Alum Kathy Butterly will have two solo shoes at the Portland Museum of Art starting November 2022. “Kathy Butterly: Out of one many” and “Headscapes” present over three decades of the artist’s small-scale ceramic sculptures. 

The Portland Museum of Art present two major bodies of work by Butterly. “Out of one, many” displays Butterly’s imaginative powers and technical brilliance applied to a single pint-glass form over many years, producing astonishing variations. The sculptures are anthropomorphic, playful, intricate, provocative, and barely five inches tall. Whereas the smaller cup forms reference the body, a new series of works alludes to the human head. In “Headscapes,” Butterly takes formal variation to a grander scale. Including 10 new works created especially for the exhibition, this recent series of sculptures makes room for what Butterly refers to as “journeys of the mind,” entering a psychological realm of unease. Taken together, the works evidence Butterly’s singular aesthetic and technical mastery of the medium and reveal an evolution in her practice in scale and content. 

Both exhibitions were organized by Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

“Out of one, many” and “Headscapes” will be on view from November 4, 2022 to March 5, 2023.