A work by renowned sculptor and alumna Deborah Butterfield will be installed in the Walter A. Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center at the University of California, Davis, early this week, and a celebration in honor of the work will be held Friday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. Butterfield received a bachelor of arts degree from UC Davis in 1971 and a master of fine arts degree in 1973, having studied under such celebrated studio art faculty as Robert Arneson, Roy DeForest, Manuel Neri, Ralph Johnson and William Wiley. She has since gone on to win international fame herself through her found-material horse sculptures. Her works are made from discarded materials she collects near her Montana and Hawaii studios, such as aluminum sheets, corrugated metal, sticks and bailing wire, which are individually hand-sculpted and welded. The result is horse sculptures that, while still representational and lifelike, go beyond realism to capture the spirit of the animal and the artist. For the Buehler Center, Butterfield has created a larger-than-life-sized standing horse (90" x 110" x 36") from heavy gauge steel that had been painted green. It will be installed in the center's three-story lobby. "I wanted to create a piece that would humanize the space, that would give it a scale that was more recognizable, a more intimate feeling," said Butterfield. "The building needed a piece that was larger than life." Robert Murphy, president of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association and a member of the committee of faculty, staff and alumni that commissioned the work, says that Butterfield was selected for several reasons. "Early on we knew we wanted to have a major work by someone connected with our own renowned studio art program, and Deborah couldn't have been more perfect. She is one of the department's most prominent alumni and her work suits the campus so well. It's reminiscent of the campus's mustang mascot, pays homage to our agricultural and veterinary strengths, and is very contemporary and modern." Butterfield is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her work has been shown in galleries from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Chicago, New York and London. It is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum and Art Institute of Chicago. "Davis was really good for me and to me," said Butterfield. "I went there trying to decide whether to be a veterinary student or an art student and lived on a thoroughbred farm and fed the horses in exchange for my rent. I was pretty impressed by Wiley and Arneson, DeForest, Johnson and Neri and decided that when I grew up I wanted to be like them." "She really wanted to be a potter," said Arneson, who remembers her tying her horse up behind TB9, the ceramic building on campus. "But I just thought that with her obsession with horses, something would come of that. Now she is world-renown for what she does. It is a great honor for Davis to finally have one of her grand achievements." The alumni association commissioned the work for $50,000 -- half its estimated value -- with private funds raised specifically for the purpose during the center's building campaign. The work is one of the very few artworks by alumni that are permanently displayed on campus. Sculptor Lucy Puls, associate professor of studio art at UC Davis and chair of the selection committee, says that it is particularly important that public art be a part of the campus. "Since students are on campus for several years, they will have the opportunity to pass by the same sculpture or painting many times and learn that a piece takes on a deeper meaning as they see it at different times of their lives. They have been trained to stand in front of a piece of art for a few seconds and walk on. To live with art is a completely different experience." The Friday ceremony will follow the presentation of this year's awards by the Cal Aggie Alumni Association to outstanding alumni, including a Citation for Excellence to Butterfield. The evening's events will also include a strolling buffet dinner in the Buehler Center. Tickets are $25 and can be reserved by calling (916) 752-0286. The sculpture can be viewed at the center Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m.-3 p.m.