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Call Me Mary

Kathy Butterly (American, born in 1963)
American
1993
Object Place: Probably New York, New York

Medium/Technique Glazed porcelain
Dimensions Overall: 17.8 cm (7 in.)
Credit Line The Daphne Farago Collection
Accession Number2012.1178
ClassificationsCeramics
The artist calls her intimately scaled biomorphic ceramic forms “emotional self-portraits.” Kathy Butterly pushes the limits of her medium to create alluring and discomfiting vessels, sometimes firing the same work thirty or forty times to achieve her desired effect. In this work, she engages the innate personalities of materials, glazes, and shapes, exploring the relationship between feeling and form. Her metamorphosing sculptures incorporate fleshly and bodily folds, invoke gendered iconographies in their curves and scale, and sometimes include adornment in the form of small pearlescent beads.

DescriptionWhite, textured vase form resting on blue foot, top is piled rings of pink-glazed clay with red beads (far left in photo)
ProvenanceBy 2000, acquired by Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York; August 3, 2000, sold by Franklin Parrasch Gallery to Daphne Farago, Little Compton, RI; 2012, year-end gift of the Daphne Farago Collection to the MFA. (Accession Date: February 27, 2013)
Copyright© Kathy Butterly.