Kehinde Wiley
“Art is about changing what we see in our everyday lives and representing it in such a way that it gives us hope.”
Bisa Butler
“I’m trying to give my subjects back an identity that’s been lost”
She enlarges a photograph to life size, and then sketches over it, isolating areas of light and dark. Then, she begins choosing fabrics, layering them and stitching them together with a sewing machine, a process called appliqué. At the end, the stitched portrait is layered on top of soft batting and a backing fabric. A repeated pattern of stitches is applied to all three layers to hold them together—thus completing the quilt. One quilt can take hundreds of hours to complete.
