Jack Butler

Jack Butler has been an active photographically based artist for the past forty plus years and was a Professor of Art at California State University Los Angeles from 1988 to 2010. He received his Master of Arts degree from California State University Los Angeles in 1972 and earned his Master of Fine Arts degree from UCLA in 1979. He was a dedicated teacher from 1971 to 2010 and taught at numerous educational institutions including California State University Los Angeles, the University of California, Riverside, UCLA Extension, Pasadena City College, East Los Angeles College, Los Angeles Southwest College and was a visiting instructor at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

He has participated in approximately one hundred exhibitions during that time including sixteen solo exhibitions. His work has been shown at such institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Fahey / Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, San Francisco Museum of Art, Gallery Min in Tokyo, Japan, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Osaka, Japan, Photo-Tableau in Paris, France, the Photographers Gallery in London England, the Kansas City Art Institute, The Friends of Photography Ansel Adams Center, the Laguna Beach Art Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, Sala Arcs Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, the California Museum of Photography, the Center of Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico, the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, the Corcoran Gallery, Boston Mass., and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and was represented by the former Sherry Frumkin Gallery.

He has been published in numerous books and catalogs. These include publications from such seminal exhibitions as “ Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph 1960-1980”, “Photography and Art: Interactions Since 1946”, “Photography and Language” and “Attitudes: Photography in the Seventies” as well as having a catalog of his work published by Min Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Recent publications include catalogs from the exhibition "Transfictions" at the Fisher Gallery USC and the exhibition "COLA 2004" at Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery as well as “The Polaroid Years, Instant Photography and Experimentation”, The Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College 2013.

During his career he has been involved in numerous workshops and lectures and has curated numerous exhibitions. He has participated in a Distinguished Artists Forum, 20x24 Polaroid Project in 1989 and was supported the by Polaroid Corporation to work on the 20x24 Polaroid camera in New York Studio in 1990 and again in 1998. Polaroid Corporation was also instrumental in assisting with the production of his project Hot Rod "Kulture / Culture.” He was also a recipient of a SECA Award from the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1980, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (major individual grant) in 1981 and received a City of Los Angeles Individual Artists Fellowship (COLA Grant) in 2004.

His work is included in such collections as the Los Angeles County Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, California Museum of Photography, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts UCLA, La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, Georges Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture, Seattle Art Museum, the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Art, Japan, the Graham and Susan Nash Collection, the Aaron Spelling Collection, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago as well as numerous other private collections.

Mr Butler retired as head of the Art Photography Program at California State University Los Angeles and now lives and works in the State of Washington.

Studio Contact:

Email: butler.jack@comcast.net