Monekana

Deborah Butterfield, Monekana, 2001, bronze, 96 x 129 ¹⁄₂ x 63 ¹⁄₂ in. (243.8 x 328.9 x 161.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the American Art Forum, Mr. and Mrs. Frank O. Rushing, Shelby and Frederick Gans and museum purchase, 2002.3, © 2001, Deborah Butterfield

Artwork Details

Title: Monekana
Artist: Deborah Butterfield
Date: 2001
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 96 x 129 ¹⁄₂ x 63 ¹⁄₂ in. (243.8 x 328.9 x 161.3 cm)
Copyright: © 2001, Deborah Butterfield
Credit Line: Gift of the American Art Forum, Mr. and Mrs. Frank O. Rushing, Shelby and Frederick Gans and museum purchase
Mediums Description: bronze
Classifications: Sculpture
Highlights: Contemporary Art
Sculpture
Subjects: Animal — horse
Object Number: 2002.3
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2002.3

Artwork Description

Deborah Butterfield's majestic horse is monumental in scale. Butterfield considered the animal's expressive postures in response to the natural world as metaphors for human experience. At first glance, the sculpture appears to be made of tree branches. It is, in fact, cast in bronze, with a patina that masterfully captures the textures and colors of the Hawaiian wood fragments the artist used to make the original maquette. Butterfield divides her time between a ranch in Montana and a studio space in Hawaii. Monekana is Hawaiian for the word Montana.

Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015.

Works by this artist (1 item)

Monekana

Artist

Deborah Butterfield

Date2001

bronze

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DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD: I’m Deborah Butterfield here with "Monekana" in the American Art Museum, of the Smithsonian. Monekana means "Montana" in Hawaiian. I thought, since I made it on the mainland of Hawaiian wood, that it was an appropriate name.

It kind of evolves. There's a lot of adding and subtracting and finding out just, I don't know, the emotional end. It's very much, I don't know, just the visual, the balance of it is pretty formal until then there's the neck and the head and then it becomes personified.

I practice karate and dressage, and so there is this, for me, this formal aspect of this that is also very much in a proscribed space where you execute different movements and figures. I believe it relates to this very much.

I told my sensei in karate that your body is your horse. When you're training, you know, there's a question. You propose a question and then you figure out ways that you might solve it. It involves a lot of repetition and a lot of mistake, but that hopefully each day, whether it's in the studio or with your horse or in the dojo, you hope that you come to some point of harmony and satisfaction. Even to the point where maybe things didn't work out so well so then, especially with a horse, you try to go back and do something you do well so that you end at a positive note.

It's so nice to see your old work. You become a different person, and your work changes. I'm so happy to see this piece. For one thing, it's been inside and so the climate—acid rain and just time—hasn't damaged the patina.

I feel like it is an old friend.