University Place

Artist Talk: Deborah Butterfield

[Sheri Castelnuovo, Curator of Education, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art]

Its my pleasure to welcome you to the second Steven Fleischman Lectureship, featuring the renowned artist, Deborah Butterfield. The Lectureship honors the 25th Anniversary of Stephen Fleischman’s tenure as Museum Director. Members of M.M.o.C.A.’s Board of Trustees who served during that time funded an endowment to provide for an annual lecture by individuals who have made exceptional contributions to art and culture. Talks organized for the Stephen Fleischman Lectureship are held each year in April and have free admission in recognition of the museum’s dedication to providing access to opportunities for learning and enrichment.

We’re very fortunate to have as our distinguished guest Deborah Butterfield. Internationally respected as one of the most significant American sculptors, Deborah Butterfield has created a body of work of remarkable focus and lasting influence. Through an inventive and masterful use of a wide range of salvaged materials, she creates sculptures that express an effecting vulnerability and eloquently suggest equine power, steadfastness, and grace.

She has explored this motif over the course of four decades, creating a deeply moving series of variations infused with metaphor and symbolism. Deborah Butterfield’s sculptures appear in major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, the Art Institute of Chicago, Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Deborah Butterfield also holds a special place in M.M.o.C.A.s institutional history. The Madison Art Center, now M.M.o.C.A., organized her first solo exhibition in 1976 at the museum’s Lincoln School building on Gorham Street, as well as an exhibition in 1994 after the museum relocated to State Street.

M.M.o.C.A. is please to count two of her sculptures, Dapple Gray and Untitled, among the treasures of its permanent collection. Roberta Lieberman of Chicago’s Zolla Lieberman Gallery donated Untitled to the museum for its collection, and we are honored to have her son William here this evening.

So, it is with great pleasure that we welcome Deborah Butterfield back to M.M.o.C.A. Please offer her a warm welcome.

[applause]

[Deborah Butterfield, Sculpture Artist]

I was born in San Diego on the day that Ponder won the Kentucky Derby. And that is the reason for these hours of horses you’re going to be looking at.

[laughter]

This shows me with one of my horses, Willie, and it was in the days when we actually used film.

[slide of a photo of Deborah and her horse Willie sticking his tongue out]

And we didn’t know that he had done this until we brought it back.

[laughter]

He was really excited getting his picture taken.

[laughter]

[Deborah Butterfield]

I started out as a potter. I went to – to U.C.-San Diego in 1969 –

[slide featuring a photo of one of Deborahs early college pottery works]

– and I took philosophy and chemistry and great things with Angela Davis and Herbert Marcuse, Linus Pauling and Jehanne Teilhet. We did this show –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– at the La Jolla Museum of Art called Dimensions of Black, which showed African art, how it impacted European art, and then African-American art. And I got to write the modern to contemporary African-American art. And anyway, we had this show and I got phoned down from Davis. I – I transferred up to Davis to study ceramics with Bob Arneson. So, I had this incredible time at U.C.-San Diego, but once I hit Davis, I knew I was in the right place.

And Bob Arneson taught ceramic sculpture, and we weren’t really allowed to make pottery in class. And he said, You can make it on your own time, but I won’t critique it, it isn’t for credit, and then of course whenever I had a critique all I had were these pots. And Bob loved a good pot.

[laughter]

Then this was my last piece of undergraduate school, and I actually –

[slide featuring a photo of a ceramic floral saddle]

– applied to Davis and was lucky enough to get in because it took me a while to figure out how to make art, what I wanted to do.

These were life-sized ceramic saddles which were technically kind of difficult. I had to make a clay horse back and the clay had fiberglass in it and, you know, make it in three parts and put it back together. But I was – I wanted to be a Chinese potter, you know, in the 11th century.

[laughter]

[Deborah Butterfield]

But it, you know, wasn’t going to happen, and I just, I was just so amazed carving into, making this saddle, how much it reminded me the patterns were so Chinese and how much it was like carving into leather.

At the time, I was really – I’d always drawn horses, I’d been teased for loving horses, and I didn’t have the courage to make horses. So, for me, this saddle was like the –

[return to the slide of the ceramic saddle]

– negative space between the horse and the rider.

[Deborah Butterfield]

So, this showed a saddle, and it leads up to the reclining horses I did. It’s a saddle with a blanket over it.

[slide with a photo of a different ceramic saddle with a yellow and green checkered blanket on it]

So, it’s a utilitarian object not in use. But it also, for me, referred to the – the idea of drapery and classic sculpture. And, also, everyone teased me for making these saddles as being very sexual. And so, I had the saddle horn there being quite phallic to please them.

[laughter]

[slide of a photo of a blue floral vase from the Ming Dynasty]

And then this shows a vase from the Ming Dynasty using a technique where you squirt the slip in a pattern and then you puddle the glaze in there when – before you fire it.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And this is a saddle I made. It was my Ming Dynasty saddle.

[slide with a photo of a blue floral ceramic saddle in the style of the Ming Dynasty vase]

They didn’t look like this, but it was, for me, if I were a saddle in the Ming Dynasty, this is what I would be.

[laughter]

And it – it raised the problem of having, how do you present it? I couldn’t just put it on a sawhorse, so then I had – I committed myself to making this carved wooden base after Ming architecture. The table saws and I and materials like wood with limitations are very, very hard for me. So, I – I worked my way out of these bases. But this is at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art.

And this is a pot from the Song Dynasty, 11th to 12th century China –

[slide with a photo of a white vase with black floral peonies on it from the Song Dynasty]

– incised peony patterns. So, it was black slip over a white clay body, and then the part that’s white was incised away.

[new slide featuring a black and white ceramic saddle by Deborah with the same motif as the Song vase]

This is my Song Dynasty saddle. And I about. . . died. The back – it cracked when I fired it and I was devastated, but I, you know, glued it back together and then filled the crack with gold. I remembered a lot of the old Chinese and Korean pots were repaired that way –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and it – it was like an analogy of when you get old you get wrinkles and you become wiser and more valuable in a way. And so, when I did that, the piece really came to life. And it ended up being collected by someone who collected Chinese ceramics. So, it became, or it ended up where it wanted to live.

And then –

[laughter]

[slide with a photo of a ceramic saddle made to look like cactus leaves]

– I guess it’s when I started really making art.

[laughter]

I had bought my first horse, an ex-racehorse mare, and she tried to dump me in a cactus patch. And so, I made this racing saddle for her. And it – it was Earthenware with glaze, and then I put porcelain needles in it with silicone. So, when you touched them, they’d kind of wiggle –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– but they – when they broke, I could replace them. And, you know, anything that beautiful and that brittle and angry is also rather delicate. And when I taught here, I got Lucas Samaras to come as a visiting artist. And I showed him my slides, sort of, you know, just a little bit. And I said, Lucas, I didn’t know your work. Bob Arneson said to me, Wow, have you seen Lucas Samaras’ work? And I said, “That’s how I discovered you. And he got all weird. And if you know Lucas, he’s really an interesting guy anyway. Very intimidating. And he said, Well my name means saddle-maker in Greek. So, it was a perfect honor.

