The first and only time I’ve seen Bisa Butler’s artwork “in the flesh” was at EXPO 2018, at Navy Pier.
The Art Institute wound up purchasing a subsequent piece, The Safety Patrol, which will be on view here for the first time in a solo exhibit, “Bisa Butler: Portraits,” opening to the public at the Art Institute next week. The exhibit will include 22 of Butler’s quilts, most of them created in the last few years, though she’s hardly an emerging artist: she’s been doing this kind of work for two decades.
That changed in 2017, when Oliver walked past a window in Harlem, spotted Butler’s work in a benefit show of art by Howard University alumni, and began taking it to the international fairs. The pieces she brought to EXPO two years ago included Southside Sunday Morning, based on an iconic image by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee, captured in Chicago on Easter Sunday, 1941.
