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Horse

Deborah Butterfield’s signature subject is horses. Her 1980 mixed media sculpture titled simply Horse is an example of her savvy in conveying the spirit of a horse, in this case, a placid, content one who stands just under three feet high at the shoulders, one-and-a-half feet across, and just under four feet long from nose to tail. The mare is not quite realistic. She has very skinny legs without hooves and no facial features, but the shape of this sculpture is unmistakably equine. She seems to be mid-stride, with her left front leg a bit ahead of the right, and her right back leg ahead of the left, all four feet firmly on the ground. Her tail hangs relaxed, muscular neck lowered, and head pointing down at 45 degrees as if she were just about to dip into a bucket of food hanging at her chest height.

Butterfield built the frame of the horse from rebar and chicken wire, then filled out the shape with gray-tinted cotton paper pulp. The dried pulp resembles earthenware with a slightly bumpy, grainy, and in places wrinkly, surface. The pulp is decorated with stiff, thin, dried bamboo leaves. The leaves are scattered randomly, almost as if the horse had lain down in a pile of these long, golden-brown rectangles while still wet and rolled herself around until they clung to her all over. Some leaves are buried under a layer of the pulp and are only apparent by the ridges they create on the surface. Others are pressed in, flush against her skin. Others dangle off her body, sticking out to the sides or hanging down.

The horse does not gleam because the gray cotton pulp of its body has a rough, matte surface. The bamboo leaves, however, make the light dance. Where they curve, they brighten with spots of light. And because the inner surface of these leaves is shiny compared to the outside, the odd leaf here or there that was affixed with the shiny surface up absolutely glimmers.