And then I got to go to Skowhegan School of Sculpture in Maine in between graduate school years. And I had really gotten sick of having to appease the kiln gods and deal with – with waiting. You know, when you do clay, you have – you have so many steps, and I just wanted to make something and have it be what it was as I was making it.

So, William Wiley –

[slide with a photo of a bed made out of a twig base and mattress of leaves]

– was one of my teachers, and when I moved up from San Diego, I loved puns. And everybody down there hated it when I made puns. So, I end up in a drawing class with William Wiley –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and he would make a watercolor this big [indicating a small frame], and the title would be this big [indicating same size as the watercolor itself] below it. It was all puns and crazy things, and I’m like, I just couldn’t believe where I ended up. But I didn’t know how to, how do you make an image? How do you begin to make art? I couldn’t figure out how that begins. And he said, “Just think of a title and then illustrate it. ” And so, when I went there, I knew I didn’t have any kilns, and so I thought I’ll make a bed of leaves.

[return to the bed of leaves photo]

And so, this was my first attempt at regular sculpture, and I learned how to lash sticks and whittle, and I made the quilt with roplex and real weaves on the cheesecloth. And I installed it in the woods. And the sculpture teachers were so conservative that they wouldn’t critique it because it wasn’t made out of art supplies.

[laughter]

[Deborah Butterfield]
And this is ’72. So, you know Jackie Winsor was using sticks and things. And I felt like it – it was like a – a piece that I wanted you to stumble across in the woods. We all have these. We’re – were born in beds. We die in beds. We make love in beds. We sleep in them. We’re sick in them. We jump on them. We hide under them. And so, I think the ones who did talk to me about it felt it was just not complete or specific enough. But I felt then, and I guess I’m in a way that way about my horses now, that I want to leave room. They don’t need to be pedantic and didactic. I think sometimes that there needs to be an opening for the viewer to crawl into, to inhabit art. And so, you know, the meaning changes throughout time, in different contexts and different cultures. Historically things change and become appropriated by younger people.

Whoops.

And so, this was my next piece, which was welded steel and chicken wire and plaster.

[slide of a photo of a plaster cow standing on top of a plaster four post bed]

And I got a sculpture award. It was very much art supplies.

[laughter]

Our – our studios were just little sheds right outside in a meadow next to a bunch of dairy heifers. And being a Taurus, I really was quite drawn to them. And so, I made this bed, and I was in love with this man, John Buck. And, you know, it was – he was married, it was horrible. And I just thought I’m this heifer, and I want to do art about myself, and how do I – how do I do that? Manuel Neri was my teacher, and if you know his figurative work, why bother making a naked woman? I mean, he did it so perfectly, I had no need to – to do that. So, I wanted to do personal art, but to have it be a little bit allegorical.

[return to the photo of the plaster cow on the plaster four post bed]

When Roy De Forest would give me advice, he would never presume to say you should do this or you should do that. He would tell me a story In the fourth century B.C. Greece there was – was, you know, an Airedale and a Great Dane. And, you know, and he would – he would, you know, if the shoe – shoe fit, you could try it on.

[Deborah Butterfield]

Anyway, so, for me this was a self-portrait on the rocky road of love and life and growing up. And she’s standing there trying to keep her balance as if she were in the back of a pickup, you know, going around a windy road.

And then I did go to John, with – to England with John. He got a divorce, and we went to England. And I built this piece over there.

[slide with a photo of a life-size blue plaster reindeer covered in clouds]

It was very rainy and very sexist. I’d never really dealt with classism or sexism. It was, sort of, shocking. And so, I was – and I’d been an exchange student of Finland, so I was very taken by the reindeer imagery. So, this was a terrible pun. It’s a rain-deer.

[laughter and groans]

There’s a – I dont know if you can – theres garden hose going up its left hind leg, and it’s a fountain.

[laughter]

I was inspired by Botticelli skies and Turner paintings. And this big heavy plaster thing, I wanted to make it look as if it really just, and Magritte of course, that it was just an idea that maybe you could put your hand into it, and it was just a thought.

Well, this is the sculpture that I had been familiar with growing up of horses, which were basically war machines.

[slide with a photo of a statue of an 18th century soldier on horseback]

Whoever had horses usually prevailed in dominating other cultures. And they were often stallions. And I just – it was ’73 during the Vietnam War, and I- I decided –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– Well, I tried going around – I tried talking people. I couldn’t even talk my parents into the idea that the war was a bad thing. And I realized that I would never make it as a politician and finally gave myself permission to go in the studio, which was hard, you know? Your friends were being drafted, and it just, I don’t know, was a very weird time. Anyway, we read the I Ching a lot with Wiley and it kept telling me to be like the sun at midday and shine, which I thought meant shine. The only way I have a hope of shining is by making art. And so, to hope to influence people somehow that way.

And then the Chinese horses were so much less about war, and this one, I guess, about sport and pleasure.

[slide with a photo of a Chinese sculpture of a horse]

And they were meant as spiritual creatures to take your soul from this world to the next. And my work has often been very much about death –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and Earth and, you know, the full catastrophe. And so, these pieces, when I discovered them really, they – they just spoke to me so much. These were my horses from my graduate show –

[slide with a photo of three of Deborahs life-size ceramic horses]

– and then the one on the right, actually, I made in ’74 right after I graduated. I got to have a show at the Berkeley Art Museum.

And Brenda Richardson was the director and said to me, “How are these different than Nancy Grave’s camels?” And I went, you know, I said, “Wow, I’ve only seen them in a tiny picture, you know, in a magazine, but I would say that the difference is the point of view. Nancy Graves is examining and studying these things, and I am the horse. So, it’s subjective and objective. And she said, “Oh, I’m so relieved. You can have a show.”

[laughter]

I – I painted them like Turner skies. You know, wanting –

[slide with a photo of one of Deborahs horse sculptures]

– they were 800 pounds, and I wanted them to just, kind of, become atmospheric.

It was very stressful for the guards. They changed them every four hours because there was carpet there and the horses were a little tippy and the schoolchildren, all the girls would just run at them. And the guards had to protect the kids.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And this is a show I made for the Madison Art Center. I came here and I was having a hard time with my work, trying to figure out what to do. I had a lot of false starts.

