A few words
About the Artist
Celeste Butler
Is a multi-disciplinary artist, quiltologist, and storyteller
Based in Omaha, NE, Celeste has worked on several community engagement art projects, celebrating the pride and culture of North Omaha and collaborating with mothers who have lost their children to violence, developing set design for 2019 Union Fellow Liz Gre’s opera Whispered Like the Wind, and more.
Celeste has participated in in-school artist-in-residences, working with children at Nelson Mandela and Saratoga Elementary Schools, teaching the next generation the art of quilting and storytelling. In 2018 she created quilts in honor of Nelson Mandela for the centennial celebration of his birth for Nelson Mandela Elementary.
Celeste lectures and teaches at Metropolitan Community College, and led workshops at the 2018 National African American Quilt Convention in Lawrence, Kansas, where she had two quilts featured.
Celeste’s work has been featured in the Washington Post, We Don’t Coast, and Omaha INSPIRED Living. Celeste’s work is in several public and private collections, including those of world renown coach and author Iylana Vanzant, Anne York and Jeffrey Schrager, Women Center for Advancement, Dr. Mark Goodman, Dr. Cynthia Gooch- Grayson, Brigitte McQueen, Camille Moten, Center for Holistic Development, Nelson Mandela Elementary, and The Union for Contemporary Art.
Celeste was a 2017 Fellow at The Union for Contemporary Art and participated in the 2018-19 Kent Bellows Artist Mentoring Program and Omaha’s Why Arts Artist-in-Residence program. Butler just finished a year as a fellow at the Union for Contemporary Arts. During that time, it was important for her to send positive messages about North Omaha. She invited the community to sit with her around a quilt frame and talk. Quilts are the original version of social media, she says, sending a message with every finished masterpiece.
Exhibits
- 2020 - Citylight Arts Project, the Durham Western Heritage Museum
- 2018-2019 - Thread exhibition at the Museum of Nebraska Arts, and the Film Streams (Dundee, Omaha) permanent gallery collection
- 2018 - Solo quilt exhibition at the Burgwin Wright House Museum (Wilmington, North Carolina)
- 2019 - National Afro-American Museum, featured in group exhibitions Yours For Race and Country: Reflections on the Life of Colonel Charles Young
- 2018 - Fitton Center for Creative Arts, featured in Visioning Human Rights: Quilting in the New Millennium