Sheila Butler
Born1938 (age 85–86)
Leesport, Pennsylvania, U.S.
NationalityAmerican-Canadian
EducationBFA
Alma materCarnegie Mellon University
Known forVisual Artist
SpouseKJ (Jack) Butler
ElectedFellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts

Sheila Butler RCA (born 1938)[1] is an American-Canadian visual artist and retired professor, now based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.[2] She is a founding member of Mentoring Artists for Women's Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba and the Sanavik Inuit Cooperative in Baker Lake, Nunavut.[3][4][5] She is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[6][7]

Career and education

Butler was born in Leesport, Pennsylvania.[8] She obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors from Carnegie Mellon University (formerly the Carnegie Institute of Technology) in Pittsburgh in 1960.[6] She moved to Canada in 1962 and became a Canadian citizen in 1975.[6]

Baker Lake

In the late 60s and early 70s, she along with her husband Jack Butler,[9] served as a special projects officer for the Northwest Territories where they engaged and supported Inuit artists.[6][10] They initiated a printmaking project, sewing projects and a shop.[11][12] When the Butlers first arrived, they faced staunch skepticism about their programs.[13] The local clothing factory had recently closed and many of the established printmakers had left.[9] The community had already seen a series of unsuccessful government programs and arts and crafts officers.[13] In Richard Crandall's book, Inuit Art: A History, he noted that the Inuit community, prior to the Butler's arrival, "had spent thousands of hours on printmaking projects only to see them fail".[13] Nonetheless, the Butler's printmaking project began in the craft centre and offered a wage of $1.25 to $2.00 per hour for those willing to study printmaking.[13] By 1970, the Canadian Eskimo Arts Council approved the sale of a collection of 31 prints and requested a special exhibition for the spring and the program expanded adding two more positions.[13] Eventually, the Butlers founded the Sanavik Co-operative[14] who mission was to "foster and coordinate the art activities in the settlement, and to be able to contract for other community services."[11]

Academic career and artistry

In late 1972, Sheila Butler left the Northwest Territories and assumed teaching positions the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg between 1973 and 1989, before moving to the Visual Arts faculty at the University of Western Ontario.[2] She retired from teaching in 2004 and moved to Toronto, Ontario.[3]

As a visual artist, her work centres around the human condition.[6] Some of her series have included bodies swimming, in tents, sleeping, while other works focus on violent images from the news media.[6] In particular, her work delves into the treatment of women.[15] Examples of such work are Bedroom (1982) and The National and the Journal (1984). Gary Michael Dault from The Globe and Mail said, "drawing has always been a central fact of her [Butler] existence as an artist (her wispy, sprawling drawing installation, The Essential Tremor, a sort of enterable dream journal, is one of the strongest works in the show)."[16] Further, Dault described Butler as a "veteran artist" and "a brilliant (and inexplicably undervalued) painter".[17] Butler explored themes of violence and fear in her collection The National and the Journal along with other artists including Eleanor Bond, Wanda Koop, Eva Stubbs and Diana Thorneycroft.[18]

Between 2004 and 2007, Sheila Butler, along with northern-Canadian writer Ruby Arngna'naaq, artist William Noah, southern-Canadian visual artist Patrick Mahon, and Jack Butler, formed the Art and Cold Cash Collective, a five-person artists' collective.[19] The exhibition called Art and Cold Cash toured to Canadian art galleries and Arctic settlements, as well as the University of Edinburgh and the Toronto Pearson International Airport.

In 1983, Plug-In-Art (now Plug-In ICA) created an exploratory committee of women to find ways in which to integrate and promote female artists in Winnipeg.[20] Mentoring Artists for Women's Art was founded based upon the recommendations of the committee with Butler as a founding member.[21]

Her work is in such public collections as the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the University of Toronto, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.[2][22]

Books and published work

References

  1. ^ "Canadian Art Winnipeg". Winnipeg Art Gallery. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  2. ^ a b c "art and cold cash". University of Western Ontario. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  3. ^ "Volumes 28-29". Fuse Magazine. Arton's Cultural Affairs Society and Publishing. 2005. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  4. ^ Gary Michael Dault (15 April 2008). "A show with drawing power". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Jules Heller, Nancy G. Heller (2013). North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. ISBN 978-1135638894. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  6. ^ Jackson, Marion Elizabeth. Baker Lake Inuit Drawings: A Study in the Evolution of Artistic Self-Consciousness. Michigan, MI: University of Michigan, 1985. Print. OCLC 54855662
  7. ^ White, Laura (2013). Herstory: Art by Women from The University of Winnipeg Collection. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Leamarc. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-9921187-0-9.
  8. ^ a b Richard C. Crandall, Susan M. Crandall (2001). An Annotated Bibliography of Inuit Art. McFarland. ISBN 0786430915. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  9. ^ Emily Elisabeth Auger (2005). The Way of Inuit Art: Aesthetics and History in and Beyond the Arctic. McFarland. ISBN 0786418885. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  10. ^ a b Jennifer Alsop and Dr. Ian McPherson (28 May 2000). "The History of Baker Lake (Sanavik) Co-operative". University of Victoria. Retrieved 2015-03-05.
  11. ^ Loren R. Lerner, Mary F. Williamson (1991). Art and architecture in Canada: a bibliography and guide to the literature to 1981, Volume 1. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802058566. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  12. ^ a b c d e Richard C. Crandall (2000). Inuit Art: A History. McFarland. ISBN 0786407115. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  13. ^ "Sanavik". Retrieved 2023-02-12.
  14. ^ White, Laura (2013). Herstory: Art by Women from the University of Winnipeg Collection. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Leamarc. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-9921187-0-9.
  15. ^ "Frank uses trees to paint trees". The Globe and Mail. 16 July 2005. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  16. ^ Gary Michael Dault (7 August 2009). "Defining the divide between safety and risk". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  17. ^ Alison Gillmor (7 March 2013). ""Herstory" exhibit reveals recurring themes". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2016-03-05.
  18. ^ Patrick Mahon (1 January 2008). "Excerpts from the Drawn like Money Series". Visible Language. Archived from the original on 23 October 2017. Retrieved 2016-03-05 – via HighBeam Research.
  19. ^ "History". Mentoring Artists for Women's Art. Retrieved 2016-06-15.
  20. ^ "MENTORING/manitoba artists for women's art (MAWA): a catalytic situation". The New Gallery. 6 February 1991. Retrieved 2016-06-15.
  21. ^ "Anirniliit a fresh breath of cold winter air". The Winnipeg Free Press. 14 January 2014. Retrieved 2016-03-05.

Further reading

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