Bisa Butler Net Worth 2023 – Income, Career, Personal Life

What is Bisa Butler Net Worth?

I’ll share an eye-opening piece of information about her stunning life and lifestyle, including Bisa Butler net worth and many more facts that are going to shock you. Are you getting excited? So, let’s break the ice.

Artists strengthen hope and push people to act on their dreams. They behave differently than policymakers or academics and think from their big, revolutionary, and visionary ideas by heart. That is why artists can move people to create significant cultural and political contributions. Bisa Butler is one of these artists who used to express emotions to communicate ideas and a way to pass down knowledge from one generation to another. If you want to learn more about Bisa Butler’s life, you should read the complete article.

As of 2023, Bisa Butler net worth is estimated to be roughly $2 million.

Full Name:	Bisa Butler
Date of birth:	1973
Place of birth:	City of Orange, NJ
Net Worth:	$2 million
Most Famous For:	Artist
Zodiac Sign:	N/a
Occupation:	Artist
Gender:	Female
Age:	50 years
Height:	N/a
Known for:	Fiber art, quilt art
Last Updated:	2023

Early Life of Bisa Butler

Bisa Butler, also known as Malissa Yamba Butler, was born in 1973 in Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in South Orange. Bisa’s mother is a French teacher from New Orleans, and her father, a college president, was born in Ghana. Bisa Butler was the youngest child in her family and had three siblings. Bisa had a great interest in art, which can be traced back to preschool. When she was four years old, she won an art competition.

Educational Background

Bisa passed her elementary education at Columbia High School in 1991. Bisa Butler’s primary subject was fine art, and she graduated from Howard University. she studied the work of Romare Bearden and attended lectures by prominent black artists such as Lois Mailou Jones. She also studied under many professional lecturers, such as Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson, and Ernie Barnes. Bisa had her undergraduate degree in painting, but she had stated that she was never connected with her degree in illustration.

Beginning of Career

Bisa started her work with fabric and made collages on canvas. She completed her master’s degree in art education from Montclair State University in 2004. Bisa took a Fiber Art class in Montclair; she was so impressed by these classes that they inspired her choice of quilting as an artistic medium. Bisa said in an interview,
“As a child, I always watched my mother and grandmother sewing clothes, and they taught me all its ways. After these classes, I made a quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and

I have been quilting ever since.”

Bisa replicated her grandmother’s wedding photo in quilt form, to which “Francis and Violette” was entitled to a final project. Bisa and her professor recognized that she had created a new form of quilting.

Artistry in Quilts

Bisa Butler became very professional in making photos on quilts. She aimed to tell all the stories, and folks people might have forgotten over time. Ssometimes used Kente cloth and African wax printed fabrics in her quilts, so her subjects are adorned with beautiful designs and made up of the cloth of our ancestors. Bisa Butler’s quilts were very heavy in size because she used to incorporate African textiles from a rich African and American quilting tradition. Bisa was once asked, for this reason, as she explained in her artist statement:

“Africans and Americans have been quilting since we were brought to this country and needed to keep warm. All the enslaved people were not given large pieces of cloth, and they made their fabrics with the scraps of cloth that were left after of cloths. From these scraps the African American quilts came out. My own pieces prove this tradition, but I use African fabrics from my father’s homeland of Ghana, batiks from Nigeria, and prints from South Africa.”

Bisa Butler was also inspired by the figurative textile works of “Faith Ringgold.”

She typically worked in bright colors and used jewel tones rather than representational colors to depict skin tone. According to Bisa’s perspective, color represents the emotions of the individuals in her hand-made quilts rather than their actual complexions. Members of AfriCOBRA mentored Bisa Butler in Howard. She always collected bright colors in her artist collective’s colorful aesthetic and aimed to create positive representations of Black Americans. The robust model can be found in Bisa’s body of work.

Bisa Butler always made quilts that featured the portraits of famous figures in Black history. The great names in her paintings were Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jackie Robinson, Frederick

Douglass, and Josephine Baker.

