Opener 10
Kathy Butterly: Freaks and Beauties

Kathy Butterly makes colorful porcelain and earthenware objects that push quirky forms, cartoonish actions and surprising textures into pint-sized packages. Each of Butterly’s cup-like vessels begins as a cylindrical form cast in wet clay; she then manipulates these simple, symmetrical shapes into curvaceous, slumping bodies. Finely detailed appendages, surface decorations, and thin coats of subtly varied color are added in successive layers. The steady accretion of these layers over multiple firings builds their complicated surfaces. Although these objects fit within the timeline of traditional ceramic sculpture, Butterly’s sculptures refer most to the suggestive, repulsive, and seductive aspects of human bodies.