Deborah Butterfield

Sculpture

July 6 - August 21, 2023

Opening Reception: “First Thursday,” July 6, 6-8pm

Greg Kucera Gallery is excited to announce its 14th exhibition of new sculpture by Deborah Butterfield. This is a diverse collection of new bronze work. Small sculptures have delicate lines created by branch, twig and leaf shapes. Larger pieces incorporate thick sticks and muscular looking chunks of wood, all cast in bronze.

Since 1980, Butterfield has been constructing sculptures of horses from found sticks and plant material from which she creates a casting in bronze at the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington State. Butterfield sculpts the original work by fastening logs, branches, and sticks onto an armature that gives the basic posture of the particular horse.

First, molds are made for each branch of wood material piece by piece. The burnable wood elements are covered with heat resistant plaster and baked in a furnace until they completely burn away. Next, molten bronze is poured into the recesses left in the plaster molds. When the molds are removed, each piece has been refashioned exactly in bronze—right down to the grain of the wood.

The work is reassembled, and the bronze parts welded together. Finally, Butterfield works with the foundry to apply a range of patinas to the bronze to suggest the original wood used in making the sculpture.

Work in exhibition