INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The fourth annual Butter Fine Art Fair that starts Thursday will showcase 60 Black contemporary artists at The Stutz business center in downtown Indianapolis.
Butter will run through Labor Day weekend.
Most of the artists are from Indiana, but 10 of them are Los Angeles-based.
Deonna Craig, director of the fair, said, “We are putting local artists and national artists in one conversation so that everyone has the same platform.”
The fair will feature a car show, music, and artists in categories including canvas art, poetry, and culinary art. It’s organized by Ganggang, a creative advocacy agency.
“When you bring creatives together, when you bring a certain skill-set together that is fueled by love and passion, great things can happen,” Craig said. “We’re wanting to not only emphasize the artists but to encourage Indianapolis to be a place where our artists’ careers can grow, and that we can retain talent and recruit more artists to come to Indianapolis and make this their home, too.”
L.A.-based artist Mary Harris says she’s excited to be featured at Butter for the first time. She says it’s a dream come true. “It means we’re entering into a phase in America where artists of color have the opportunity to shine and really bring forth the best of their work.”
Harris says her piece represents women having freedom in the art space since, historically, they weren’t represented. “We think a lot of the art history and art texts, but we don’t get to shine, and every single nationality should be represented in art history. It should just be centralized in Europe.”
Butter will also serves as a model for economic justice in the arts; it aims to sell or loan all of the pieces. In 2023, art sales totaled more than $1 million.