As I have told you before, I am the king of sticking my foot in my mouth! I thought you all might be ready for a laugh, so I decided to recall one such time.

I have loved my friendship with and teaching Kate Kapshaw, wife of Steven Spielberg. Their farm in the Los Angeles area is just beautiful, and as they were doing the finishing touches to the place, I was out to help her and her trainer, Ester, with their horses.

As I walked between the home and the stables, I couldn’t help notice there were some men installing a very large (and by that I mean life-sized) statue of a horse, seemingly made completely out of driftwood. It was being well anchored into a patch of knee-high grass, so as to appear that it was standing in a lovely field. Naturally, I thought to myself, “It’s very pretty, but isn’t the water needed to keep the miniature field irrigated going to make the wood rot?”

After teaching, Kate asked me to come inside for a drink and to meet the artist responsible for the sculpture being assembled outside. Sitting on the couch in the living room was a very slender woman with long blondish hair - very California 70’s hippie looking.  Kate said, “Robert, this is Deborah, and she is responsible for the statue out there.”

Well, Deborah had obviously been helping the guys install her work of art, as she was looking like she had been doing some of he heavy lifting herself, in her jeans and T-shirt. She seemed very sweet and said she was a dressage enthusiast and was glad to meet me. With the ice broken, I asked her how the driftwood would fare the elements, and was relieved to find out that it only appeared to be driftwood but in fact was bronze. She explained that she would travel and find interesting pieces of wood and scrap metal just lying around and, in her shop which was sort of like a big hanger on her ranch somewhere in Montana, she would go about making this “junk” come to resemble horses in every possible size and form.

I remember thinking to myself, “How sweet. Lucky that she can do this out there in Montana where life is probably far cheaper and she can indulge her artistic side. I’m sure her husband, like most horse-husbands, has to humor her and pay for all this and  her riding too.”

Anyway, we had a nice lunch and I left back for my home in New York. A couple of weeks later, we had our friends, Jim and Jerry, out for Chrismas to our place in Bridgehampton. With the fire going, we sat around opening gifts and Jim handed me what was obviously a book, beautifully wrapped. As I unwrapped it, he commented that he always loved this one “horsey” artist, and knowing she also loved dressage, thought I would enjoy her book. And wouldn’t you know it, the book was entitled, DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD!

I said, “You won’t believe this, but I just met this woman a couple of weeks ago.”  Jim gasped and explained that he always wished for even a tiny coffee-table sized sculture, since anything bigger would be way out of his price range.

What?  How much do this lady’s things go for? the answer was simple. Most of Deborah’s work can be viewed around the world in almost every major museum. Heads of State, Kings, Queens, and the ultra-wealthy are probably the only ones left who can afford one of her pieces, should she decide to grace that person with the opportuninityof purchasing one of her “herd”. The smallest sculpture might go for arouind a quarter of a million and the life-sized one…… let’s just say they are out of most human being’s price range!

Here I was sort of feeling sorry for this lady who I thought was giving Kate a sweet gift so she might help her along with her business,  just as starving artists have  often asked for help from me to do for them in the past. Needless to say, Ms. Butterfield needs absolutely no help from Kate, me, or anyone else in the world, and my only regret is that I didn’t come home with like a stray hoof or an ear or something.  It would have been worth its weight in gold.  Literally!

Cheers!

RD

Posted: Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized