Bisa Butler On Her Approach to Painting with Fabric
The quilt artist reimagines Black portraiture through layers of cotton, silk, and Kente cloth.
Bisa Butler’s quilts hang in museums, but she still cuts every piece by hand. Her portraits — luminous, larger-than-life figures rendered entirely in fabric — take months to complete.
The Process
Each portrait begins with an archival photograph. Butler studies the image for days before cutting a single piece of fabric. Then, over the course of weeks, she builds the figure layer by layer — skin tone in cottons and silks, clothing in Dutch wax prints and Kente cloth.