Deborah Butterfield

Deborah Butterfield
Sculpture by Deborah Butterfield, 1986, The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu
Born	May 7, 1949 (1949-05-07) (age 62) San Diego, CA
Nationality	American
Field	Sculpture
Training	University of California, Davis

Deborah Kay Butterfield (born May 7, 1949) is an American sculptor. She divides her time between a ranch in Bozeman, Montana and studio space in Hawaii. She is known for her sculptures of horses made from found objects, like metal, and especially pieces of wood.^[1][2]

Background

Born the same day as the 75th running of the Kentucky Derby, Butterfield partly credits that birthdate as an inspiration for her subject matter; she has also said that she would have preferred to work in the female form, but that her mentor Manuel Neri dominated that form. Instead, she chose to create self-portraits using images of horses. Gradually, the horses themselves became her primary theme. Butterfield earned a bachelors degree in 1971 and an M.F.A. in 1973 at the University of California, Davis, where she met her husband, artist John E. Buck. They married in 1974 and have two sons.^[1][2]

Career

Butterfield's work has been exhibited widely and there is demand among art collectors for her sculptures. She began crafting horses out of scrap metal and cast bronze in the early 1980s. She would sculpt a piece using wood and other materials fastened together with wire, then photograph the piece from all angles so as to be able to reassemble the piece in metal. She only works in the winter, so works usually take 3 to 5 years.^[1][2]

My work is not so overtly about movement. My horses' gestures are really quite quiet, because real horses move so much better than I could pretend to make things move. For the pieces I make, the gesture is really more within the body, it's like an internalized gesture, which is more about the content, the state of mind or of being at a given instant. And so it's more like a painting ... the gesture and the movement is all pretty much contained within the body.

Public installations

• Seneca Park, Chicago, 1989
• Toledo Museum of Art Sculpture Garden, Toledo, Ohio, 2001
• The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu in Hawaii
• 1635 Village Center Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada
• Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minnesota
• The Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando FL, 2008
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, TX
• Hunter Museum of American Art Sculpture Garden, Chattanooga, TN
• Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
• Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI
• Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN Installed: October 19, 2009
• Wind River installed in 2004 at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX
• Pappajohn Sculpture Park[1], Des Moines, IA

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "John Buck and Deborah Butterfield" (PDF). Montana Arts Council. http://art.mt.gov/about/BuckButterfieldProfile.pdf. Retrieved July 24, 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Butterfield's horses ride into MAC opening". East Valley Tribune. September 14, 2005. http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/article_e2f8cdf4-fd88-5927-82a6-66573bcb5d2e.html. Retrieved July 24, 2011. 

See also

Horses in art

Links

Deborah Butterfield is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago, IL, and LA Louver, L.A., CA

• Butterfield biography and images at L.A. Louver gallery
• Examples of horse sculptures
• Artist's biography and list of exhibitions
• Deborah Butterfield on artnet

Persondata
Name	Butterfield, Deborah
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1949-05-07
Place of birth	Marshalltown, Iowa
Date of death
Place of death