Deborah Butterfield | available work

RECENT PRESS:

January 7, 2024
The Square Cylinder
Deborah Butterfield at Manetti Shrem
by David M. Roth

Deborah Butterfield's solo exhibition, "Deborah Butterfield: P.S. These are not horses" at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art continues through June 24, 2024.



  
PORTAL, 2023
Unique cast bronze
91 x 86 x 43 inches
Price on request


PORTAL
PORTAL was created from driftwood collected along the Gallatin River, MT and Shoshone River, WY.



HOPE, 2006
Unique cast bronze
91 x 120 x 35 inches
Price on request


FAITH, 2006
Unique cast bronze
80 x 102 x 42 inches
SOLD

FAITH AND HOPE
Named after Ed Keinholz and Nancy Reddin Keinholz's Idaho art gallery, The Faith, Hope and Charity gallery from the 1970s. These are two works made in the same time frame but they are not a pair. They were sold separately at the time of their making and we are likewise offering them separately now.

The wood used for these works is delicate in comparison to many other of Butterfield's large works. The posture in FAITH, of the head down, suggests a restful and calm posture. This nearly grazing posture is less common in her oeuvre but these, like the fully resting, reclining works, display the range in her sculpture over the years. Most of the standing horse sculptures, like HOPE, have the head and neck in an upward, even reaching, position signaling a horse that is alert and paying attention.


  
CITATION, 2004
Unique cast bronze
88 x 107.5 x 36 inches
Price on request

 
KAI MALO'O, 2023
Unique cast bronze
32 x 42 x 10 inches
Price on request


KAI MALO'O
KAI MALO'O, a Hawaiian term meaning "dry sea, low tide," has a rich mix of textures in its composition. Some components are stalks of bamboo. Other parts have deeply etched wood grain. Running the length of the body are vine-like sticks that create a tangle of lines resembling kelp or seaweed. The highly contrasted values of light and dark give the sculpture a wet sheen as if it has just washed ashore.


  
CHEW, 2023
Unique cast bronze
38.5 x 48 x 13 inches
Price on request

CHEW
The descriptively appropriate title for this sculpture derives from the wood collected from trees that were chewed by beavers near the artist's home in Montana. It took Deborah a long time to collect enough of the wood to build this medium sized horse. All the bark was chewed off and removed so that only the raw wood remained. Because they gnawed randomly on the branches, the beavers' teeth marks can be seen throughout the work.


  
ŌHIA ĀPANE, 2021
Unique cast bronze
26 x 32 x 9 inches
Price on request


ŌHIA ĀPANE
Deborah made this work in her studio on the Big Island. The wood for her sculptures with Hawaiian names comes from walks she takes on her property where she and John Buck live during the winter months. Vegetation there is always sprouting, growing, blossoming, ripening, wilting, dying and decaying. The tropical nature of it just speeds up the process so there are always sticks and branches to pick up.

The Ōhia trees are particularly messy and are always blooming and then dropping twigs. leaves, and flowers on the ground. The small flowers and leaves of the tree are added to this sculpture to mimic what Deborah sees in her nature walks. They are cast in bronze and welded to the limbs and branches after the rest of the work has been cast and reconstructed.

ŌHIA ĀPANE is Hawaiian, meaning "red blossoms from the Ōhia tree."


  
MUGO, 2013
Unique cast bronze with patina
44 x 53 x 18 inches
Price on request

MUGO
The wood used to create this sculpture came from a large overgrown Mugo pine tree in Greg Kucera's garden that had developed boles on the branches. When the tree finally died, and it had to be cut down, Kucera saved the branches knowing Deborah would be attracted to them. She made this sculpture from them –boles and all.


  
SANCAI, 2023
Cast bronze
23 x 26 x 9 inches
Edition of 5
Price on request

  
KĀPENA, 2023
Cast bronze
19 x 23.5 x 6 inches
Edition of 5
SOLD


SANCAI AND KĀPENA
SANCAI AND KĀPENA are the two smallest pieces in our 2023 exhibition and are each from a variable edition of 5.

The basic structure of branches and sticks create the edition matrix, each piece in the variable edition will be patinated differently.

SANCAI, is Chinese, meaning "three colors." Sancai is a Tang Dynasty glaze developed in the late 7th century. The combination of colors is historically white, amber, and green and, though Butterfield's sculpture is not literally a blend of these three colors, the artist was thinking of the Tang Dynasty while she patinated this work. The colors in this patina are of bleached Ō'hia wood, sand, and terra cotta.

In addition to the variable patination within the SANCAI edition, variable attachments of bronze cast leaves and flowers from the Ō’hia Lehua tree are welded on by the artist. Many native Hawaiian traditions refer to the Ō’hia Lehuna tree, and the forests it forms, as sacred to Pele, the volcano goddess, and to Laka, the goddess of Hula. Ō’hia trees are resilient, growing easily on lava, and are usually the first plants to grow on new lava flows.

KĀPENA is Hawaiian for Captain, the name of what Deborah Butterfield refers to as "one of my great horses." Its construction conveys the form of a horse perfectly. The sticks and twigs resemble the gestures in a sumi ink drawing.


  
GARNET, 2023
Unique cast bronze
88 x 108 x 38 inches
SOLD

  
ŌHELOHELO, 2023
Unique cast bronze
30 x 38 x 10 inches
SOLD

  
NOHI, 2023
Unique cast bronze
36 x 42 x 10 inches
SOLD