Lucky
...ing one medium to create the look of another. American Craft Art is often using traditional craft mediums, like metal, in a new direction (Stockstad, 1152). This scrap metal has done justice to forming the likeness of a part of the nature it helps destroy. The viewer might wonder why it is made of metal rather than the suggested form of wood in the first place. There is nothing functional in this weighty sculpture made of metal; it was made for aesthetic reasons. Though it could be viewed from any side, the piece is displayed so one sees the front left side of the horse that is lying in the gravel, baking in the sun. Lucky is the horse’s name and he is lying down with his tail stretched out long and heavy as if relaxed. His neck is most visible because Lucky has his head stretched around to his right. There is a triangular negative space between the bottom of the neck, the head, and the front right leg. This life-size sculpture is creating volume and mass by lying down with his legs collapsed underneath him. As a whole it is large, thick, and bulky with twisting pieces. The pieces create a bumpy, knobby look forming what is imagined as joints or muscles bulging. The compiled logs make one imagine they are solid yet light weight when in reality they are made of heavy cast bronze. The appearance of the wood is polished and smooth and does not look splintery. There is an amber sheen on the sculpture that gives the wood a finished look and is completed by the sunlight glaring off. Lucky is peaceful and pleasing to the eye. The viewer can imagine being on a ranch or at a stable. The sculpture raises questions of how it was formed and this keeps the viewer intrigued. There is a remarkably prolonged, disciplined and ultimately poetic inquiry into our relationship with the organic world (Makiki Heights, 1). The eye is drawn to the darkness and confusing arrangement of branches. The back of the horse creates a diagonal shape going down and away from the viewer’s eye, and another diagonal line is created in the opposite direction with Lucky’s head. These perpendicular diagonals are uneven and create the circle with the eye. Followed by the tail and around again to the nose. The sculpture is heavy and weighty at the bottom but organic in the rhythm of its shape. The gesture and pose are familiar and convincing. It is not often that a horse is seen lying down. In fact this may be the viewers first time to see this outside a stable. Lucky’s posture is quiet and still. According to Butterfield, each horse represents a framework or presence that defines a specific energy at a precise moment. Lucky is calmly basking in the sun amidst the downtown Denver sky scrapers. Lewis I. Sharp, the Director at Denver Art Museum stated, “Butterfield lives north of us in Montana, and Willy, Argus, and Lucky, the three bronze horses we commissioned from her, symbolize for some the very essence of life in this part of the country.” Deborah Butterfield claims to have been a “horse girl” all her life. She convinces us of this with her Contemporary American Craft Art. Butterfield is depicting emotion in the horse as a way of doing a self-portrait only one step away from the specificity of herself. Her intimate relationship with the horse species consistently acquaints her with their gestures and grace. She gives an identity to an animal in her work. Like many female artists Butterfield does not fit in the Neo Expression label comfortably and she may not easily fit under feminism although these art forms did influence her as a person and...