Deborah Butterfield Identifies Strongly with Horses
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
b. Deborah Butterfield identifies strongly with horses. Ask Deborah Butterfield, students to choose an animal with whom they identify. Instruct students to imagine living as the animal they chose. Students should write a description of themselves, their Dapple Gray families, their habitat, and their world as this animal. , 1980, wire and steel, 25 x 40 x 12 inches. Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Purchase, through National Endowment for the Arts grant with matching funds from Mr. and Mrs. Julian Harris. 81.0.9 © Deborah Butterfield Julian Harris. and Mrs. Arts the for grant through National Endowment Collection of the Madison Museum Contemporary with matching funds from Mr. Art. Purchase, 25 x 40 12 inches. wire and steel, 1980, , Social Studies Horses were first tamed centuries ago on the Eurasian steppe. Butterfield has intentionally sculpted mares, as opposed to “war horses going off to kill people.” Engage students in an examination of how the role of the horse has changed over time. Ask: How did the ancient Greeks react to their first Deborah Butterfield with Hoover and Ismani, Bozeman, Montana, 1991, Rob Outlaw photo. sight of mounted horsemen? How did warfare change as horses were used in different ways? How did the life of Native Classroom Activities Americans change with the introduction of horses by the Visual Art Spaniards? What happened to horses after the invention of the combustion engine? a. Grade K-8: Discuss the building blocks of drawing with students. Show illustrations of horses from Heidi’s Horse a. Ask students to read Leonardo’s Horse by Jean Fritz (Hudson by Sylvia Fein and The Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle. Talbott, 2001). Leonardo’s Horse describes a twenty-four- Follow this with a drawing exercise, showing students how foot-high clay sculpture made by Leonardo da Vinci for to construct the basic form of a horse from a series of ovals. the Duke of Milan. Ask students: Why wasn’t the sculpture Teach students how to use arched lines and other shapes cast in bronze? Why was it destroyed by French archers? to connect these ovals, creating a horse. Demonstrate the Where is the sculpture today? adaptation of this technique for drawing other animals, people, and forms. b. Engage students in an examination of the use of working horses in contemporary life. Invite a guest speaker from b. Grade 9-12: Show students the film Deborah Butterfield: the Madison police department to talk about the use of Dialogue with the Artist (Crystal Productions, 19 horses for crowd control. Contact the National Parks minutes), which documents Butterfield’s Montana ranch, Service to inquire about the Morgan horses they raise for the foundry where some of her sculptures are cast, and park patrol. an installation of a work at the Denver Art Museum. After learning about Butterfield’s process and sculptures, Kinesthetic challenge students to create an assemblage sculpture from Imagine yourself as Dapple Gray. Stand very still, as if you natural materials. Obtain permission to walk with students are the sculpture. Where do your legs and arms touch the through a natural area, where they may collect branches, ground? How are you holding your head and neck? Does the dried grasses, pinecones, bark, and other natural materials. way you are standing make you feel a certain emotion? What Help students conceptualize and make an armature for is it? How do you think this horse would walk? How would their sculptures, then use the found materials to embellish you move if you were a horse? their armatures. Students who want further challenge can be encouraged to make a group of horses that they would like to exhibit together. Language Arts a. Ask students to read and write a review of a novel based on a horse. Suggest the books Black Beauty and My Friend Flicka. Students may also research in the library or online to find other appealing stories. Rent The Black Stallion for older students to watch and write a critique. Deborah Butterfield rained down on the entire region and everyone was From 1974 to 1977, Butterfield taught in the Art Discussion Questions “The materials were very cautioned to stay indoors. During this time, Butterfield Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It 1. How would you describe Deborah Butterfield’s observed masses of gray clouds and the drift of ash was here that she started to use natural materials like sticks, sculpture Dapple Gray? What are its physical overhead, which reminded her of the patterns in the coats branches, and earth to depict her equine subjects. She said characteristics? Does the horse seem friendly or aloof? important because they of Appaloosa horses. She expressed her observations of and of these