About this Event
Join Bisa Butler for a Community Quilting Mural Workshop!
October 11 | 1–5 PM
Project for Empty Space
800 Mayor Kenneth A. Gibson Blvd., Newark, NJ
Bisa Butler will kick off the workshop at 1 PM, with community members invited to drop in anytime between 1–5 PM as part of the Newark Arts Festival Open Studio Tour.
The City of Newark Division of Arts and Cultural Affairs has commissioned Bisa Butler’s inaugural, large-scale mural, which will live in downtown Newark, and is currently being fabricated at local non-profit Project for Empty Space. This workshop offers a special opportunity to see the mural in progress, learn about Bisa’s creative process, and participate in its development.
During the workshop, participants will create artwork alongside Bisa and her team of assisting muralists. These contributions will become part of a community quilt that will activate a lower-level wall, extending the mural’s ideas, patterns, and imagery into the space.
Drawing from Bisa’s signature approach to quilting and portraiture, participants will explore color, pattern, fabric, and personal storytelling as they create their own contributions to the collective work. The workshop offers a chance to experience firsthand how individual pieces can come together to form a larger, shared composition.
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For nearly a decade, Bisa was part of Newark’s public school system, and her connection to the city runs deep. Her practice brings together quilting, portraiture, family, and African American history to create vibrant works that connect generations and make space for collective memory.
For her inaugural Newark mural, Bisa draws on this longstanding practice, creating a vibrant composite work inspired by her signature quilting language, past artworks, family portraits, and archival photographs. The mural incorporates figures from her acclaimed The Warmth of Other Suns (2020), now part of the Newark Museum of Art’s permanent collection, alongside imagery inspired by photographs by Gordon Parks, Dorothea Lange, and Newark-based photographer Al Henderson.
Together, these multigenerational figures celebrate Black life, family, history, and the stories carried across generations. At the center of the composition, an elder figure represents wisdom, resilience, and continuity, honoring elders as keepers of stories, culture, and family memory.
Come see the mural take shape, meet the artists, and help create a piece of the story.
Event venue & nearby stays
Project for Empty Space, 800 Broad Street, Newark, United States
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