[slide with a photo of another of Deborahs horse sculptures]

And then John and I gave talks down in Louisville, at – at the university there, or Lexington I guess it was, and I got to go see Secretariat.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And he was the most valuable horse in the world. I think he had just finished the triple crown a year or two earlier. And he – I get there and he’s covered with mud. And I was so disappointed. But it was also so wonderful, you know, that they let him just wallow in the mud every day. And I – I remember the New Guinea Mud Men studying South Pacific art and how wonderful pots are before you fire them. They have this wonderful quality, especially when they’re still wet that you somehow never quite live up to once they’re fired. They shrink down a bit, and you don’t get that beautiful, luscious feeling. So, I’d mixed everything I’d worked with. I was still using the plaster and chicken wire armature. I mean, I’m sorry, the welded steel and chicken wire armature. And instead of the plaster and gauze or burlap, I used these paper strips from a taxidermy store and this glue called Dextrin, which is what’s on the back of an envelope. It’s a sugar starch, so it’s not poisonous. And I just, I went out into the backyard and dug up dirt full of pine needles and grass and twigs and earthworms and rabbit sh– and mixed it together with this Dextrin and a little plaster and put it all over these horses.

And the gallery had been lit for a print show. It was about 30 by 35 or so.

[slide with a photo of Deborah at her exhibition surrounded by her life-size horse sculptures]

And I just left the lighting the way it was so that the horses weren’t lit as objects, they were just more like they had wandered into this space. And there were two doors. And they didn’t – didnt really have eyes or anything, but you felt like you were walking in late to class. When, you know, when you came in, theyre all, like, their ears were at you. And then many – they were very close together so many people wouldn’t even go in the room. It was – you had to sidle between them. And a lot of people were very intimidated. It’s really the best installation I’ve ever done.

[laughter]

You see? You can feel the shame of being late, can’t you?

[slide of a photo taken amongst Deborahs horses at the gallery]

[laughter]

There’s a lot of blame there.

[laughs]

[slide with a photo of a life-size horse made of sticks and mud]

And then, well, I’d had a review on these last horses –

[return to the slide of the photo taken amongst Deborahs horses in the art gallery]

– and they don’t really have eyes. I guess they kind of have nostrils. They don’t have feet really. And I spent a lot of time –

[return to the slide with the photo of the stick and mud horse sculpture]

– with this woman from Art Forum. And the first sentence of my review was, “Deborah Butterfield’s horses have no genitals.”

[laughter]

Oh, my goodness.

[Deborah Butterfield]

I can’t even show it to my parents, you know? I finally get a review –

[laughter]

[Sighs] I don’t know, I was disappointed on so many levels, you know? I hadn’t– I don’t know, I hadn’t communicated, and I hadn’t made it phallic enough, so I got busy.

[laughter]

Anyway I, you know, they were very well received. And I thought if they – and so, they went from, that show went from, sorry Bill, went from the Madison Art Center. The next year, Roberta Lieberman, she came into my studio I think right as the show was up, and I’d been showing my slides to students, and she was looking for artists, so I showed her my slides over lunch. And she gave me a show. And we went home to celebrate, and John, my husband had just, John Buck, had just come home with a whole bag of wild morels. And we picked asparagus in the garden and had it on toast.

That’s my fondest memory of Madison.

[laughter]

It was a lucky day and about the same time of year, it was wonderful.

Anyway, I thought if these pieces were successful, was it just because they were big? I was worried that I was relying on scale. And so, I made this piece that was really little in Montana. John had a job there, and I moved there with him. And so, we lived in a lodgepole forest. And you could see, I don’t know, I see, like, a horse. You see silhouettes in the trees. Like our Chow running through the woods. At 50 yards I thought was a bear at 300 yards, you know? And so, I – I used this image with the horse of the many legs, thinking of the nude descending the staircase or the Magritte painting of the women riding through the trees.

[return to the slide of the mud and stick horse sculpture]

And when I used the same materials on the tiny horse, all of a sudden, they became really big. So, then I started using more sticks and poking them through and trying to make it look like it was just part of the landscape that we happened to come upon.

[slide of a photo of another mud and stick sculpture of a horse lying on its side]

And then, so I made this first group of work for Zolla Lieberman in ’77.

[new slide of the same mud and stick reclining horse sculpture taken from a different angle]

A horse can sleep standing up, but when they have a guardian figure –

[slide with a photo of three mud and stick horse sculptures – one reclining, one sitting and one standing]

– with them and they feel comfortable, they’ll – theyll lie down. But their – their bodies are made so they can lock their knees. Since they’re a prey animal, they can run –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and flee at any moment, even, you know, wake up instantly. And so, since these were self-portraits, these were mares, I thought of myself in the gallery as a reclining nude. You know, the idea that I would have the courage to lay down while these art critic predators skulked around –

[laughter]

– was, I thought, a – a – a sign of courage, you know, like I’m strong and I will make myself vulnerable to you because I am powerful. And, also, it went back to life drawing lessons with Wayne Thiebaud. How he showed up in a blue suit and a pink carnation at eight A.M., and we all staggered in, you know? And this was 1971 and everybody was hippies and, you know, we worked hard but we weren’t very organized. And he informed us that class would begin at 8:05 or at 8:10 the door would be locked, and if you came late, you could rejoin the class at 10:10. [laughs] And he had us draw a naked – the naked, he had us draw the model up in the right-hand corner of the paper. And then he had us make a grid, and then we had to hold our pencils up and make dots on it where we saw the figure. And then, in the very end, he would let us connect the dots. And what the nude ended up looking more like a mountain range. If you can see that one on the left, it was more like that.

You know, everything gets displaced –

[return to the slide with the photo of three mud and stick horse sculptures]

– and the foreshortening and I didn’t – I got a B and I was glad of it, you know?

[laughter]

I was grateful. But I learned how to look. I wasn’t a great drawer, but I did learn how to look at stuff. And so, the horses were made of the Earth. The joke of the figure/ground relationship and – and that, horses, to me, they represent the Earth, the Earth itself.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And then, in Montana, we had the coldest winter we’d had in ’78, and my father had died that fall, in ’77 actually, and the Albright-Knox invited me to – to make a show there. But they could either afford to bring me out or the work, not both. And we were all poorer then. And so, I made these pieces.

[slide with a photo of four standing mud and stick horses in a circle]

And it was so cold, and I had to go to the – and we had four feet of snow, 30 below zero for three weeks. And so, I had to take my horse down. I broke branches off the trees, and he pulled them out to the road with a rope. And then I had chains on the pickup, loaded them up –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– went to a nursery and used a pickax to get the frozen mud out. And I was feeling kind of sorry for myself, you know, that there was no art supply catalog for sticks and mud.

[laughter]

But then, you know, this was about my father. And so, I realized, you know, there was a point to all of this. But so, I – I couldn’t be there to install them, and it was so important that I sent them a compass and said, Put their noses three feet apart. And when I was here, I made, and I’m sorry I didn’t include the slide, I made a huge plaster Percheron baggage horse for the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. And I made this fiberglass harness, which about killed me, which is why I went into the mud and paper and Dextrin because I didn’t want to use chemicals again. But in my research, I went up and there was a group of eight Percherons out in the pasture. And I went out to meet and greet them. And, you know, their heads are this big, and they all came around me and I did that encounter group thing where you can fall backwards, and people are supposed to catch you. [laughs] And they would just, they would catch me with their foreheads and push me back up. And I did it with the whole group. And I thought, this is what I want to recreate.