Bisa Butler used various patterned fabrics, which she carefully selected to reflect her subject’s life. She sometimes used clothing worn by the subject.

Portrait of Nina Simone

Bisa Butler portrayed Nina Simone. She used a quilt of cotton, silk, velvet, and netting.

Portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Bisa Butler’s portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat is made of leather, cotton, and a vintage denim quilt.

African American Subjects on Photographs

Along with Bisa’s portraits of notable figures, Bisa Butler also created pieces that feature daily. She made unknown African American subjects on the quilts she found in old photographs. Bisa described her fascination for her nameless subjects’ strange stories as :

“I can feel these people; I know these stories because I have grown up with them my whole life to bring as many of these unnamed people’s photos to the public so people will see these ordinary folks as deserving of a spotlight too.”

Bisa’s projects have been done on a life scale to invite those viewers who engage in dialogue, and most figures look the viewers directly in their eyes.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Bisa Butler’s work, Harlem Hellfighters, got so much popularity and was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum as part of the Renwick Gallery’s 50th Anniversary Campaign.

Public Collections

The public was very impressed by Bisa Butler’s art and portraits. Bisa always took part in exhibitions held in different museums and institutions of art. Following are some public museums and institutions where Bisa participated:

• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• Art Institute of Chicago, IL
• Newark Museum of Art, NJ
• Orlando Museum of Art, FL
• Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and Culture, Kansas City, MO
• Mount Holyoke Art Museum, Hadley, MA
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
• 21c Museum of Art, Louisville, KY
• Toledo Museum of Art, OH
• Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL

Solo Exhibitions

• Bisa Butler’s solo exhibitions are listed below:
• Essex County College, Newark, NJ – 2003
• Essex College, Newark, NJ, in 2004
• Organic Soul, NJ, in 2006
• Home of Lonnie Austin show, solo exhibit in 2008
• Sistahs Fine Art Gallery, Maplewood, NJ, in 2008
• Quilt Me A Story, Bloomfield College, NJ, in 2008
• Morristown Courthouse, Morristown, NJ, in 2015
• Hearne’s fine art, Faced in Man Places in 2015
• NEWARK Academy, Livingston, NJ, in 2015
• Domareki Gallery, Maplewood, NJ in2015
• Firehouse Gallery, Valley Arts, Orange, NJ, in 2015
• Richard Beavers Art Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, in 2016
• The Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, KS, in 2017
• ” The Whirlwind, the storm and the Earthquake by Claire Oliver Gallery, New York, NY, in 2020
• Bisa Butler, Katonah Museum of Art, NY in 2020
• Bisa Butler, Art Institute of Chicago, IL, from 2020 to 2021

Bisa Butler Net Worth 2023

According to Jan 2023, her net worth is $2 million.

Bisa Butler is an American fiber artist who created a new genre of quilting that transformed the medium. Bisa Butler projects are always sold for a high amount. After many years on the waiting list for private commissions, one of Butler’s quilts sold at auction for USD 75,000. Three Bisa Butler’s quilts sold at auction for between $ 37,500 and $75,000. As of 2023, Bisa Butler net worth is estimated to be roughly $2 million.

Bisa already had a waiting list for her commissioned projects that she estimated to be several years long. After her first solo museum exhibit, she became a celebrity among the general public, and she grabbed all the attention of media and news channels forecasting that exhibition.

On the other hand, many sites have posted that Bisa Butler net worth sits between $2– $5 million. But, if we consider her additional revenue, Bisa Butler net worth might be more than $2 Million.

Conclusion

Bisa Butler’s quilt has long been considered a craft of her interdisciplinary methods. She created quilts that looked like realistic paintings. Bisa had launched quilting into the field of her fine art. Bisa Butler is known for her vibrant colors and quilted portraits that celebrate Black life and portrays American and African people and notable historical figures daily.

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