People Without the People Parts

Cassie Butcher turned her back on psychology and picked up sculptor’s tools instead. Photo by Paul Stebner

Cassie Butcher remembers the conversation she once had with a five-year-old girl who had been studying the human-shaped but mostly featureless sculptures that Butcher calls Souls. “She asked me approximately a thousand questions trying to understand what ‘soul’ meant,” Butcher says. “I don’t recall many of the questions, but I do recall the long pause while her gears turned. She then asked, ‘So they’re people without the people parts?’”

Before she turned to a career in the arts, it was the “people parts” that first interested Butcher, who had planned a career and earned a degree in psychology “so I could fix people,” she says of her years at Berea College in Kentucky, after growing up in West Virginia. But like many of the college-bound before her, an exposure to the diversity and complexity of a wider world engendered some questioning, and her parallel course of elective study in the arts provided some answers. “It seemed that the art students were able to express what they were going through and share through their art, while the psychology students learned about how to analyze others,” the 36-year-old says.

“What I definitely needed at that time was to learn to be less analytical of others. I have my own issues. Who am I to fix anyone?”

The sculptor’s “Souls” are of varying sizes, but their faceless mystery unites them. Photo by Paul Stebner

Butcher’s glazed clay Souls, devoid of distinguishing features and only differing in size and surface embellishment, suggest a universality and common spirit as an antidote to isolation and divisive polemics. They project serenity and maturity, whether they are the life-size figures that stand like benevolent sentinels or smaller ones displayed in groups or incorporated into larger pieces with supporting or enclosing elements. The more diminutive Souls, some just seven inches tall, take on an added gravity when arranged in groups, as many who collect Butcher’s work have discovered. One such collector is the British psychotherapist Sarah Tyerman, who first saw a group of these smaller Souls during a visit to a gallery in Bakersville, North Carolina.

“I immediately thought how she had captured something about people in groups,” wrote Dr. Tyerman, who later visited Butcher in her River Arts Studio in Asheville. “Her heart lies in helping people, as does mine. She sees her art and psychology as definitely connected.”
Butcher has been making her Souls since her senior year at Berea, and while the basic concept has remained constant, they’ve evolved in subtle ways over the years. “When I started working with this style of figure that I now call a soul, I didn’t totally understand what it was about,” Butcher says. “I just started making it. The more I sculpted with this soul figure and the more I shared it with people and talked about the work, the more I’ve grown to understand what it means to me and to others. It’s like learning a language. The more you study a language, the more you understand how to use the words.”

Photo by Paul Stebner

One example proved particularly resonant for an older studio visitor who encountered one of Butcher’s “Stages of Memory” series of Souls, which feature a central hole where a piece has been removed. The figure stirred feelings of loss and mourning for the visitor, who had been close to his deceased parents. “He had tears in his eyes,” Butcher recalls. “He helped me understand that the grief of losing those who made you and came before you is like having a chunk taken out of you.”

Butcher’s life-sized Souls are mostly commissioned pieces which require sketching beforehand and are built in sections. Otherwise, as Butcher says of creating new work, “I just go for it. It’s kind of like asking a baker, ‘How did you come up with that recipe?’ They just thought those ingredients would taste good.” Butcher’s glazes range from delicate blues and floral greens to calm earth tones. Glazes for a “Soul With Light” series are punctured with tiny holes in an incised second figure, which glimmers like a cradled new life taking form.

For Butcher, the Souls are about what makes us alike, not what makes us different. “In our search for individuality, there’s still a deep desire to belong and to connect,” she notes. “My work takes us back from the distractions of individuality and reconnects us to each other.”

Cassie Butcher encourages visits to her studio in Asheville’s River Arts District, 9 Riverside Drive, open 11am-4pm Monday-Saturday. For more information, see cassiebutcher.com and the artist’s ETSY site.

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