I’d also seen a photograph of a girl in a Navajo sand painting sitting in the midst of it being healed –

[return to the slide with the photo of the four stick and mud horse sculptures in a circle]

– by the four directions of the universe. And so that was my idea, that you could go into the middle of these horses and receive this positive healing energy.

[new slide with a photo of a mud and stick horse sculpture encased by a teepee of sticks]

And then this is a – a piece that evolved from that small piece with all the legs. And the pieces that were reclining that were at Zolla Lieberman – Roberta Lieberman went to O.K. Harris in New York and talked to Ivan Karp.

[Deborah Butterfield]

He was one of the only people who would look at slides from the street. And he said, “These are beautiful.” And she hadn’t sold any of them. She had sold some little ones. So, I was devastated, but there they were in storage. And – and Ivan said, “We’d love to include a couple in a group show next fall.” And then I get a call in October. “Young lady, would you like to have a show next, a one-person show next month?” [laughs]

And because I hadn’t sold anything, I had all that work available for a show in New York.

[laughter]

And he sold one to the Whitney Museum and the – oh, the museum in Virginia. I mean, it was an amazing opportunity for me. It really made my career.

This show was at Hansen-Fuller Gallery in San Francisco on the sixth floor. And we had to crane everything in.

[return to the slide with the photo of the mud and stick horse sculpture in a teepee]

And my gallery dealer was somewhat hysterical. I wish I had a picture of the – the process because the whole gallery was just trees, you know? I wanted to capture the feeling of what it was like to be in the woods and to perceive these entities in the negative space. I also – the sun had this way of making these incredible –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– sunset rays of light. And I got quite martyred when I make these mud and stick horses because they’re on chicken wire with – with tie wire. So, my hands get really sliced up and then infected because they’re in the – the soup of making the mud. And so, I was feeling a little Joan of Arc-y, martyr-y here as well. [laughs]

[laughter]

[return to the mud and stick horse in the teepee photo]

This is at the di Rosa.

[slide featuring a photo of a Magritte painting of a maiden on a horse in the woods, Le Blanc Seing]

This is the Magritte painting that you’re thinking of.

[slide with a photo of Deborahs sculpture installation at the di Rosa, featuring several stick and mud horse sculptures in various poses covered in stick teepees]

This shows the installation. Oh, one’s at the Oakland Museum. And that’s at the San Francisco Museum, the reclining one. Hansen-Fuller did really good things.

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of wood and fencing]

And then this was my next show in ’79 at O.K. Harris. And I, kind of, thought I was the woman who made mud horses. And we had just moved to our own farm that had been derelict for years. And I gathered – I had to clean the pastures. There were like three old fences. They never tore down a fence, they just built a new one.

[Deborah Butterfield]

So, I gathered all this stuff, and I was taking it to the dump and then going to buy rebar to make armatures, and I realized this is crazy, you know, you should use this stuff. So, I started doing this, wanting to show the inside of the horses because the old ones were hollow inside to make them light and stable like a pot. They were like a vessel. I still think of them as vessels, only it’s more metaphorical what they contain now.

That reindeer was like a – a medieval watering pot where they put holes in it like a colander and fill it with water and then you water your seedlings. Ans so, I still think of them as vessels.

But this one was really nice and everything –

[return to the photo of the wood and fencing horse sculpture]

– but I realized it was like frosting on a perfectly fabulous pound cake that didn’t really need it.

[slide with a photo of a wood and hog wire horse sculpture]

And so, I just started going bare. This piece is one of my favorites in terms of how I really think. This was hog wire I was rolling up to make it safe for my horses, and it tries to explode and cut you. So, I – I put sticks though it. You know, you do that to keep it from unraveling. So, this whole horse is rolled up crammed hog wire, and one day these sticks will all rot and the – the pieces will explode.

[laughter]

[new slide of the hog wire and stick horse sculpture from a different angle]

And I think my friends –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– were getting pregnant a lot, and rather than my father’s death, I was, sort of, thinking about more positive ideas and opening up to the light and looking at what was inside. Like almost an emotional X-ray of a horse at a given time.

Okay, now I have –

[slide with a photo of a horse sculpture that is made just with sticks and the outer frame – lacking the hog wire of the earlier sculptures]

– to go faster because we’re going to run out of time, so hang on.

This was – I was invited, in 1980, to build a show at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. And we stayed there for a month in the government guest house. And I had an assistant. We worked out in the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And I got them to take me around. We got these things from blown up buildings and, you know, junk yards and it was a really powerful experience. But there were a lot of American tourists who thought I was making dead moose and stuff. And it was – that was annoying. But –

[return to the previous slide and the photo of the stick horse sculpture lacking the hog wire innards]

– this was really one of my favorite pieces.

[new slide featuring a photo of a life-size horse sculpture made out of wooden ladder planks]

This was made out of Arab ladders, which were narrower at the top. And that one stayed. It was called “Jacob.”” “Jacob’s ladder.” It stayed at the museum.

[new slide featuring a photo of Deborah and her assistant in Israel working next to a wireframe horse sculpture]

And this was me and Ovi welding. You can – oh, there’s another side maybe.

[new slide with a photo of the finished wireframe horse]

This was really, really fragile pieces of steel that were almost gone. Just like cloth. And then this delicate woven mesh. So, I made a world, feeling, and this was only 1980, how fragile everything was.

[new slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s installation in Israel]

We went to Israel for a month and ended up knowing less about Israel than when we, you know, when we left than when we got there. Everything was so complicated, and this was my warhorse. There were blown up troop carriers and tanks along the road that were preserved as memorials.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And then this was ’81. I had a traveling show –

[slide with a photo of a reclining horse sculpture made of wood and crushed heating ducts]

– that went to different, about 10 different museums, and this was at the Walker Art Center, and this stayed there. It’s called “Rosary.” It was made from the crushed heating ducts of Rosary Elementary School, a Catholic school. So, it’s very pierced and quite Catholic.

[laughter]

[Deborah Butterfield]

The pink brick dust is still on the silver metal.

And this, I got invited in ’86 to go to Hawaii by Thurston and Laila Twigg-Smith and build a show for the contemporary museum there. And it was –

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of colored metal]

– my first opportunity to use a lot of colored metal. All the roofs are colored metal there. And so, you know, they – they rust out really quickly and there’s hurricanes. So, I had a really good time over there and built five pieces in three months. And we got to live there, and it was

[Deborah Butterfield]

– just an incredible time. This was after my mare

[slide featuring a reclining horse sculpture made out of colored metal]

– “Ooha-oola-oola.” It means red thigh. I had – she had two foals with me, and they were both born at 12:10. And I would walk in a little late, she’s like looking at her watch, you know?

