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In the Lot, an American artist dies and leaves a house filled with her mosaics
Press review –
In the village of Saint-Jean-Lagineste, a small village of 400 inhabitants in the North of the Lot, lived an American artist, France Butler, who has just died at the age of 84.
La Dépêche du Midiin its edition of the Lot, tells the rest: the town hall discovers that the American artist, Frances Butler, is recognized in the United States and that she has created mosaics on the walls of her house representing the fauna and flora of the surroundings, inspired in particular by the representations existing in the Pech Merle cave, in the surrounding area.
The artist has no heirs and, again according to journalist David Naulin of the Dépêche du Midi who contacted a friend of the artist in the United States, she donated her property to an agricultural landowner close to at home and that she appreciated.
The journalist specifies that the artist's work, in the field of avant-garde fashion, has been exhibited in major museums, such as the MoMa in New York but also in London and Tokyo.
To discover the video presented by Dépêche du Midi on the artist's mosaics.
Frances Butler returned to her journey and spoke about her project during a speech at the University of Davis (United States)
“After classical training in the history of reading at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford, I trained as a book designer and calligrapher. I eventually became a professor in the environmental design department at the University of California, Berkeley, and then Davis.
I have been invited to many institutions: the Art Institute of Chicago and the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht. My work is presented in museums: the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in New York. I have won commissions for public art projects; I have written articles for design magazines and book arts publications. But my main creative impulse has always been to explore outside of academic institutions or the art world.
My mother taught me to sew and I started by sewing clothes to sell them. I opened a fabric printing workshop in 1969; instead, I did wall hanging and fabric sculpture projects. I created Poltroon Press combining books and fabric projects, including creating a series of garments as “reading environments”. Then I focused on producing books and posters. I have also worked on various public art sculpture projects for hospitals and colleges, and I am now working on a large mosaic poetry garden project called “Cuts” on my farm in the South West of France «
- (elements from Wikipedia)
Frances C. Butler (born 1940 in Saint-Louis, Missouri, died 2024 in Saint-Jean-Lagineste, France) was an American artist and educator. Butler received her bachelor's degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961, her master's degree in history from Stanford University in 1963, and a second master's degree in design from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. She was professor at the University of California, Berkeley from 1968 to 1970 and began teaching at the University of California, Davis in 1970. She directed Goodstuffs Handprinted Fabric at 6221 Hollis St., in Emeryville, California, from 1973 to 1979, and co-founded Poltroon Press with Alastair Johnston in 1975.
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