Creator Record
Metadata
Name |
Butler, David |
Notes |
Born in 1898 in Good Hope, Louisiana, David Butler was the eldest of eight children. As an adult, he worked in saw mills until he suffered a job related injury forcing him into retirement in the early 1960s. He then bought a house in Patterson, Louisiana, and began making yard art from tin cut outs and other found items. Inspired by religious beliefs, Butler created a dense yard installations composed of complex, wood and metal whirligigs, cutouts staked into the ground, decorated lawn benches, niches filled with recycled ceramic statues, and canes made from umbrella parts. Butler's yard pieces, designed to be portable, were regularly sold by the artist and replaced. His most important work may have been done before the mid-1980s, when his health began to fail. At that point, his nieces and nephews took over the embellishment of much of the artwork that Butler continued to cut, but the painting was often less interesting than it had previously been, and the work as a whole tended to suffer. When his health finally collapsed, he stopped making art altogether, lived with relatives at times, and at last entered a nursing home in Morgan City, Louisiana. He died in 1997, at age 99. The Butler house and the remains of the yard installation were eventually dismantled. |
Nationality |
American |
