Inaugural Los Angeles Edition of BUTTER Fine Art Fair Coming to Hollywood Park

BUTTER LA to take place at Inglewood’s Hollywood Park during LA Art Week from February 26 – March 1, the immersive four-day cultural experience will highlight the creativity of the African diaspora, featuring work from California-based artists (50%) and Indiana-based artists (25%), with the remaining artists selected from various cities and countries across the globe. 

Known nationally for its no-commission, no-censorship model that gives 100% of art sales to the artists, BUTTER LA marks the fair’s first expansion beyond its Indianapolis homebase, introducing its artist-first model to a new major cultural market. BUTTER has generated over $1.2 million in artwork sales to date, building one of the country’s most acclaimed new art experiences. BUTTER operates with an artist-first approach that removes traditional barriers and redirects value back to creators, offering a more equitable and sustainable path for Black artists to thrive. BUTTER LA artists in 2026 will include: 

CALIFORNIA-BASED ARTISTS 

Andre Woolery, a visual artist visual art who remixes cultural artifacts, that prominently feature portraits, infusing them with Black faces; 

April Bey, is a contemporary visual artist known for her mixed media work which creates commentary on contemporary Black female rhetoric; 

Autumn Breon, a multidisciplinary artist that investigates the visual vocabulary of liberation through a queer Black feminist lens;

Cortney Herron, contemporary figurative painter whose work blends surrealism with serene, introspective compositions known for evoking a profound sense of calm; 

Fawlene Aziza, documents vanishing L environments through photography and painting, translating memory and somatic experience into abstract works; 

Marie Jose Njoku-Obi, explores language and memory through spider-web imagery that reflects strength and the repair of fractured communities; 

Micaiah Carter, photographer known for blending fine art, fashion, portraiture, and street photography to show the entire representation of people of color; 

Mr. Wash, a self taught painter who refined his craft in oil and acrylic while incarcerated. His life sentence which would be later commuted by President Obama in 2016;

Natou Fall, Senegalese-American multidisciplinary artist and educator working across sculpture, film, painting, and make-up artistry; 

Nya Serano, an abstract landscape painter whose work explores the complexities of identity, drawing from her personal experiences with mental health; 

Rebekah Gaillard, uses photography to paint vivid, thought-provoking, and emotionally expressive images to make sense of cultural identity as an immigrant woman;

Riea Owen, a former senior art director whose creative journey from graphic design roles at major film studios has evolved into a renewed, expressive practice;

Shania McCoy, an artist whose richly hued paintings captures ambiguous familiar essence of memory, radiating both history and wonder; 

Terrick Gutierrez, interdisciplinary artist whose work explores urban life in LA;

 

Tiffany Conway, acclaimed Bay Area painter whose vibrant, imaginative works pay homage to the African Diaspora; 

Tumi Adeleye, a photographer and creative director whose work explores visual storytelling through softness, identity, and care; 

Will Raojenina, a multidisciplinary artist whose work delves into the intricacies of human connection; 

Zulu Heru, Oakland-based sculptor whose work reimagines the cultural remnants of the African diaspora. 

 

NATIONAL + INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS 

Amai (Brovcheski) Rawles, Jr (Louisville), Amai Rawls Jr. transforms legal tender into intricate, emotionally charged collages that reframe currency as both material and metaphor; 

Asia Estelle (Houston), photographer, ceramicist, and visual activist documenting Black issues and Black hair; 

Blake Lenoir (Chicago), a self-taught multidisciplinary artist whose work blends contemporary surrealism with socio-cultural inquiry; 

Cornelious Tolluch (Miami), interdisciplinary artist and architect focuses on the beauty and nuances of the Caribbean and African diaspora from a distinctly South Floridian point of view;

Kai Marie Akarue (Houston), explores identity through collage, focusing on urbanism, capitalism, and erased narratives through both private and institutional collections, including the MFAH and the Carter Knowles Collection; 

Micah Johnson (Maine), the former Los Angeles Dodgers’ player turned artist and storyteller centers his work on blending fine art, literature and imagination to show that no dream is out of reach; 

Pugs Atomz (Chicago), reclaims Chicago identity drawing from African Cobra influences and vibrant “Kool-Aid” color palettes; 

Samantha Modder (Tampa), uses fairy-tale aesthetics and dreamlike materials to evoke childlike wonder while interrogating labor, privilege, access, and creative disruption;

Vanessa German (New York), leading citizen artist working in sculpture, performance, and communal ritual to cultivate spiritual models for transforming human experience. 

