Artists Deborah Butterfield is as well known and respected among her generation of artists as one could hope for in a career. She has legions of fans and admirers and her work is in fine collections both private and public all over the world. For more than thirty years she has been creating sculpture that moves us and draws us in and carves out a spot in our hearts and memories and stays. You never forget seeing a Deborah Butterfield sculpture. It will remind you of many past experiences, rubbing a horses muzzle, first time astride, and conjure in your memory going forward when you see a field of horses or maybe when you watch a good movie, or watch your children and have that same feeling of connection and emotion. Simply put she speaks horse and if you are at all familiar with the language and even if you aren’t, chances are her work has spoken to you.

INTERVIEW WITH DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD
On a recent hot, hot summer day we spoke and this very articulate, thoughtful artist took a moment to answer some questions.

SPLASH: When did you begin to see yourself as an artist?

DB: I was always sort of the designated artist in school. When I was three or four I remember doing my first major drawing. It was of a bee. I learned later that my name, Deborah means bee in Hebrew. I thought that was interesting.

SPLASH: How did you start with horses in your life?

DB: I grew up in San Diego. We weren’t wealthy and could not afford a horse but I loved them. I got to ride a pony at a kiddie fair and I was hooked. Somehow my parents managed to get me riding lessons once a week that I loved. Later we knew a family who had horses and I got to ride with the children of that family. The father was a horse doctor and he would let me go on calls with him. When I was going to college at the University of California at Davis, I had to decide whether to be a vet or an artist. UC-Davis had an amazing art department with famous and talented working artists and great students doing really good work. Manuel Neri, Bill Wylie, Roy Deforest, Wayne Thiebaud, and Robert Arneson were all there. It was an amazing environment. I chose art school and I did my first horse in college. When I was riding I felt guilty to not be working on art and when I was in the studio I wanted to be riding. I did a sculpture of a horse that was painted like a Turner sky.…sunsets. Maybe I was also influenced by Magritte’s skies. I liked apprehending nature in something else, in this case, the form of a horse.

SPLASH: Did you do other subjects other than horses?

DB: I did a cow on a bed, I did a reindeer that was raining. I got teased some in school for doing horses by some people who didn’t understand what I was trying to say. But when I did horses I felt like I wasn’t lying anymore. It was what I wanted to say and I didn’t have to answer to anyone else. Many years later, Vicki Hearn, a poet and philosopher helped me understand the work was a different language….a conversation with a different species. The relationship I have with horses has all the same facets as any other relationship. There is love, heartache, joy, death.

SPLASH: Do you ever paint and draw?

DB: Not really. I sort of see the sculptures as drawings because I am adding and taking away with the torch or with sticks. I build as I go. Each is a unique piece, they are not editions. The foundry I use, Walla Walla, is great. They are very much a part of the process. At any stage I can change, add, take away, re-patina.

SPLASH: You used to teach at the college level, right? What did that bring to your work?

DB: Early on I taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison I was only 24 so I wasn’t too much older than a lot of the students. I had many wonderful students. I remember a critique when I was just blown away by the student’s work. I felt what an honor it was to direct and challenge these students to do their best work. I went to my studio and wondered if I was doing the same in my own work….really pushing hard, living up to my own demands. I had a breakthrough and completed a piece that was papier mache and mud--a new step in my work, and an attempt to live up to my students.

SPLASH: Do you dream?

DB: I used to dream a lot more than I do now. Now I mostly dream about my kids. I definitely feel a spiritual and subconscious as well a conscious connection to the horses and the work. I am intuitively connected to them. My vet no longer doubts me or thinks I’m nuts. I feel like I can see stuff before it happens. My horses doctor and I had this strange experience when a foal was born. The foal seemed transparent to me and I felt like something was wrong. Later when the foal died, the doctor and I talked and I told him the feeling I had experienced. He said he had had a similar feeling and so we decided to trust that intuition from now on and be honest. I know I can trust it.

SPLASH: Your husband, John Buck is also an artist. Is that good, or complicated? Are you ever able to get your heads out of art?

DB: We’ve been together 32 years. It’s just our lives. I’m not sure I could be with someone who didn’t do art. It is what we do for fun and our careers. We do projects together and alone. It is us.

SPLASH: How does having children effect your work?

DB: Well my oldest is 21 now! Firstly I remember sculpture feeling like a man’s world, so when I was pregnant with my first child I was aware of having this undeniablyfeminine physical manifestation growing in size that said I was a woman! In the world of sculpture you had to be kind of tough. I was afraid I would lose my “mojo” but I didn’t. I am a feminist and my early pieces were mares. The norm in horse sculpture was a general on a warhorse, a stallion. It was during the Vietnam War so I did anti-war horses. I did mares. They were a kind of self-portrait….mares lying down, a vulnerable position for a horse. Horses can sleep standing so they can run if a predator comes along. They lay down to sleep only when they feel safe. In the predatory world of art and harsh critics, I dared myself to show vulnerability- that was really a strength. It is to be vulnerable to be bringing children into the world because the world really has you. It makes you a real authentic human being. After my first child was born I found a focus I hadn’t known before. I had this baby who would sleep only so long so I had to get serious and focused. Work became more disciplined and black and white. I had a piece to do for an art fair in Chicago and I did it fast and focused. I knew how to use and enjoy my alone time and let my power emerge as an artist and a parent.

SPLASH: What are your tools?

DB: Its all pretty industrial. I work with crushed metal, a hydraulic press, welders, a cutting torch, a chain hoist. I sort of maintain my own junkyard. I really could use an airplane hanger but I don’t have one of those. A lot has to be outdoors. In the winter it gets really hard.

SPLASH: Your metal horses can be a little abstract yet they read as so undeniably horseflesh. One’s sense is so totally horse. How do you feel you accomplish that? I remember the first pieces I saw of yours were wood.…piles of sticks.

DB: The old work was wood. Long term the bronze and metal proved to be better for longevity. Patinas change but the form remains the same. It turned out to be a more practical material. When I begin a piece, I don’t really know how they are going to turn out. I have a feel for it but I do not actually know….it comes out as I am working. I work with and spend a lot of time with horses so I know them. I try to capture that. I weld them standing up. Body and then legs and it begins to tell me who it is. It becomes personified at the end when the head is added. It grows naturally and a personality becomes recognizable.

SPLASH: What are your thoughts on today’s art scene?

DB: I see stuff that blows me away and some that turns me off. Living in Bozeman, Montana, I really don’t get out as much as I should! I am grateful I can still be moved. There is this very moving feeling when you see something really amazing and you feel like you wish you had made that. Not a jealousy but just a longing to have had the experience you can imagine was so rich and joyous to have made that by your hand. One of my sons was in San Francisco participating in a program and we were visiting and we saw a South African artist, William Kentridge. He does these animated shorts on video, maybe 10 or 15 minutes long. They’re stop animation of charcoal drawings of the sea. They just blew me away. I really enjoyed that feeling.