[laughter]

[slide with a photo of an actual white horse in front of an erupting volcano taken at night in Hawaii]

And then John had said to Twigg, Thurston Twigg-Smith, “I’ll give you my life’s work for some land.” And Twigg said, “Well, I have to see if my daughter wants to buy this land, but I’ll trade you art for it.” And Roy De Forest and the kids and wife were visiting, and we drove down –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– to the volcano because it – it was supposed to be going off. And Roy and I wandered out into the dark under a full moon. Can you see the volcano? The lava was fountaining 1600 feet. And there stood a white horse. I’m like, this is my religious experience, and I have it on film. [laughs]

But we walked back, and I said to John, “We’re going to get the land.” And sure enough, he called the next morning. And then came home and built this show for Ed Thorp Gallery. This was called “Joseph” –

[slide with a photo of a sculpture of a horse turning its neck made from colored metal]

– after the coat of many colors and Chief Joseph. They’re Appaloosa horses. There’s Pierce Tribe.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s studio featuring a red horse sculpture made of large letters and another green horse sculpture made of metal and also with several metal fragments laying on the floor of the studio]

And this is a studio shot. “Ferdinand” and –

[slide featuring a photo of the finished red horse sculpture made from large letters]

– “Riot” in Baltimore Museum.

[new slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of multi-colored metal]

And “Palma”, I managed to keep this one. It’s mouth which isn’t seen here is like Guernica, and I thought of Picasso, but it was definitely a mare. And my mother-in-law’s name was “Palma”, so it’s like a contraction of “Paloma”.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And this is –

Oh, my gosh, my mind is going blank.

He’s a – a samurai horse. I found – I dug this up. It’s like 1930s automobiles.

[slide featuring a photo of a standing bronze military-type horse sculpture]

And “Ekazuki” was a samurai horse who – whose mother died and he grew up next to a pond and he would look at himself in the water to keep himself company. And, of course, in the great battle all the horses were afraid to ford the river, but Ekazuki wasn’t afraid of the water, and he led them to a great victory.

[Deborah Butterfield]

But welding this metal was just like cutting butter, you know. It was just virgin American steel, really thick, and it made me feel like I actually knew what I was doing again. It was wonderful.

And then, in ’88, this is my first bronze sculpture for the Walker Art Center.

[slide featuring a photo of a standing horse sculpture that looks as if it is made of sticks but is actually bronze]

Martin Friedman had asked me to build an outdoor piece, and I didn’t know how to do that. And I met Jim Dine at a dinner with Martin, and he said, “I’ve been casting with this young man in Walla Walla, and you must – you must get a hold of him.” I just had my first baby, Wilder, in ’84, and Mark flew out –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– to Bozeman, and I showed him my slides. He said, “Just drive a truckload of sticks out here in the spring, and we’ll cast him in bronze, and then we’ll weld a horse.” And that was the most fun I have ever had in my life.

And this shows me working in Hawaii.

[slide with a photo of Deborah working in a outdoor studio creating two horse sculptures made of fruit vines]

We would send bronze sticks over there, and Mark would come over and we’d weld armatures. And here I’m tying passion fruit vines onto them, and then we had to put them in container –

[slide with a photo of a finished standing horse sculpture made of bronzed vines]

– and ship them back to The Foundry. And this went to the Kansas City Zoo.

[slide featuring a photo of a reclining horse sculpture made of large pieces of driftwood]

This is “Lucky.” These are at the Denver Art Museum. They have three horses and they wanted one that the children could climb on. The patron of Ed Kienholz in Hope, Idaho, Klaus Groenke, bought three horses of mine –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and I was – I’m a dressage rider and one of my wonderful horses died and his daughter gave me her – her St. George Young Rider horse. I had to go to Germany and try him out. And he taught me so much and I loved him. He just died at 30 last year. But when I would go to a show or even at home, he loved to curl up and have you cuddle with him. And there was payment at the show. I had to give him about a dozen carrots, and then he would do really well.

[laughter]

But I often caught the cat sleeping under his chest. He was really a dear horse. And this is “Second Daughter”, also at –

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture “Argus”, a sculpture made from birch tree branches]

– the Denver Art Museum, after my mare “P.J.”, whom I bred, and birch wood.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Second Daughter”, a standing horse sculpture made of tree branches]

I’m sorry, this is “Second Daughter” –

[return to the slide with the photo of “Argus”, the birch branch sculpture]

– and this is “Argus”, after the myth of the – the cow herd with all the eyes.

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture “P.J.”, a standing horse sculpture made of wooden branches]

And this is “P.J.”

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture “Walla Walla”, a standing horse sculpture made from ivy vines]

This was “Walla Walla.” It was a – a vine, an ivy vine going up the tree in Walla Walla that I liked. The Wicked Witch and the gingerbread house had been pinching and wanting to kill for years, and Mark finally gave me permission to do it.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And Bob Arneson, the right hind leg is a bougainvillea vine –

[return to the slide with the photo of the “Walla Walla” sculpture]

– from his porch that I had also wished bad things upon. [laughs]

[laughter]

And it finally died, and Sandy brought it up to The Foundry for me. So, I always thought it was a wonderful –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– piece using him as one of my foundation legs.

And this is a piece I got to make out of –

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of Manzanita branches]

– Manzanita from California.

[new slide with a photo showing a large scrap yard filled to the brim with scraps of metal everywhere]

And this shows my palette.

[laughter]

This is in Bozeman.

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s steel studio with different colored scraps of metal in different piles]

This is my steel studio.

[slide with a photo of a metal scrapyard in Rockford, Illinois]

[slide with a photo featuring a different view of Deborah’s steel studio with an assistant working at a sculpture]

[slide featuring a photo of a yellow standing horse sculpture]

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of metal and rebar]

This – this wonderful man in Rockford, Illinois, is a – owns the scrapyard, and he has traded me art for probably 100 tons of scrap metal. I get to go there –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and choose it, and they ship it to me. And I got these pieces of concrete with rebar in it.

This is a piece I made on 9/11 called –

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture titled, “A Thousand Cranes”, a standing horse sculpture made from concrete and rebar]

– “9/12” actually. Well, I didn’t know what to do with myself. And so, this piece is called “A Thousand Cranes.”

[new slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture called, “Boogie-Woogie”, a standing horse sculpture made from multicolored metal, mostly red and yellow]

And this is after Mondrian called “Boogie-Woogie.”

[new slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Turning Its Head”, a standing horse sculpture made from driftwood]

This is “Turning Its Head.”

