buZ blurr

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buZ blurr
buZ blurr in front of his 1950 Ford in 2017
Born
Russell Butler

August 23, 1943
Lafe, Arkansas
DiedJanuary 26, 2024 (aged 80)
Gurdon, Arkansas
Notable workColossus of Roads
MovementMail art, Boxcar art


"Colossus of Roads" redirects here. Not to be confused with any of the various works named, or named after, the Colossus of Rhodes.

Russell Butler (23 August 1943 – 26 January 2024), best known by the pseudonym buZ blurr, was an American artist and photographer primarily known for his contributions to the modern mail art network[1] and for the boxcar art he produced under the monikers Gypsy Sphinx and Colossus of Roads.[2]

Despite having lived his life in small towns in rural Arkansas, Butler connected with an international audience by documenting his life through mail art and boxcar graffiti, using the railroad and postage networks as systems of distribution and broadcasting.[3][4]

Early life and education[edit]

Russell Butler was born in Lafe, Arkansas on August 23, 1943, to Cleda Elmira Mullins Butler, a restaurant manager in Forrest City, and Eugene H. Butler, a second-generation railroad worker.[1]

In 1961 he started attending Henderson State Teachers College (now Henderson State University), where he studied drawing, painting, printmaking, and ceramics,[5] but dropped out in 1964 to work full-time for the Missouri Pacific Railroad,[6] where he continued to work for forty-one years, until retirement.

Boxcar art[edit]

Inspired by Herby[7] and other notable boxcar artists, Butler marked a boxcar for the first time on November 11, 1971.

The design of his first character was inspired by the figure of one the coworkers who was most tolerant of his cartoons.[8] Butler had been drawing cartoons about events of the railroad yard and, while those grew in popularity thanks to coworkers who xeroxed them,[8] the caricaturized subjects often regarded them as offensive, which eventually led Butler to stop producing the work.[9]

The drawings were dated, and included a caption composed of three or four words of no apparent meaning. In reality, they helped Butler recall events in his life better than dates alone. The repeated use of cryptic captions would become one of his distinguishing features as a boxcar artist.[10]

Gypsy Sphinx[edit]

Eventually, Butler wanted to move on to a new character, but to give "a proper send off"[10] to the first one: for a year, he drew the character with the caption "Gypsy Sphinx". This name caught on and has been used to identify the character since. The name reflected some of the character's features: "gypsy" because he was nomadic by virtue of constantly roaming on trains, and "sphinx" because he only spoke in cryptic sentences.[10]

Colossus of Roads[edit]

The inspiration for his second character came from an article about J.H. McKinley,[8] the boxcar artist and fellow railroad worker behind the moniker Bozo Texino. The new character debuted in 1979[6] and, like Bozo Texino, consisted of a cowboy smoking a pipe. Butler's cowboy is viewed in profile, facing the direction of the train and leaving a trail of smoke behind, as if riding the boxcar. As with Gypsy Sphinx, Butler continued to use cryptic captions under his character.

Eventually Butler again wanted to move on to a different character, and once again for a year, Butler drew it using only one caption: "Colossus of Roads". While Colossus of Roads gained popularity, Butler never found a suitable icon for the third character,[8][10] so he abandoned the project and went back to drawing Colossus of Roads with different cryptic captions.

Mail art, documentation, and photography[edit]

In April 1972, Butler started producing mail art after reading about it in Rolling Stone magazine.[2] He mailed the artists mentioned in the articles small artworks created on postcards that were included with The Rolling Stones' album Exile on Main St..[6] He later moved onto mailing artists listed on File Megazine, which showcased artwork from the mail art network and included a directory of participants.

For a while, he assumed the alias Hoo-Hoo Archives, inspired by the local movie theater Hoo-Hoo Theatre, which was associated with the Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo. When Butler found that the Order was still active, he decided to stop using the name.[6] After various other names like Sweeney Todd, he settled on buZ blurr. Like other mail artists, Butler also uses pseudonyms for his location, like Surrealville and Principality of buZ.[11]

Caustic Jelly Post Portraits[edit]

Encouraged by E.F. Higgins III, a mail artist he met during the Inter-Dada Festival in Ukiah, California,[12] in 1982 Butler started creating his own artist stamp sheets.[13] These were mostly made from xeroxed Caustic Jelly Post Portraits: portraits that Butler took with a Polaroid 3000, an instant camera that prints pictures covered in a negative image meant to be peeled off and discarded because considered caustic. Instead of disposing of the negative image, Butler carved it, creating stylized, high-contrast portraits of his subjects.