sculptures, “The materials were very important portray the horse as being feelings about the eruption through Dapple Gray, which because they portray the horse as being inseparable 2. What materials do you think Butterfield has used was completed as volcanic ash drifted past her ranch. As from the environment, in fact, literally made of the to make Dapple Gray? If you were making a horse a final touch to commemorate the eruption, Butterfield environment. The posture was important, because at that sculpture, what kinds of materials would you use? inseparable from the sprayed adhesive on the sculpture and sprinkled it with time my horses were all mares, and they were sort of self- environment, in fact, literally volcanic ash. portraits…I thought, how fabulous to have these huge, 3. What do you notice about how Butterfield wrapped round sensual mares in an art gallery on the floor, resting materials to form the different parts of the horse, its made of the environment.” Butterfield filled Dapple Gray with a swirling energy or sleeping…A horse will lie down…if it feels safe.” legs, head and neck, ears, tail, and body? Which part implied by the lines of twisted wire. At the same time, the do you think she wrapped first and why? - Deborah Butterfield posture of the horse—the gentle arc of the head and neck, Butterfield thought about horses enlisted for use in the slight gesture of the legs—creates a paradoxical sense warfare and their portrayal in the history of art as symbols 4. Do you think Dapple Gray looks like a real horse? of repose. Dapple Gray is unusual among Butterfield’s of military power. She wanted her sculptures instead to How is it the same or different? What does Deborah work for its small scale, as most of her sculptures are life- reference life and empathy, as opposed to “war horses going Butterfield have to know about horses in order to The Art: What’s Going on Here? size or larger. off to kill people.” She imagined her horses to be mares make her sculptures seem “real”? Dapple Gray is a small sculpture of a horse made of wire because they are capable of “creating and nourishing life.” and steel. It has a noticeable armature, or sculptural Every time she begins a new sculpture, she says, she feels When she settled on a ranch near Bozeman, Montana in skeleton, made from steel rods that have been bent and like she is setting out on a new adventure. She never 1976, however, the stallions and mares that Butterfield wound tightly with wire. The armature forms a strong knows what she will discover. Her ideas develop as she raised and trained for dressage became models for her visual and structural outline of the horse’s neck and back, works, one form suggesting another. It is the process of sculptures. (Dressage is a French word meaning ‘training,’ front and rear legs, and body. Tucked within and around creating the sculpture that interests her. No matter what and is sometimes referred to as horse ballet.) the armature are masses of thin wire that weave in and materials she has used or how abstract her sculptures may out, animating the sculpture. Small metal squares are appear, her horses have “presence.” We feel we are looking Deborah Butterfield has taught at Montana State attached intermittently to the wire. Cut from a ½-inch- at a real horse that Butterfield has known intimately. University since 1977 and continues her work as a wide metal strapping band, the squares give the sculpture sculptor on her ranch in Bozeman and at her second its dapples or spots. home in Hawai’i. Her sculptures appear in major public The Artist: Biographical Notes collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art Butterfield did nothing to camouflage the color or other Deborah Butterfield has always loved horses. She rode and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; physical properties of the wire and metal she used to and made drawings of horses as a child. Her childhood the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Art make Dapple Gray. She often uses materials that she finds ambition was to be a “horse doctor” like the father of her Institute of Chicago; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture in nature and on her ranch as well as in salvage yards and best friend. Instead, Butterfield pursued her interest in Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; junkyards. She stacks these raw supplies—parts of a car, art by studying ceramics at the University of California Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Israel Museum, the tin roof of a burned-down factory, a child’s tricycle, an at Davis. Jerusalem. old metal sign—in color-coded piles. When incorporated in a sculpture, they retain the qualities of their past lives While in college, Butterfield took care of thoroughbred and contribute layers of meaning to the work of art.