[new slide featuring Deborah’s sculpture, “Hawaii, The Big Island”, a reclining horse sculpture made of driftwood]

And this is my own piece, “Hawaii, the Big Island”, that I own. I – I sent this wood, in 2002, from the Big Island. I sent a container of it and built the piece in Walla Walla. And, again, it’s that idea of, is it a – a figure? Is it a reclining nude? Is it a land mass, is it a continent? I love the – or is it just a pile of stuff?

[Deborah Butterfield]

When I drove the reclining mud and stick pieces to Zolla Lieberman in ’77, I had an open trailer, and they were wrapped in plastic. And the gas station guy asked me if I was going to the dump.

[laughter]

And this is “Monekana”, which is at the Smithsonian –

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture “Monekana”, a standing horse sculpture made from driftwood]

– the American Art Museum. Monekana is the Hawaiian word for Montana.

[slide with a photo of Deborah with two of her real-life horses]

And these are my models. They’re long gone. Dear Isabelle just died at 30, on the right, and Vicki. They were both Grand Prix mares that I rode in dressage from Germany and Denmark. The – the sweetest, most wonderful, talented horses I’ve ever known.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Isabelle”, a standing horse sculpture also made of driftwood]

This is “Isabelle”, whom I kept.

[slide with a photo of another one of Deborah’s real-life horses, a white Appaloosa Percheron]

And this was one of my first horses, Hoover. He was an Appaloosa Percheron and quite a good dressage horse.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And this is “Hoover” in the collection –

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture “Hoover”, an standing horse sculpture made of colored metal based on her actual horse]

– the Margulies collection.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s real-life horse, Rex]

This was Rex who was a noble horse. He’s quite old here. The dressage horse in Saddlebred and won the Northwest Therapeutic Riding –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– Horse of the Year Award. We used to have the – the riding program at my barn.

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Rex”, based on her real-life horse as a standing horse sculpture made from coral gable]

And this is “Rex” using coral gable.

[slide with a photo of another of Deborah’s real-life horses, Ismoni, a white dressage horse]

This was Ismoni, my best horse who died of colic. And but, anyway, I made a white horse that lived in Madison for quite a long time called “Ismoni.”

[slide featuring Deborah’s sculpture, “Ismoni”, a white standing horse sculpture made of white metal based on the horse in the above slide]

This was at the [inaudible]. And this was Willie. The horses just die –

[slide with a photo of Deborah and her horse, Willie]

– is what they do. So much – it – it’s such a daring thing to love somebody, isn’t it?

[Deborah Butterfield]

I mean – and that’s him.

[slide with a photo of one of Deborah’s real-life quarter horses, Captain]

This is Captain, our old – he’s like 27 now, but he’s a cow horse, a thoroughbred from – a thoroughbred quarter horse from the Winecup Ranch in Nevada. I always have one cow horse around –

[slide of a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Captain”, based on her real-life horse, a standing horse sculpture made of copper colored metal]

– and this is him. And didn’t know it, I was making it, and I said to Walt, my assistant, “My god, who is this? Look at this at this nose.” We’re like, “It’s Captain.”

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s black cow horse, Danuta]

[slide with a photo of Deborah and Danuta together]

This was Danuta.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture based on “Danuta”, a reclining horse sculpture made from tree branches]

And this is “Danuta.” She’s in Louisville.

[slide with a photo of Deborah and her spotted white horse, Spotty]

And this is Spotty, who just won the intermediary championship in the northwest in dressage, and he is an Appaloosa Warmblood. And I’m still riding and –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– showing him, and my young trainer is showing him, and he is the best horse. Oh, my gosh. And this is Spotty.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Spotty” based on the horse of the same name, a standing horse sculpture made from cottonwood branches]

These are galls on cottonwood, which represent the spots.

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s horse, Dancia, out in the field]

This is Dan – Dancia, my newest horse.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture based on Dancia, also called “Dancia”, a standing horse sculpture made from branches]

This is “Dancia.”

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s son standing next to her sculpture, “Indelible”, for scale, a very large standing horse sculpture made of saplings]

And this was “Indelible”, right? At Zolla Lieberman. And that’s my son, Hunter. I decided to make this gigantic piece. And the columns in the old Zolla Lieberman Gallery, I had fought with them for 20-some years. And this piece –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– you see? They’re saplings.

[slide featuring another photo of “Indelible” from a different angle]

They are mere nothings. They used to seem like they were five feet across. [laughs]

Anyway, that piece was almost double size and twice – it was 4,000 pounds. And it was the only thing in the gallery.

[Deborah Butterfield]

It was so wonderful to have it there. And this is my greenhouse in Walla Walla. They built –

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s greenhouse in Washington state that is filled with long rows of branches in piles]

– a studio, which I lease, and it’s annexed to this repurposed greenhouse from the ’60s. So, my wood is out of weather. And they don’t have to spray poison on it to keep the weeds from coming up. So, I can work all year-round –

[slide featuring another photo of the inside of Deborah’s greenhouse showing the area where the saws and construction platform are]

– which had been a real problem. And this – this shows me. I like – I have a fabulous studio, but I love just being out with the sticks. And sometimes I leave the doors open and I go out there.

[Deborah Butterfield]

There’s like deer in there, hiding out from the hunters.

[laughter]

This shows the process where they invested in –

[slide featuring a photo taken in Deborah’s studio of tree branches covered in a ceramic shell]

– the ceramic shell. So, they invest these, burn them out, burn – clean the ash out, and then core it with wax. I mean swish wax in it, core it, and then put it in a plaster –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– waste mold. And then burn it out. So, it’s like a twice-baked potato. First, it’s lost stick and then it’s lost wax. Or, if it’s small enough, under an inch, it’s just solid. So, they just immediately cast it. But they – they get the beautiful surface with the ceramic shell but the reliability with the traditional plaster mold. So, the ceramic shell is inside the plaster mold. So, we have – they found that it costs more to do it in the beginning of the process, but then in the metal shop they don’t have to do very much tooling, and it leaves a fresher, just amazing surface.

This is Mark Anderson –

[slide with a photo of Mark Anderson next to his new electric induction furnace]

– talking about his new electric furnace. Induction furnace.

[slide with a photo of three men in protective gear pouring metal]

This shows the guy – it’s a little blurry – pouring the metal. It’s 2300 degrees.

[slide with a photo of a crate of bronzed sticks]

And this is a load of bronze sticks. And this is what it looks like when I weld the armature. Or what it looks like before they weld the horse back together.

[slide featuring a photo of the inside of the studio with the head of a horse sculpture on a hoist and the rest of the sculpture to the left of the hoist and with another worker, John working on a different sculpture in the background]

So, here it shows us doing some brain surgery. I – I didn’t like the way the neck and the head were, and so, we cut the head off. And it weighs about 100 – 200 pounds, I don’t know. So, I have a hoist. And that’s John, my assistant, there welding. But this is –

[slide featuring a photo of a close-up of the sculpture’s head on the hoist]

– the studio in Walla Walla. Can you see that?

