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
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Artwork Details
- Title
- Monekana
- Artist
- 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
- Highlights
- Subjects
- Animal — horse
- Object Number
- 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 (2 items)
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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.