 

INDIANA-BASED ARTISTS 

Ashley Nora, a dedicated visual artist, highly experienced in oil painting and mixed media art, telling stories of joy and happiness that transcends time and space; 

Deonna Craig, a published and visual artist, director of BUTTER Fine Art Fair;

Fingercreations, a visual artist who uses his unique medium of oil pastels, drywall, and broken glass while creating with just his “fingers”; 

FITZ, a self-taught artist whose surreal pop-culture abstractions create universal, relatable narratives; 

Gary Gee, a visual narrator, sculptor, and multidisciplinary artist using ceramics with a graffiti style to explore humor, social and political perspective; 

Harriet Watson, emerging multimedia artist who uses figuration and portraiture to process the emotional weight of her experience with Blackness in the Midwest; 

Israel Solomon, a visual artist whose unique style has been compared to cubism; 

India Cruse Griffin, an accomplished Mid-Western artist educator whose work demonstrates everyday challenges relating to women and family; 

Julian Jamaal Jones, a multidisciplinary artist and educator who memorializes Black culture by presenting fresh perspectives; 

Kyng Rhodes, a contemporary artist whose work transcends the canvas, radiating with vibrancy, color, and profound expressiveness; 

Matthew Cooper, an emerging self-taught artist specializing in mixed media paintings, exploring themes of faith, identity, and perseverance; 

Samuel Levi Jones, a trained photographer and multidisciplinary artist, his work explores the framing of power structures and struggles between exclusion and equality. 

The BUTTER LA artist roster is one of the most credentialed yet, with the group having artwork on display in notable private and public collections and in prestigious museums and exhibitions including: The Smithsonian NMAAHC, SF MoMA, The Whitney, LACMA, Tate Britain, The Rubell Family Collection, Studio Museum in Harlem, Dakar Biennale, Cranbrook, Detroit
Institute of Arts, Brooklyn Museum, Newfields, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and more. 

Nakeyta Moore, past BUTTER curator and founder of the collector support platform ARTLOUDLA, will lead curatorial efforts for BUTTER LA, alongside creative directors and GANGGANG co-founders Malina Simone Bacon and Alan K. Bacon, Jr. Joining the curatorial team for the first time is London-based Kimberly Drew, curator, writer, and cultural force, formerly of Pace Gallery. 

Tickets are now on sale at www.butterartfair.com. General Admission tickets are $50 per day or $125 for a General Weekend ticket, which includes three-day unlimited access to BUTTER on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Premier VIP tickets and Inglewood Resident tickets are also available. Students 18 and under are encouraged to attend BUTTER and expert conversations for free on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, no pre registration required. 

BUTTER LA is made possible because of support from generous organizations and individuals including ARTLOUDLA, ARTNOIR, Barnes & Thornburg, Black Girls in Art Spaces, CAAM: California African American Museum, Context Projects, Haus of Grams, Hollywood Park, Inglewood Unified School District, LA Works, Manulife, Orange Barrel Media, and Valence Projects. 

ABOUT BUTTER 
BUTTER Fine Art Fair is a multi-day fine art fair that centers the care and economic viability of Black visual artists. Anchored in Indianapolis over Labor Day weekend, BUTTER serves as a new model for economic justice in the arts and a catalyst for career transformation. Aiming to sell or loan 100% of the exhibited artworks, BUTTER gives 100% of sales proceeds to the artists.