May 23 – Sep. 27, 2015

Deborah Butterfield’s talk: Wednesday, August 5, 6-8 p.m. 2015

Deborah Butterfield is exhibiting her equine sculptures at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Denver, Colorado, USA in an exhibit titled ” Deborah Butterfield, The Nature of Horses” that will run though May 23rd – Sept. 27th, 2015. She will be there in person on Wednesday, August 5, 6-8 p.m. 2015. If you are in or around Denver, don’t miss the opportunity to hear her discuss her art, her connection with horses and more!

These three sculptures below are at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Denver.

~Deborah Butterfield~

Born on: May 7, 1949

Currently resides in Bozeman, Montana and studio space in Hawaii

Deborah Butterfield partially credits the 75th running of the Kentucky Derby, her birth date, for her equine passion.  However, she states that the would have preferred to work in the female form in sculpting, but her mentor ,Manuel Neri domanated this theme. Gradually, the horses themselves became her primary work. Butterfield earned her bachelor’s degree in 1972 and a Master of Fine Arts in 1973 at the University of California, where she met her husband, artist John Buck, whom she married in 1974.

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 works only in the winter, so pieces usually take 3 to 5 years.

As critic Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times in 2004, “By now Deborah Butterfield’s skeletal horses, fashioned of found wood, metal and other detritus, are familiar to almost a generation of gallerygoers. Yet they still have a freshness, which comes from the artist’s regard for them as individuals. In fact, training, riding and bonding with horses, as she does at her Montana ranch, she thinks of them as personifications of herself…They seem to express the very spirit of equine existence.”

Butterfield’s sculptures are in permanent collections across America. She now resides in  ranch in Bozeman, Montana and studio space in Hawaii.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come back this Friday to see another  recycled metal sculptor, John Lopez! He will also be doing a Q&A on #EquineArtHour on Twitter, June 28th, 4-5pm EST. Hope to see you all on:)