I have followed Deborah Butterfield's work for many years, and even had an opportunity to hear her speak in the early eighties when her star was just beginning to rise. A couple of years ago I bought Horses, The Art of Deborah Butterfield, and read her 1988 interview with Marcia Tucker. Tucker asked, "What do you feel is the most important issue for you as an artist right now?" And Butterfield responded:
"I suppose I feel that what's most important is to try to make work that advances you as a human being, that somehow pushes you to keep asking yourself questions, makes other people ask questions, and hopefully encourages them to see the world through different eyes. When I was a little kid I wanted to be able to be inside somebody else's body and see through their eyes for just a minute. I felt that if I could do that I could understand myself and the world so much better.
And I guess that's what art is about. ....... And I suppose that's why I make sculpture, because I feel that people have to sense my work almost as much with their skin as with their eyes, and in doing so they learn a different way of perceiving the world. If we could each learn to step into the other for a while, we would be a lot better off.
Art is very important in terms of politics; not just in a literal way, meaning that we should all do work that is overtly political, but in the sense that we make the step of transference into someone's otherness."
I make art to understand me, my time, my place. It is the place that I learn to live within my own skin. It is through the sharing of it that it becomes 'political', as Butterfield defines political. With each piece I try to pare my experiences down a common denominator, not to what makes them unique. And it is always my hope that if I can get it close enough to right, you, the viewer, will experience a moment of transference and walk away with a sense that you have brushed past a fellow traveler.
If you would like more information on Deborah Butterfield, the Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle has created a web page for her at http://www.gregkucera.com/butterfield.htm.
