Steffany Butts - Boucher
ARTIST
STATEMENT
“Drawing, sculpture, video and installation art provide me the opportunity to explore, inventory and fold my interests together.
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I am interested in the process and sequence of evolution, co-evolution and de-evolution; prehistory to current. My work connects to the curiosities, abnormalities, adaptations and anomalies of living-beings that are morphing due to various factors including: belief structures, bio-engineering, industry, genetic modification, new technologies, and the changing environment. Cause and effect, new species, extinction, faux-hybrid-species, foreign landscapes, the city as an organism, migration, environment; architecture, anatomy and physiology, anthropology, archeology, mythology, cartography, paleontology, comparative and molecular biology are ever-inspiring subjects.
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I am strongly influenced by the nostalgia of childhood and personal histories; my work is driven by my connection to specific activities, memories and objects related to this time of my life: sleepwalking, shadow-puppets and flashlight tag, exploring unfamiliar landscapes or even peculiar environments and an unusual cast of characters. The feeling of mystery in connection to the unknown and the anticipation of being present with the unfolding of something new are childhood experiences worth re-awakening. My work overall connects to the nostalgia of imagination at differing stages of my life and how that changes over time.
I have long been fascinated by shadows; the stories they illustrate and the way windows encapsulate or capture these stories. Shadow puppets activated stories my grandmother told at bedtime, would send me into dreamtime, a secret subconscious life in an underwater-like realm, half in the world and half out. There are unexplained mysterious shadows that our imagination twists into beings themselves. And there are the personal shadows of our past that we work with and let go. Shadows are the subconscious world animated, the limitlessness of the imagination as impermanent illustrated projections.
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These subjects are mixed and explored in ink on various types of paper and alternative materials that have a connection to both my interests and personal history: music paper, pages taken from comic books, wallpaper, wood etc. Plastic models, paper and findings are deconstructed and reconstructed into sculptures that become landscapes or the morphed beings that inhabit it. Creative writing is the foundation to my creative process. To me, the creative process is a practiced development of symbolic language, which in turn reflects culture, personal mythos and history.​”
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Steffany Butts-Boucher is a visual artist and sound practitioner; Owner of Echo Studio located in Manitou Springs, Colorado. She has shown her work throughout the United States in both solo and group exhibits including Illinois, Colorado, Brooklyn, and New York City. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Parsons School of Design in New York City and her BFA from Western Illinois University. Her 20+ years of teaching includes Parsons School of Design, NYC, Bemis School of Art and Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs in addition to K-12 schools and independent educational programs in Art and Design, Sculpture and Drawing, in addition to Art History. Within her art practice, she creates symbolic votives: sculptures, collages, drawings and installations which serve as placeholders for morphogenesis and personal mythology. These unique personal votives mutate and emerge reflecting her changing relationship to the world around her. Votives often serve as physical figures for themes or characters from her writing. Intuition, creative writing and research are the foundation of her studio practice.