Whirligig Folk Artist David Butler Dies At 98
Submitted By N.O.V.A. July 2005
Times-Picayune	05-21-1997


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David Butler, a self-taught south Louisiana artist who attracted wide attention
for the whimsical kinetic creations he called whirligigs, died Saturday in his
sleep at St. Mary Guest Home in Morgan City. He was 98.

Mr. Butler, a native of Good Hope, fashioned his creations out of scrap lumber
and tin he found lying around, and adorned them with carved silhouettes of
animals and humanlike creatures. He attached them to propeller blades to make
them move.

His first exhibit, in 1976, was at the New Orleans Museum of Art, which also
featured some of his pieces in a group show in 1993. In the 1970s, the U.S.
Information Agency displayed his works in Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary.

But the exhibition that made Mr. Butler famous was "Black Folk Art in America:
1930-1980," which the Corcoran Gallery of Art assembled in Washington, D.C.,
and sent to six other American cities, including Detroit, Chicago and Los
Angeles.

Because of the exposure Mr. Butler received in this show, collectors began
clamoring to buy his pieces, but he was ambivalent about parting with them.

"I can make things because God gave me a gift," he said in a 1983 interview.
"But God don't want no one selling what's a gift. If you have a gift, then you
shouldn't be taking no money."

Mr. Butler, the son of a carpenter and a missionary, started working in his
father's carpentry shop when he was a boy. As an adult, he worked in sawmills
until the early 1960s, when he became partially disabled after an accident,
said William A. Fagaly, an assistant director of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

While he was recuperating, Mr. Butler began creating sculptures from scraps of
tin and using them to decorate his home in Patterson. He painted them in bold
colors and loose geometric patterns, mounted them on scrap wood supports and
attached wheels and propeller blades, wrote Tom Patterson, a North Carolina
folk art expert, in an exhibition catalog.

As his skill grew, so did his art. Mr. Butler created whirligigs and windmills
8 feet high and stationed them around his yard.

He also populated his property with animals he created, along with decorated,
roofed lawn benches. For privacy, Mr. Butler nailed pieces of tin, decorated
with cutouts, to his windows, creating fanciful light patterns inside.

He continued his artistic work until 1986, when vandalism and increasing crime
in his neighborhood seemed to take away his creative zest, Patterson wrote.
Declining health forced him into a nursing home.

Mr. Butler's works are in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum
of Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, the Museum of American Folk
Art in New York City, the High Museum in Atlanta and the Museum of
International Folk Art in Santa Fe, N.M.

Survivors include nieces and nephews.

A funeral will be held today at 2 p.m. at Jones Funeral Home, 715 Sixth St.,
Morgan City. Visitation will begin at 11 a.m. Burial will be in Shields
Cemetery in Patterson.