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BEN BUTLER

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Gallery view: "Nest" poplar wood, 43" x 150" x 86"

Interior view of "Nest" poplar wood, 43" x 150" x 86"

Tea Drawings
 click on image for larger view

 

 
Artist Statement:
A vaulted dome, during its construction, grows brick by brick with a single purpose.  It is concerned with survival, to span a distance, to enclose a space and to remain stable.  Its completed form is therefore both essential and necessary, a requirement for existence.

The shape of a wooden canoe reflects a similar purpose.  It is curved and pointed and elongated as much by the nature of water as by the intentions of the mind that built it.  Like the dome, it is the product of unseen forces, and is willing to conform endlessly to these forces for its own success. 

The boat and the dome and so many other elemental structures, from water pitchers to suspension bridges, resonate not because their forms resemble the forms of nature, but because the processes that generated them resemble the processes of nature.  My sculptures are meditations on these processes.  Rather than compose forms, I compose systems, simple but strict, and work within each to find and build a resonant form.  The resulting object, when successful, conveys the elegance of the system immediately while inviting a slower contemplation of that system’s relationship to the manifested form.

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