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| A digital reproduction of an original coloured Alma Buote drawing, featuring designs for women's clothing. Buote worked as a designer for The Fashion Academy in New York |
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A digital-reproduction-based exhibition, celebrating the life and achievements of Tignish-born artist Alma Buote (1894-1966) opened at the Tignish Cultural Centre recently. It will remain on display there until the end of August. The exhibition was launched as part of Acadie 400 celebrations in the region.
Buote was a successful commercial artist, teacher and designer who achieved a great deal during her lifetime, much of which, was lived far away from Prince Edward Island. In 1916, Buote left Tignish to study at the Montreal school of l'Association d'Art. To finance her career she painted and sold greeting cards. Reproductions of some of those cards (they are quite delightful), can be seen in this exhibition. Then, following a period running her father's fox farm, alongside her mother, the two women moved to New York City. There, Buote obtained a placement at the prestigious Fashion Academy. Over the course of the next twenty years, she made a name for herself as a clothes designer, mainly for women and children. She also did work for the Astrel Laboratory, designing artificial limbs for a group of New York Surgeons.
After retiring in 1958, Buote returned to PEI where she founded the Tignish Arts Foundation. She died from cancer in November 1966 at the Western Hospital in Alberton. Buote is buried in the Tignish Cemetary.
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