Materials and Structure

Deborah uses many found materials as well as bronze to create her life-size horse sculptures. In the piece directly below the horse sculpture is displayed with other materials around on the ground that were used to construct the horse. This has turned the sculptures from stand alone to installation art.

Butterfield calls her horse sculptures "Ghosts". She refers to them this way because after the wooden forms are created she casts the sculptures into bronze and burning the wood away. Some of the horses remain in wood sticks and limbs, displayed as originally constructed.

She is not trying to replicate any particular aspect of the horse. This means she is not searching for materials to represent certain muscles or attributes of the animal. As she gathers scrape metal and other materials she uses them to form the structure of the horse based on the piece's suggestion on in it's form. Meaning if it reminds of the curve of the horse's neck or structure of muscle then that is the role it begins to play.