willits center for the arts: art butterfield

MEMORIAL EXHIBIT HIGHLIGHTS WILLITS PHOTO CLUB’S SHOW

Originally written by Jay Gordon for the Arts Council of Mendocino County. Revised and updated by Stacey Patton.

This year’s Willits Photo Club’s annual photography show dedicated to long time member and former president Art Butterfield, who passed away April 7, 2008, has been renamed The Art Butterfield Memorial Photography Show and will feature works from his extensive collection selected and donated by his family. November’s show on November 11th, coincides with what would have been his 73rd birthday.

“Back in the pre-historic days of the late 1940’s, my father received a photographic kit for Christmas,” said Art, the beneficiary of his father’s boredom.

The kit consisted of a reel tank for film, chemicals, and a 4X5 inch frame for making contact prints.

“I was fascinated watching a sheet of white paper come alive in the dim red light of our family kitchen at night. I was hooked!” To learn more, Art took several years of photography at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, CA. “They had a great lab, but we only worked in black and white.”

Over the years, he kept moving on – building darkrooms, the last one a color lab that allowed him to make great Cibachrome prints from 35mm slides.

One of Art’s great interests in life was wildlife. He traveled to the Galapagos Islands with a photographic workshop led by Jeff Foote, a professional nature photographer. He also was attended travel workshops with Boyd Norton, another great professional wildlife photographer, to Africa, McNeil River in Alaska, Lake Baikal in Siberia, and a fall color workshop in Colorado.

His last photographic trip was to White Sands, New Mexico with fellow photographer Neil Silverman in November 2007. Silverman took the portrait of Art featured in the Memorial Show. “Art left behind many, many friends in Santa Rosa. His sweet smile and warm personality remains with all of us,” he said. “That twinkle in his eye is still right there for all to see.”

Art always watched for great images when the lighting was right. He would photograph anything from insects to grizzly bears, children, and buildings of architectural significance, but preferred wildlife. “I’ve never had a grizzly bear complain about their hair-do,” he once said. He moved to Cherry Creek, north of Willits in 2000 because of the great scenic and wildlife opportunities in the area.

Moving away from darkroom work because of concern about chemicals he became thoroughly involved with digital photography.

Art remained an active member of the Santa Rosa Photographic Society, where he was a Masters Class photographer. He was also active in the Willits Photography Club joining just after its inception in 2000, and became the Club president for the next six years until his health failed him. He was among those locally who elevated photography to an art form.