While Butterfield’s horses may at first glance appear made from branches and bark, they are in fact molded bronze. To create this illusion, she followed a labor-intensive, multistep process that took several months to complete. She sourced discarded materials and enormous piles of wooden branches from near her studio in Montana to create the preliminary forms of each horse. These substructures were sent to the Walla Walla Foundry in Washington, where the branches are covered with ceramic mold-making material that captures the shape and surface of the wood in detail. The molds are then filled with liquid bronze that burns away the wood, leaving behind an exact metal replica. Then, the pieces are assembled into an armature onto which Butterfield wires more branches, shaping, joining, subtracting, and adjusting until she achieves an effective composition. After meticulously photographing the placement of the branches, this bronze and wood creation is sent back to the foundry, where the new branches are also cast in bronze and reassembled. Butterfield then modifies the piece, cutting out certain sticks and welding others onto the sculpture. Finally, she carefully applies chemicals to the bronze to develop a surface patina that simulates the variations of color and texture found in the original wood. Rather than existing for human riders or as symbols of political and military prowess, the way horses have so often been portrayed in art history, Butterfield’s majestic and expressive figures serve as metaphors for the strength, beauty, and the sublime found in nature. 

A lover of horses since childhood and an accomplished dressage rider, Butterfield considered studying veterinary medicine, leading her to enroll at the University of California, Davis. Instead, she switched to sculpture and earned an MFA there in 1973. In 1976, she began making the forms of horses using mud and sticks. Three years later, she started incorporating discarded fencing, steel, sheet metal, and other scrap materials. Ancient Forest combines the artist’s interest in the use of natural and cast-off materials. “When I walk past my pile of junk,” Butterfield explains, “I am inspired by things I see. It has to do with finding and identifying objects of interest that I can work with. Working with junk is a way of recognizing a quality of line and appropriating it to my sculpture.”(1)

(1) Mind and Beast: Contemporary Artists and the Animal Kingdom, text by Thomas H. Garver, exh. cat. (Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1992), 25.