DENVER, CO.- Denver Botanic Gardens’ 2015 outdoor art exhibition, Deborah Butterfield: The Nature of Horses presents 15 life-sized horse sculptures throughout the York Street location that span the artist’s work trajectory from the early 1990s to present, including the premiere of a new sculpture. Horses have been the subject of the American sculptor’s work for more than 30 years. The exhibition is on view May 23 – October 18, 2015, and is included with admission. An exhibition catalogue will be released in the summer.

The majority of the sculptures in Deborah Butterfield are crafted of cast bronze, originally created in wood collected from locations around the world. Molds are made of each branch, the wood is burnt out and the cavity is filled with molten bronze. The bronze branches are welded together to erect the finished horse. “Trees reflect their experiences in this world, serve as metaphors for our lives and help define the nature of each horse I build,” says Butterfield. “Because they are cast in bronze, even the most fragile and ephemeral branches become permanent, structural parts of my horses. The opportunity to have my sculptures interact with the varied landscapes and exhibits at the Gardens speaks poetically to my process.”

Since the late 1990s, cast bronze has been Butterfield’s material of choice, but the style and materials have evolved over the course of her career. She began working with plaster over a steel armature and by the mid-1970s, she used natural materials such as mud, clay and sticks over a wire armature. In later work, Butterfield used found and industrial materials such as barbed wire, pipes and fencing.

Brian Vogt, Denver Botanic Gardens CEO, says, “The Butterfield horses provide a dynamic and organic complement to the Gardens’ varying landscapes and spark the imagination of the viewer. This is a year in which we are celebrating the Great Plains and similar steppe ecosystems around the world. There is no more iconic animal of the steppe than the horse.”

Butterfield divides her time between Montana and Hawaii. Her work is represented in more than 20 museum collections, including the Denver Art Museum (which is loaning three sculptures), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Walker Art Center. The sculptures presented in Deborah Butterfield are on loan from the artist, museum collections, private collectors, galleries and universities around the country.