At first glance you would never think Clyde Butcher, who is often called the Ansel Adams of the Everglades, created this wall clock. Clyde’s black and white landscapes have made him a household name in Florida and he is becoming increasingly known nationwide and worldwide.
I’ve always been fascinated with the path artists take to get to the final destination. For obvious reasons- I’m still relatively new to the art world and of course searching for my own path. While Staying with Clyde and Niki Butcher last winter while doing an art show in Venice, FL they were telling me all about all their crazy stories back when they were doing art shows. When they told me at one time they had a large clock making business with photographs taken by Clyde on them I said I have to find one of them! After a lot of searching on eBay, sure enough I found one and now I’m the proud owner of an awesome piece of Clyde Butcher history.
I asked Niki to write a brief history of the kitten clock…
“During the 1970’s Clyde owned a business hat produced his color photography into “photo-clocks” that we’re sold in the wall decor departments of major dept stores across the country. He had 200+ employees, a manufacturing plant in both Santa Ana, Calif & Akron, Ohio. He became the largest clock manufacturer in our country.
The concept was to photograph images that sold…generic stuff. Kittens sell. Clyde is allergic to cats & dogs, so he went to a pet store & rented a kitten to photograph. Our daughter, Jackie, fell in love with the kitten & wanted to keep it. When Clyde returned the kitten to the pet store, Jackie was very upset.”
To learn more about Clyde Butcher and his amazing large format black and white photography visit his web site at http://www.clydebutcher.com/
