Kathy Butterly has created distinct, evocative sculptures for nearly four decades, contributing to and expanding the tradition of studio ceramics. Through her practice, Butterly engages with concepts ranging from materiality and line to the history of the vessel. She uses traditional ceramic forms as her starting point, referring to these historical templates as her “canvas”; however, Butterly contorts and misshapes these forms in ways that veer toward the iconoclastic. She then adds layer upon layer of glaze – sometimes to the point of creating additional volume – and fires the works repeatedly. The colors and textures Butterly chooses and their relationship with each other are simultaneously seductive and jarring. Her strange forms and surprising palette decisions often generate an uncanny awareness in the viewer and produce a visceral impact.
Each of Butterly’s sculptures is unique and detailed. She eschews large-scale work, preferring instead to make concise, pithy compositions that express a wide variation of moods. Whether rising, collapsing, stalwart, or teetering, these sculptures exude a defiant and passionate individuality. Butterly exaggerates the echoes of figuration inherent in the vessel form, allowing the viewer to relate to her works on an intimate yet human level. The distinct, faceted personalities of these sculptures provide the works with their own raison d’être.
Kathy Butterly (b. 1963, Amityville, NY) has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. The artist was most recently the subject of a solo exhibition, Kathy Butterly: Out of one, many / Headscapes, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2021, which traveled to the Portland Museum of Art in Portland, Maine in 2022. In 2019, Butterly was the subject of a solo exhibition, ColorForm, at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. Butterly’s work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Anderson Collection at Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia; and Kemper Art Museum, Kansas City, MO, among others. Kathy Butterly will be the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, New York, in early 2026, with a substantial career-spanning catalogue.
Her works are in the permanent collections of institutions including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; the Whitney Museum, New York, NY; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; and Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, NJ, among many others. In addition, Kathy Butterly has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2017), Guggenheim Fellowship Award (2014), Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Contemporary Artist Award (2012), Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2011), Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2009) and the Anonymous Was A Woman Grant (2002). Butterly received her BFA at Moore College of Art before earning an MFA at the University of California, Davis. She lives and works in New York, NY and Maine.
