EXHIBIT: ‘Touchable Sculpture’ at Museum : ‘Life Casting’ Becomes Artist’s Life Work

After years as a successful graphics artist, Roy Butler found another creative direction almost in a flash.

It happened in 1990, when he attended one of Willa Shalit’s “life casting” classes in Arizona. Shalit’s work, which makes up much of the “Touchable Sculpture” exhibit at the Fullerton Museum Center through Feb. 11, impressed Butler in a huge way.

“I just knew right off that that’s what I had to do,” the 49-year-old from Santa Ana recalls. “It was a feeling. . . . it was in my guts.”

Since then, he has immersed himself in efforts to cast near-perfect representations of his subjects, who have included actress Sarah Nabor, a regular on TV’s “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” and the torsos of championship bodybuilders Chris Cormier and Diana Dennis. Butler’s work has appeared in several galleries in Orange County and Los Angeles.

Butler says he was drawn to life casting by what draws him to public places: the diversity of the human figure. “I’m really such a people-watcher. I can watch them for hours and hours. We’re all the same but still different, and that fascinates me.”

He says his subjects like the casts “for both vanity and curiosity reasons. But the most important thing, I find, is that they want to have something to leave behind, a family heirloom or something that is archival.”

Do they ever balk at being covered in plaster? Not really, Butler says. “I’ve cast about 150 people, and only one couldn’t do it. She was claustrophobic and just couldn’t accept it.”