PAM BUTLER
Biography
Pam Butler first gained attention with her street postering in the 1990s, and, in particular, her Good Girl Project. In 2010, she revisited this project and expanded on it for The Good Girl Book. Materials for this project are now housed at the Fales Library at NYU. Butler has shown in galleries both nationally and internationally including Scotland Street Museum, White Columns, Artists Space, Cue Space, CCNY at Baxter Street Gallery, and Atlanta Museum of Design.
Her awards include a Sharp Foundation residency, a Gottieb Foundation artists grant and a NYFA artists grant. She had an NEA supported residency at Virginia Center for the Arts and a supported book making residency with Endless editions in NYC. Her magazine Lotion is published whenever she is able to get an issue out. Each issue is done in collaboration with another artist and merges each artist's work to form an overarching concept, often ironic and sometimes funny and always a flavor of social critique, which could also be said of all of Butler’s work.
https://pambutlerart.com
Project Proposal
Exhibition at Meantime Gallery
It was with my first large project (Good Girl Project 1992-94) where I began using the environment as an integral part of the work. This project consisted of a series of 11 x 17 in. photocopied drawings wheat pasted on
the streets of NYC (and elsewhere). Blanketing a neighborhood overnight with hundreds of posters of different drawings created a dialog across the expanse of the area’s streets. In my studio a decade later, while
working to remake this project into a book, this immersive way of working began to reassert itself. I wheat pasted directly to my studio walls out takes from my developing book. These collages started expanding, growing off the walls as I began adding objects, sandwich boards, and even in one studio-sized iteration, plants, chairs and pillows. The first installation piece realized outside the studio was for The Mood Back Home at Momenta Art in 2009. After the Momenta Art show I continued working with installation as an important part of my practice,
turning my studio into a constantly evolving work. However, I felt limitations in my understanding of this medium so I jumped at an opportunity to work with Pepón Osorio, an installation artist I had always admired, at a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. While there I completed my piece Sex, Death and Boys.
After this residency, I started a year-long residency at the Sharp Foundation in Brooklyn NY. At the Sharp Foundation I continued working with smaller installation works and sculptural pieces that grew from the
remains of these larger works. I also began adding objects and collage directly onto my paintings. In my new studio after the Sharp residency my work became increasingly focused on my painting practice and with
collaging directly onto the canvas. With leftovers from old installation pieces finding their way onto the paintings and drawings, a conversation between the different methods and series of work developed.
In 2016, I returned to larger installation work when asked to do a piece for the Bushwick Art Book and Zine Fair. This installation was done in support of my Good Girl Book which was the featured book at the table for Blonde Art Books, the fair’s sponsor. And in 2019, I was asked again to do a large work, this time for Look Both Ways: The Illicit Liaison between Images and Information at SVA gallery.
This coming September, I will be having a solo show at Meantime Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This show will be installed as one large installation piece in full engagement with the totality of the gallery; it’s floor
space and windows as well as the walls. A grant from the Tree Of Life Foundation, will be of great help, allowing me to fully focus on this project and to hire the studio help I know will be needed in order to become fully immersed in the process as the project comes together. It will also allow for professional documentation of the project beyond what the gallery itself is able to offer.
Biography
Pam Butler first gained attention with her street postering in the 1990s, and, in particular, her Good Girl Project. In 2010, she revisited this project and expanded on it for The Good Girl Book. Materials for this project are now housed at the Fales Library at NYU. Butler has shown in galleries both nationally and internationally including Scotland Street Museum, White Columns, Artists Space, Cue Space, CCNY at Baxter Street Gallery, and Atlanta Museum of Design.
Her awards include a Sharp Foundation residency, a Gottieb Foundation artists grant and a NYFA artists grant. She had an NEA supported residency at Virginia Center for the Arts and a supported book making residency with Endless editions in NYC. Her magazine Lotion is published whenever she is able to get an issue out. Each issue is done in collaboration with another artist and merges each artist's work to form an overarching concept, often ironic and sometimes funny and always a flavor of social critique, which could also be said of all of Butler’s work.
https://pambutlerart.com
Project Proposal
Exhibition at Meantime Gallery
It was with my first large project (Good Girl Project 1992-94) where I began using the environment as an integral part of the work. This project consisted of a series of 11 x 17 in. photocopied drawings wheat pasted on
the streets of NYC (and elsewhere). Blanketing a neighborhood overnight with hundreds of posters of different drawings created a dialog across the expanse of the area’s streets. In my studio a decade later, while
working to remake this project into a book, this immersive way of working began to reassert itself. I wheat pasted directly to my studio walls out takes from my developing book. These collages started expanding, growing off the walls as I began adding objects, sandwich boards, and even in one studio-sized iteration, plants, chairs and pillows. The first installation piece realized outside the studio was for The Mood Back Home at Momenta Art in 2009. After the Momenta Art show I continued working with installation as an important part of my practice,
turning my studio into a constantly evolving work. However, I felt limitations in my understanding of this medium so I jumped at an opportunity to work with Pepón Osorio, an installation artist I had always admired, at a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. While there I completed my piece Sex, Death and Boys.
After this residency, I started a year-long residency at the Sharp Foundation in Brooklyn NY. At the Sharp Foundation I continued working with smaller installation works and sculptural pieces that grew from the
remains of these larger works. I also began adding objects and collage directly onto my paintings. In my new studio after the Sharp residency my work became increasingly focused on my painting practice and with
collaging directly onto the canvas. With leftovers from old installation pieces finding their way onto the paintings and drawings, a conversation between the different methods and series of work developed.
In 2016, I returned to larger installation work when asked to do a piece for the Bushwick Art Book and Zine Fair. This installation was done in support of my Good Girl Book which was the featured book at the table for Blonde Art Books, the fair’s sponsor. And in 2019, I was asked again to do a large work, this time for Look Both Ways: The Illicit Liaison between Images and Information at SVA gallery.
This coming September, I will be having a solo show at Meantime Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This show will be installed as one large installation piece in full engagement with the totality of the gallery; it’s floor
space and windows as well as the walls. A grant from the Tree Of Life Foundation, will be of great help, allowing me to fully focus on this project and to hire the studio help I know will be needed in order to become fully immersed in the process as the project comes together. It will also allow for professional documentation of the project beyond what the gallery itself is able to offer.