The biggest change about her inspiration happened when Butler moved the artwork in a new direction. Photographs are still the key to her process. “I can’t get the job done without a photo,” she said. As usual, she started with a photo that moved her, which inspired the dignity she brought to the final product. From there, she created line diagrams of images to explore the value of every shadow in between from the whitest white to the darkest darkest. The sketches become the pattern of her tailor when she builds the fabric of the quilt to create her signature depth and lighting. Although the source changed in the way Butler thinks basic, the process remains the same.
Butler practiced sewing for most of the past two decades, and the process started mainly comes from archives and databases. These government and private collections of retro photos sometimes feature famous faces (see “Storms, Tornados and Earthquakes” her portrayal of Frederick Douglass), but for the most part, we see people’s faces going through time: Captured by Photos: Captured by Photos, but anonymous.
Much of her practice is dedicated to studying these people. Sometimes Butler reveals their life stories (like her “Don’t trample on me, my goodness, let’s go!”, depicting a group of soldiers known as Harlem Hell Warriors), although sometimes her research ends with an understanding of people who like them
Photos may live like their struggles and ambitions, their hopes and stumbling blocks.
“I’ve been trying to live photographers lately,” Butler said. “This is part of the new interest I started during the pandemic. As history evolves, these tragic events – all the events – around and in front of me – I want to focus on the history I’m in. So I decided to create some working photographers who focus on photographers who have lived through this century. It makes sense for my work and be able to get along with my work, and this is my conversation with photographers.
These collaborators include people like Jamel Shabazz, Janette Beckman and Malike Sidibe.
Butler continued: “Jamel Shabazz is a genius and legend to me, a person who grew up in hip-hop. Being able to hear their travels and experiences with their travels and experiences makes the work that I cannot get accurate and relevant. I was able to choose a private and private example with the subject, because they now share their lives with them. Before I could make a guess, it was a fictional novel and a fact, while the other was a realistic novel.”
Working directly with these photographers also means that Butler tells a more recent story, focusing on the 1960s. Here we have reasons to inject all the new fabric into her work. Different tools at different times. Multi-plant in the 1960s and Lamés in the 1970s. Climate-conscious ecological warrior artificial fur. Holograms and metals from the nuclear age. Impressing how modern life becomes synthetic, exaggerated and completely custom fabric.
Whether Butler studies things deep in the past or near present, her work always features the pure flow of autobiography. When it comes to the source material, she says, “Unconsciously, I’m attracted to photos of my family.”
One day, her father pointed out that every image of a family always has two daughters and a son. “I didn’t even notice until he pointed it out,” she said, reflecting the exact composition of the Butler family before the father remarried. “I reappear often.”
Butler believes that the images she made today reflect those images she grew up with. Family portraits of her mother, father and siblings. Snapshots from her grandmother’s album show New Orleans’ booming black middle class. Perhaps this helps explain her obsession with hardworking, blue-collar people whose desires are shown to them in the most powerful or even happiest way.
