link: http://www.katonahmuseum.org/exhibitions/upcoming/

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An artist replaced the men in these classic Westerns with women. The images are awesome.

When Felice House moved to Texas from Massachusetts, she quickly fell in love with “Western” culture.

Photo by Timothy Douglas, used with permission.

House, a painter and artist, moved to Austin to study for her master’s degree before becoming an assistant professor of painting at Texas A&M University.

At first, the culture shock was fun. House says she quickly became infatuated with the Western genre: the outfits, the cowboy boots, the music.

“But when I actually got around to watching Western movies,” she adds, “I was horrified by the roles for … anybody except white men basically.”

The stoic renegades played by John Wayne, James Dean, and Clint Eastwood stood in stark contrast to the helpless damsels they shared the screen with. The empowered and the powerless.

House had spent much of her career painting women in ways that clashed with media representations, so she decided to tackle the male-dominated Western genre.

She put out a call for models and was quickly overwhelmed with women who wanted to participate.

All images by Felice House, used with permission.

House says many of the models already knew which iconic cowboy they wanted to portray.

Virginia Schmidt became “Virginia Eastwood.”

Then there was “Liakesha Dean.”

And “Rebekah Wayne.”

House first photographed the models in Western getups, then painted from the images she captured.

She also says practicing the facial expressions and body language was the hardest part for the models.

“Women are kind of trained to make coy, approachable facial expressions,” she says.

Turning these women into iconic and powerful heroes meant stripping away any remnants of the “sexy cowgirl” trope.

The paintings themselves are larger than life. Roughly 1.25 times larger, to be specific.

“When you see them in person, people are surprised by the scale.” People aren’t used to women towering over them, House says.

And that’s exactly the point. House wanted to start a conversation about who is assigned power and how we view it.

In that sense, the timing couldn’t have been better. “Issues with gender and power in the U.S. are kind of in the forefront of people’s minds, ” she says.

In the very beginning of the project, House says she simply digitally clipped one of the models heads and put it on John Wayne’s body.

“It looked ridiculous,” she says with a laugh. “But then I thought, what if I could find a way to give this same sense of power [that iconic male heroes have] to women?”

With a brush and a few massive canvases, she managed to do just that, and she hopes it’ll make a few people think differently about how we define who can be a hero.

In the meantime, and despite her criticisms of the films of yesteryear, House says pop culture is getting better at representing women. Projects like this one definitely help.

After all, it was John Wayne himself who once said, “Tomorrow hopes we have learned something from yesterday.”

Link: https://www.upworthy.com/one-woman-ran-into-the-dog-she-fostered-and-shared-the-moving-story-on-twitter

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