Artist Spotlight: Tay Butler
Find out how artist Tay Butler brings his experience of Black history into a new medium and what it means to him to celebrate Black History Month.
Get to know Tay:
Tay Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Houston, TX. He received his BFA in Photography and Digital Media from the University of Houston and recently completed his MFA in the University of Arkansas' Photography program. After retiring from the US Army and abandoning a middle-class engineering career to search for purpose, Tay reignited a rich appreciation for Black history and a deep obsession with the Black archive. Using past and present images to create a historically-layered body of work, Tay reorients cultural material from the evergrowing Black experience. Tay currently teaches in the University of Houston's photo department, and has also led private and community workshops for Crystal Bridges Museum, Arkansas and The Center for Fine Art Photography, Colorado.
In Tay's's Words:
This collage combines Black history with the history of advertisements that incorporated Black people, with an emphasis on Coca-Cola. The company's ads were a staple of leading publications that Black households read and subscribed to for decades. Creating a "cloud" of community, small excerpts of advertising reach thru the crowd, bringing the famed bottle into focus.