Kathy Butterly New Work
February 13 - March 10, 2001
The latest works by Kathy Butterly continue and refine her previous approach of conjoining commercial cultural and personal iconography within sinuous, provocative vessel related forms. Imagery derived from sources as disparate as Ming, Rococo, and Disney (sometimes within the same object) connect on both a psychological and formal level.
Butterly has stated that she has no set idea what a piece will be about when she begins her work. It is only after the piece is finished that she sees how elements of her life have crept in. Throughout most of the creation of this work, Butterly was pregnant with her second child who would be born in the Chinese year of the dragon, something she thought about often. With the pregnancy and titles like Thinker Thinker, Fortune and Tongue Tied II these works seem to reflect a period in the artist's life when self-reflection and meditation were at a peak.
In Thinker Thinker Butterly comments on eastern and western notions of intellect. Its body sits stoically like a meditating Buddha with his robes draping over the pagoda-inspired pedestal, yet looming at the opening of the vessel are two bright yellow google-eyes seemingly plucked right from a Jim Henson puppet.
One of the highlights of Butterly's new work is a limited series which incorporates the Chinese Fu-Dog, actually a traditional Chinese lion believed for centuries to be a symbol of luck, wisdom, authority and protection. Fu dogs are also the traditional guardians of Heaven and Earth; however, in this work Butterly has replaced Heaven and Earth with vessels resting on the shoulders of the Fu Dogs, who struggle under the weight of responsibility to the form.
Like Surrealist vignettes Butterly's images conjure her stream of consciousness responses to everything from junk food, to head ware, to flesh and bodily fluids. With an uninhibited sense of irony and comedy Butterly's sculptures offer a six inch world of desire, fear, exaltation, curiosity and visual joy. They make sense both as objects of profound beauty and as diaristic self-portraits.