Amy Butowicz - Hidebound in Fool's Paradise

2020, Wood, muslin, hinges, foam, string and acrylic paint. 51"h x 33-1/2"w x 24"d 

The form of this work is inspired by the Chippendale chair design. The specific chair back variation I was looking at is regional to Philadelphia. When looking at this chair, the support structure is reminiscent of the female anatomy.

I create sculptures made from sewn and painted canvas, fabric, wood and plaster. My works are derived from my lived experience with a feminized body, bound to the demands and performances of a normative history. While standing with autonomy and grounded in a site of domesticity, my works slip between human, abstract, and figurative. They are animate, seductive and disquieting, seeming as if ready to walk away or beckon a viewer with sly humor. I elevate what historically has been discarded, pushed aside or devalued into sculptural forms that explore a collapse of the traditional categories that define the One and the Other.

About the Artist:

Amy Butowicz was born and raised in Akron Ohio and currently lives and works in New York. She received a BA in Studio Art from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Butowicz has been awarded fellowships and scholarships to attend Lighthouse Works, DNA Residency, Salem Art Works, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Summer Studio Program, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. She is a 2019 and 2022 nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist in New York Grant and her work has been published in Art Maze Magazine. Her recent solo exhibitions include Pantomime at The Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder, Colorado, Inhabit at Anderson Ranch Arts Center, A Room to Hoist at Hunter College, New York City, New York, Hiding in Plain Sight at Underdonk, Brooklyn, New York, and Boudoir Theatre at Peninsula Art Space in Brooklyn, New York.