


Author Website for Brainard and Delia Carey
Bisa Butler was born in Orange, NJ, the daughter of a college president and a French teacher. She was raised in South Orange and the youngest of four siblings. Butler’s artistic talent was first recognized at the age of four, when she won a blue ribbon in an art competition.
Formally trained , Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor’s in Fine Art degree. It was during her education at Howard that Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Lois Mailou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson and Ernie Barnes. She began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques.
Butler then went on to earn a Masters in Art from Montclair State University in 2005.
While in the process of obtaining her Masters degree Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art. “As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts ever since.”
Bisa Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and 3 years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.
In February 2021 Bisa was awarded a United States Artist fellowship.Butler’s work is currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop of a traveling exhibit which began at the Katonah Museum of Art. She is represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery of New York. Butlers work has been acquired by many private and public collections including The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture,The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Nelson-Adkins Museum , 21cMuseum Hotels, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
To grow anything, you must nurture and cultivate it. This is no less true for your art career than for a garden flower. Success in the art world doesn’t just happen, it is the result of patient cultivation, hard work and the willingness to take risks. Along the road to success, you will inevitably meet with failure from time to time, but these are nothing more than bumps along the way. The ultimate goal is up ahead and it is this that you must keep in view. There are resources all around you if you know where to look, designed to assist you in your professional artistic endeavors. Here are a few to consider.
The Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant for Artists with Disabilities offers support to artists with disabilities who have experienced financial hardship as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The program is open to visual, media, music, performing and literary artists with a disabiity living within the five boroughs of New York City. For details and to apply, visit the website. Deadline for applications is June 15.
Columbia Law School invites artists to apply for residency to take place between September 2021 and May 2022. The selected artist will have access to a small workspace on the campus of Columbia Law School and is expected to complete at least on piece while in residence. This residency is intended to highlight the vibrancy and diversity of the school and broaden representation among artists, media and subject matter within the art collection. There is a $15,000 grant for the selected artist as well as a $5,000 budget for materials and supplies. For more information and to apply, visit the website. Deadline is June 15.
Emerging or early-career female artists living in New York State are invited to apply for the Candian Women Artists’ Award. This one-time $5,000 award is intended to assist in any way the artist sees fit to further their artistic goals. For more information and to apply, visit the website. Deadline for applications is June 30.
Praxis Center is in the business of nurturing artists. We offer courses to teach you how to navigate your art career as well as resources to keep you motivated as you do the work of building your business. Our team is ready to guide you through all the necessary components of professional artistic life. Stop by and visit us, see what Praxis membership can do for you.
Brainard Carey is an author, artist and educator. He is the director of Praxis for Aesthetics. He has written six books for artists; Making it in the Art World, New Markets for Artists, The Art World Demystified, Fund Your Dreams Like a Creative Genius, Sell Online Like a Creative Genius, and Succeed with Social Media Like a Creative Genius. His forthcoming book, Making it in the Art World, is available for pre-order with bonus content here.
Photo credit: Wiki Commons
Rebecca Bryant creates danceworks that combine movement with text, video, and objects. Originally trained in visual art, Bryant’s dances emphasize improvisational methods and performative states, as well as non-hierarchical collaboration across disciplines. Bryant has shown her work in 26 US states and in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. She worked extensively with the Lower Left Performance Collective for 13 years and is a co-founder of PMPD (dance/music/new media). Her projects have received support from residencies such as Djerassi Resident Artist Program (USA) and Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency (Mexico), and a choreographic grant from the Puffin Foundation. Bryant has danced for renowned and emerging choreographers including Nina Martin, Wally Cardona, Victoria Marks, Kim Epifano, Shelley Senter, Lionel Popkin, and Marianne Kim. She has taught workshops in New York, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and at the Los Angeles Improvisational Dance Festival, West Coast Contact Improv Festival, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Contact Festival Freiburg, TransContact Festival, Kontakt Budapest Festival, and at numerous universities across the US. She holds a BA in Visual Art and an MFA in Dance, and teaches dance improvisation, composition, somatics, and pedagogy at California State University, Long Beach.
The book mentioned in the interview is The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman.
Benjamin Bertocci lives with his small family and has been working out of his studio in Queens, New York since 2005. He was raised in Stockbridge Massachusetts, and attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock, UMASS Amherst, and worked as Visiting Assistant professor of Printmaking at Southern Illinois University.
He primarily shows with VonAmmonco Gallery.