Documentation[edit]

Influenced by Guglielmo Achille Cavellini's Autostoricizzazione,[2] most of Butler's work revolves around documenting his own life. The captions under his boxcar art were a way of documenting life events. Throughout his mail artist career, Butler traveled widely, documenting the many gatherings and exhibitions of the network through his artist stamp sheets and Caustic Jelly Portraits.[13] Since he turned 36,[5] Butler has been taking self-portraits on his birthday and working them into his art, often with self-deprecating captions like “glabrous pate acrophobic, and “lyssophobic underwater man.”[13]

Exhibitions, reception and impact[edit]

Butler remained anonymous for most of his career as a boxcar artist, while Colossus of Roads grew in fame. For a time, the character was shown in training videos for new hires of the Union Pacific Railroad, to suggest the company was "the colossus of roads".[10] Since then, Butler's work as Gypsy Sphinx and Colossus of Roads has appeared in nearly every zine, magazine, and movie on the subject of boxcar art.[14] Musicians Doug McCombs, Tim Barry, and Hurray for the Riff Raff have named songs after Colossus of Roads and its captions.[15][16] Bill Daniel, the filmmaker behind Who is Bozo Texino? regarded Butler as "The most poetic of the boxcar graffitiers".[17]

Butler has remained a prolific contributor of the mail art network for over fifty years, is internationally renowned[13] and regarded as a "mail art guru",[17] both for his extensive body of work and for his effort to document the gatherings of the mail art network.[13] Mail artists John Held Jr. and Anna Banana described him as an unassuming person, whose work has benefited everyone in the mail art network.[13][15]

Butler's work has appeared in many group art exhibitions of mail art and stamp sheets. His solo exhibitions include: Caustic Jelly Portraits at the Stamp Art Gallery in San Francisco (1997);[13] Pretty Ugly White Black Blues Again at the International Curatorial Space in New York (2003) and the Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale, Arkansas (2003);[2] and Wait of World: buZ blurr Age Progression at the CALS gallery in Little Rock, Arkansas (2019).[2]

In March 2024, two months after Butler's passing, STRAAT Museum in Amsterdam held the exhibition Moniker: An Origin Story, spotlighting iconic moniker artists with a special focus on Butler's work and his friendship with Bill Daniel.[18]

Personal life[edit]

From 1959 until his death in 2024, Butler lived in Gurdon, Arkansas with his wife Emmy S. Blanton (known as Earlene in the mail art network[11]). Together, they had three children.[19]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "buZ blurr (1943–)". Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Wait of World". Oxford American. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  3. ^ buZ blurr. "buZ blurr". northbankfred.com. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  4. ^ Phillips, Susan A. (2019). The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. Yale University Press. p. 119. ISBN 9780300246032.
  5. ^ a b Falco, Tav (2019-04-11). "Rust Never Rests: buZ blurr's art is an exercise in "time stoppage"". Arkansas Times. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  6. ^ a b c d "Interview with buZ blurr – 09/12/08". Babylon Falling. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  7. ^ "Interview with buZ blurr". The Fifth Goal. No. 4. Retrieved 2023-08-19 – via northbankfred.com.
  8. ^ a b c d "The Odd Podcast with Joe Parisi: 13 | Buz Blurr- Colossus of Roads". oddpodcast.libsyn.com. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  9. ^ Phillips, Susan A. (2019-11-05). The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-24603-2.
  10. ^ a b c d e Development, PodBean. "Buz Blurr – Colossus of Roads | Look What I Did". lookwhatidid.podbean.com. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  11. ^ a b admin (2010-03-21). "The Caustic Jelly Post Portraits of buZ blurr". Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  12. ^ "E.F. Higgins III: Doo Da Forever! at Van Der Plas Gallery". Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g Held, John Jr. (1997). Caustic Jelly Post Portraits of buZ blurr. San Francisco: Stamp Art Editions.
  14. ^ "Colossus of Roads Portrait by Relish". Juxtapoz. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
  15. ^ a b Lewis, Mark (2013). "buZ blurr". Fluke Fanzine #11. Fluke Publishing. Retrieved 2023-08-23.
  16. ^ "Colossus of Roads, Snake Plant". Oxford American. Retrieved 2024-01-23.
  17. ^ a b Friedman, R. Seth (1997). The Factsheet five zine reade: the best writing from the undergroung world of zines. New York: Three Rivers Press. p. 141. ISBN 0609800019.
  18. ^ "Our STRAAT Gallery exhibition Moniker: An Origin Story". STRAAT Museum. 2024.
  19. ^ "Boxcar artist from Arkansas featured in Bookstore show". Arkansas Online. 2019-04-11. Retrieved 2023-08-19.
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