[slide with a photo of the sculpture’s head on the hoist on the left and the headless sculpture’s body on the right]

We’re repositioning the head. There it goes. And this is in bronze. And I’ve got it already patinaed. And since they’re one of a kind, I can change them when I’m like, “I just can’t live with it, we have to do something.” So, we – we often do major –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– corrections at the very end.

This shows how I patina it.

[slide with a photo of Deborah next to one of her sculptures doing the patinizing]

I use a weed burner and a couple kinds of acid and paint, white paint and black paint. I lay down the white paint to give an opaque, light undercoat, and then ferric nitrate goes on top of it with heat, developing lighter tans –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– to deeper reds.

That’s not an earthquake, is it?

Okay.

And here they were. This is my first show at Danese Gallery in New York.

[slide with a photo of one of Deborah’s sculptures being lifted by a crane outside the Danese Gallery in New York]

[slide with another photo of Deborah’s sculpture being lifted by a crane – this time near the top of the crane arm]

[slide with yet another photo of Deborah’s sculpture being lifted by a crane]

[laughter]

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s sculpture nearly being set on the roof of the gallery by the crane]

[slide featuring a photo of the crane dropping the sculpture into the gallery via the skylight at the gallery]

It’s like the Ascension.

[slide with a photo of the workers taking the harness off of the sculpture and crane in the gallery]

[laughter]

[slide featuring the next sculpture high in the air on a crane]

[slide with a photo of the next sculpture being dropped into the gallery via the skylight]

[slide of the next sculpture being released by the crane in the gallery with gallery worker surrounding it with one worker’s hand on the snout of the sculpture]

And look at that guy. These guys rig Richard Serra, but he’s comforting the horse.

[laughter]

Well, just intuitively. I mean, I don’t think he’s thinking about it. But you can see the scale. And these aren’t the big – big ones.

[slide featuring a photo of one of Deborah’s horses being lowered through the skylight of the gallery by a crane with the Sun blazing through the skylight]

There’s the Ascension, actually.

[chuckling]

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of wooden branches with four branches leaning against the horse]

Then I, kind of, went back to my roots, and I think the horses are getting so big because I’m getting more blind. And so, I have to be able to see them.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And so, the legs are really long, and I just felt like the space underneath them was not adequately defined. And I started – and you can see my studio, the whole floor was covered with stuff. So, when we clean up my studio to photograph them, they kind of, some of them look naked. This one was really one of my favorite pieces. I just started –

[return to the previous slide of the standing horse sculpture with branches leaning on it]

– leaning stuff on it and –

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture with its head sagging down made of burnt wood branches]

– leaving stuff on the ground. This was from a fire – forest fire, the first piece I did from this fire behind our house. We had to evacuate all our art. We have a Bob Arneson head that weighs about 300 pounds, and the problem with it is that –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– you have to stick your fingers in his nose and his ears to – to move him. And it’s very difficult. And we gave up on the lawn and thought if the fire came, we’d just roll it into the pond. And he’s still there, he looks great.

[laughter]

But, anyway, the fire – I guess I haven’t even talked about materials. I feel like I’m talking too long. But the wood that I use, because it’s translated into bronze, it can – I can use wood that is almost not there. Wood that is strong enough for me to put together as a piece made of wood is so fragile. It’s got bugs. It’s got dry rot. It’s very, very old. And this way I only need to keep it in one piece long enough for them to put it in a, you know, in the ceramic shell. And, again, that idea of age, of a story, of a narrative, of a history is more interesting than something that’s just utilitarian.

And the – the wood that I use, the metal that I use, I – I think of it as an analogy to different types of horses or different ways of thinking. I am in love with materials and metal There’s a – I love “The Periodic Table”, a book by Primo Levi. Copper is so cooperative, but it isn’t. It – it quickly becomes brittle and breaks. Lead is so luxurious and buttery, but it has no structural strength. Steel is just, it’s so fabulous and probably the best to work with of all. It’s the most resilient. And bronze, in casting, is really great. It’s so much lighter than steel and easier to bend. But then, at a certain point, just before you’re where you want, it breaks because it’s crystal – gets crystallized from being cast. And so, I try to find – all of this is incorporated. When I start working –

[leaves podium and stands under the projection screen and the slide of her sculpture]

– I am just – this is so high – but it’s just that body shape.

[indicating the outline of the horse sculpture]

And I – I weld it on the floor, or I made it – make it out of sticks, and we tie it together. And then I hang it up. And then do the two cross pieces for the chest and the hips. And then we weld the legs down. I’m using sticks that have –

[return to the slide with the photo of the horse sculpture made of burned wood]

– already been cast in bronze. And they stay there forever. And that way you don’t get the cutting the table legs off effect.

But so, when I’m working, I don’t have the neck –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– or head or the tail on it. It’s basically an abstract painting that’s a long rectangle. And I wrestle with that for a while until I’m informed of who – who the horse is. And then I add the neck and the head and personify it.

This was at L.A. Louver and –

[slide featuring a photo of a standing horse sculpture with its head craned down to the left made from driftwood]

– and Paule Anglim.

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of birch branches with branches leaning against it]

“Storm Castle.”

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture, “Kamehameha”, with its head bowing made of driftwood, cane and whale bone]

This piece was “Kamehameha.” This was from the north shore of Hawaii, the Big Island, where Kamehameha was born. And Twigg gave me this old rotten Hawaiian canoe hull that was so filled with termites. And there’s some whale bone in it and just amazing things that we gathered.

[slide with a photo of a Hawaiian volcano]

And this shows the volcano where we live in Hawaii. We’re at 3400 feet. And there’s lots of dead trees. [laughs]

[laughter]

[slide with a photo of two wild horses and a wild donkey on Deborah’s Hawaiian land]

It’s fabulous. And these are these wild horses and donkeys that we found on our land. We bought 100 acres, and they had been fenced out and the man who owned them was dead. And the donkeys had been rounded up from the golf courses –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– and brought up the mountain. But this is what inspires me in Hawaii. These are koa trees.

[slide featuring a photo of Hawaiian koa trees]

[new slide with a photo of Hawaiian giant hapu’u ferns]

These are giant hapu’u ferns, like “The Land Before Time.”

[slide with another photo of Hawaiian koa trees]

They walk around.

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s studio in Hawai’i with tree branches strewn about in the foreground]

And this is my studio in Hawaii.

[slide with a photo of a different view of Deborah’s studio in Hawai’i with bunches of branches in the foreground and two of her smaller standing horse sculptures on tables against the wall in the background]

[slide with a photo of a horse sculpture in progress in Deborah’s Hawaiian studio]

I have an assistant.

[slide with a photo of Deborah’s assistant, John, collecting wood on her Hawaiian property]

This is John helping me get wood.

