Cool Spot by Kathy Butterly
Today, the American Art Museum announced that Kathy Butterly is the 2012 winner of our Contemporary Artist Award. She was selected after a lively discussion by a panel of five independent experts who know the contemporary art world inside and out.
This biennial award recognizes an artist younger than fifty who has produced a significant body of work and consistently demonstrates exceptional creativity. Butterly creates intimate ceramic sculptures that resemble cartoonish forms based on the human body. Many of her works are cast from mundane kitchen objects, then endowed with suggestive appendages such as bulging bellies, curvaceous bottoms, and painted toes. The jurors said that Butterly's ceramic objects "explode traditional conceptions of earthenware art," and are "richly communicative and wildly imaginative." Butterly is the tenth recipient of this award and the first ceramicist to be recognized, a move that signals a welcome openness in the contemporary art world today.
If you want to see more more of Butterly's work, visit the museum's Luce Foundation Center where her 1996 sculpture, Royal Jelly is currently on view, or check out the online gallery of her current exhibition at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica.
