Artists & Works |
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| Tom Butter American (b. 1952) STRATOCASTER (1987) fiberglass/wood 85" x 12" x 52" |
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| STYLE: sculpture | ©Tom Butter |
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Stratocaster is an example of Tom Butter's ability to combine materials in surprising ways, creating fluid, poetic statements. A sheet of fiberglass is gently enveloped by a curved piece of wood, leaving open the question of where the work begins or ends. Much of Butter's work evolves from his curiosity about how different materials such as fiberglass, wood, steel mesh, or galvanized pipe would look or work together. Butter believes a spirit of exploration and innovation in sculpture is still possible. Although Butter acknowledges Modernist sculpture's legacy of simple abstract forms, he combines them with a rippled transparent surface and a scale attuned to the human body. |
CRITICAL EXCERPTS |
| artist's quote, Splash, 12/88 "What I do is traditional, influenced by the past—mostly the recent past. The process has the feeling of research for me, in the form of questions: What would this look like? What would happen if this was combined with that? The most successful pieces develop a parity between the personal and the formal. This quality allows the sculpture to contain and resolve contradictions, the "whole" of the sculpture keeps oppositions from flying apart....Ironically today, when artists have the most freedom, there is a general retreat from innovation and exploration. I look forward to a time of invention and a sense of renewed possibilities." |
| NYTimes, Michael Kimmelman, 12/23/88 "...he creates objects almost balletic in their gently curving lines and softly rounded surfaces. His predominant material is a sheet of translucent fiberglass, colored in one of several pastel shades. It can be bent or twisted and then combined with a long curving piece of wood or a wire lathe. Mr. Butter's Constructivist works generally have a back and a front—an open half and a closed half—and they must be seen in the round to get a full sense of their character...he has a wonderfully light touch with materials and a talent for making sculptures that seem alive and in the midst of change." |
| Richard Huntington, Buffalo News, 4/23/87 "Tom Butter has no need for special spatial acrobatics. Instead of intractable steel he opts for materials of incomparable lightness and buoyancy—fiberglass and lightweight wood...These are airy and relaxed works, filled with literal and metaphoric lightness...Butter uses unbroken, usually curved planes that abut and penetrate adjoining planes, sometimes suggesting a solid quasi-cubist construction. The sculptures are never static or overconsistent however. Many seem to be in a state of formation, hovering between resolution and dissolution." |