[slide with a photo of an Ohia tree in Hawai’i]

[new slide featuring some of the tangled wood structures that are on Deborah’s Hawaiian property]

[new slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of Hawaiian ohia branches]

[new slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of Hawaiian driftwood with leaves and seed pods still intact]

And these are pieces made from ohia, and I’m starting to use leaves and seed pods from the trees. I’ve become kind of a tree worshiper. Ohia is the native tree that’s – that’s the state tree, actually. And we live in a forest of them.

[Deborah Butterfield]

And they have these beautiful yellow and red flowers. It’s just the craziest tree you’ve ever seen.

That’s sunset there.

[slide with a photo of the sunset over Deborah’s property in Hawai’i]

[new slide with a photo of an Icelandic mountain]

And then we were invited to Iceland. We’ve gone for two years, several years ago and last – the year before, and spent a month there making art and staying on a horse farm with a woman –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– who is a famous sculptor there. And she let us stay in this guesthouse and use her studio.

[slide with a photo of an Icelandic landscape with a mountain in the background]

And my son and his girlfriend and John and I all made work there.

[slide with a photo of Deborah on a tiny horse in Iceland]

This is me on one of these horses I always made fun of.

[laughter]

They’re tiny and they look like “My Little Pony.”

[laughter]

But they are so courageous and fearless. There’s no predators there so they don’t – they’re not afraid of nature. They’re just so unbelievable.

[slide featuring a photo of the head of the tiny Icelandic horse]

[new slide with a photo of an eider duck taken in Iceland]

This is an eider duck out on a peninsula –

[slide with a photo of Deborah collecting driftwood and other branches in Iceland]

– and I gathered – where I gathered all of this driftwood and debris.

[slide featuring a photo of an Icelandic sheepdog reclining in the Sun]

And behind this Icelandic sheepdog is old eider duck nesting boxes, which I made –

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of old eider duck nesting boxes from Iceland]

– into this horse.

This was at Anglim Gilbert last winter.

[slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture being made in a studio in Iceland with a tabby cat in front of it]

And this is Amonis, my studio assistant in – in Iceland.

[slide featuring the sunset in Iceland in a valley between two mountains]

[new slide with a photo of the inside of Deborah’s suitcase in Iceland filled with sticks and random debris for her sculptures]

This was my suitcase. [laughs]

[laughter]

[Deborah Butterfield]

And this is another piece from what I brought home, the material –

[slide featuring a standing horse sculpture made from driftwood and various found objects in Iceland]

– that I just kept like this. I didn’t get it cast. I just love it.

Speaking to the marine debris, you know, these currents of plastic, oh my god, –

[slide featuring a photo of another standing horse sculpture made of wood and marine debris in Iceland]

– it’s a nightmare. Another one from Iceland.

[slide featuring a photo of a large area of wooden branches strewn about in Wyoming]

And then this is in Wyoming, in Cody, where I gather wood. This is where I almost had a heart attack seeing all this wood.

[laughter]

[slide with a photo of a driftwood tree trunk]

[new slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made from the pine branches with leaves and roots attached]

This is a piece in my New York show. “Pine Forest.”

[slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s sculpture, “Pine Forest”, taken from the reverse angle of the above photo]

[new slide with a close-up of the detail leaves and twigs of the sculpture, “Pine Forest”]

[new slide featuring a photo of a standing horse sculpture made from the driftwood branches from Wyoming]

And this is a piece from the Cody, Wyoming, wood.

[new slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made from the Hawaiian driftwood]

And this is a piece from Hawaii.

[new slide featuring a photo of the open end of a box truck filled with debris that had washed ashore in Alaska after a tsunami]

And then I was allowed to get some debris from the tsunami that washed up in the shore of Alaska. The Gulf of Alaska keepers –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– gathered all this debris and brought it down to recycle in Seattle. Somehow the permits weren’t right, and King County made them put it all in the dump. And it was a tragedy. And Waste – Waste Management was nice enough to – I mean, they risked getting a huge fine, but they snuck me in, and I filled two U-Hauls with this debris. And look at this little fir tree growing out –

[slide with a photo of a fir tree growing out of a buoy that was part of the tsunami debris that Deborah was allow to have]

– of this buoy.

There’s hope.

[slide with a photo of a standing horse structure armature made of driftwood]

And this is the piece I made. This is the armature. That’s the only part of it that’s bronze. So, it’s welded bronze and painted bronze.

[slide with a photo of the same horse sculpture with its innards made of the tsunami debris and having tsunami debris strewn all around it]

And then I made this piece. It was at Greg Kucera last fall, called “Three Sorrows – Earthquake, Tsunami, Meltdown”. And this stuff, I tried to use more abstracted stuff but, I mean, I have in my studio baby shoes and toothbrushes and crushed helmets and, you know, –

[Deborah Butterfield]

– everything is written in Japanese. It’s so poignant, and it looked like it just washed into the – the gallery. These are small pieces from that same.

[slide with a photo of the remnants of a forest fire along a hillside]

And then this is a scene of the forest fire where I’ve gathered some of this burnt wood right a few miles from our house.

[new slide with a photo of a close-up of the burnt trees from the forest fire]

[new slide with a photo of a burned log from the forest fire]

But the baby trees are coming back.

[new slide featuring a photo of Deborah’s studio with the armature of a new horse almost completed and two piles of burnt logs from the forest fire, one in front of the sculpture and one behind]

This shows me building this piece.

[new slide with a photo of the armature of a new sculpture made entirely of burnt wood branches]

[new slide with a photo of the completed standing horse sculpture made entirely of burnt wood with other burnt wood branches strewn about it]

And there it is, this is also in my New York show.

[new slide with a photo of Deborah’s assistant, Brianne, lifting the neck of a partially completed sculpture with a hoist]

And this is Brianne. This is how we figure out who the horse is. We – we try to figure out the – the neck and the gesture.

[new slide with a photo of Deborah standing underneath the neck of one of her large standing horse sculptures made of driftwood]

And that’s me with one of the big ones.

[new slide with a photo of a standing horse sculpture made of driftwood]

[new slide featuring a photo of one of Deborah’s sculptures laying on its side while her assistant welds the neck area of the sculpture, taken in Deborah’s studio]

This shows them welding this piece. This is what it looks like before I get it back. They weld it all together and tool it, and then they sandblast it.

[slide with a photo of another of Deborah’s horse being tooled in her studio]

[new slide with a photo of Deborah hugging the head of her real-life horse, Danuta]

And there’s Danuta. All right, I think that’s it.

[new slide with a photo of Deborah and her kids with Hilary Clinton taken when Deborah was younger]

Uh-oh.

[laughter]

I showed this in Smithsonian before the election.

[Deborah Butterfield]

[laughter]

It’s a tragic story.

[laughter]

[applause]