Elon Butler threw her arms down to her side, clenched her fists, looked up at the sky and let out a celebratory “Let’s go!” as she ran past the first base bag.

She had just hit her 51st career home run (with her 50th coming the at-bat before), and she did it in a huge spot: to put the Ducks up by two as they looked to sweep their century-old rival, the Washington Huskies. They did just that with help from Butler at the plate and in the field. Since transferring from Cal, Butler has looked right at home in the Oregon lineup. She’s leading the team in every offensive category and even hit for the first cycle in Oregon softball history.

Four days before she crushed home runs 50 and 51, Butler sat in the Yamanaka Media Room of Jane Sanders Stadium. In front of her, spread out on the table, were two of her sketchbooks: one recently broken, its spiral bounding bent and twisted like a forgotten chainlink fence, and the other black leather bound. She had recently purchased the upgraded sketchbook to replace the previous.

Both were filled with beautiful pastel work, intricate sketches and designs. She pointed out drawings inspired by album covers, a cover she made herself for a friend, a design for hiking shoes that she “never really finished” and more.

“I want to be the next Ed Hardy,” Butler said, still looking at and flipping through her work.

Hardy is known as “The Godfather of Modern Tattoos.” He combined the art styles of traditional Japanese tattoos with American culture, creating an entirely new form of art.

“My dream, truly, would be to just tat, paint and draw for the rest of my life. And make bread,” Butler said.

Butler’s love of art goes back to her childhood. She has memories of sitting at her table in the summer months and flipping through workbooks because her mother, a school teacher, did not allow her to just take it easy over the summer.

“I would just really spend that time with her,” Butler said. “And just really enjoy being able to sit and just spend time with her, and be able to draw.”

In those early summers, something clicked. She could draw; she could do it well, and, most importantly, she loved to do it. That love for art grew and grew over the years, and her family supported the journey.

Her grandmother was the most supportive. A creative herself who’d often do crafts with Butler when she visited, she bought Butler supplies and gave them as presents during the Christmas season. The artistic gene ran in her family. Her great-grandfather, too, was a sign painter when Jim Crow laws were still in effect.

In middle school, Butler took her first art class. She recalls sitting down in the classroom and starting each day off with a Bob Ross video before they got to work. A project centered around taking a Bob Ross landscape and repainting it onto a box for her jewelry cemented the love for Butler; she was hooked. She took another couple classes in high school, where she continued to develop her technical skills.

Today, the San Jose, Calif. athlete still loves the process of creating. It infiltrates almost every facet of her life. Even during those long, grueling days at the field, she finds time to have a little creative outlet.

“When we watch film, I always have doodles,” Butler said, drawing out what she does with her finger on the table. “Ever since I started watching film, I’ve made a stick figure of myself and where I want to actually hit the ball. On my scout(ing reports), you’ll see I have little doodles of what is actually a strike, and what’s a ball and what the trajectory of the ball is.”

But where the passion really helps for the senior is the down time. Softball is a marathon season, and players have all the time in the world to sit and stew in their own thoughts. For Butler, drawing helps her get out of it.

“It’s almost like a meditative type of practice,” she said.

The ability to do something off the field also creates an identity for her.

“This is something outside of softball that I really enjoy, that’s not going to get me sucked up into, ‘I’m just a softball player, and I do softball,’” Butler said. “But on top of that, it’s also something for me to like — if anything ever happens in life, it’s a way for me to get away from the mental wear and tear of life in general.”

That wear and tear of life came to a tipping point at Cal. Butler wasn’t having fun in Berkeley, California.

“I was kind of hating my life,” Butler said. “I was crying every night trying to finish my homework because I was a data science major. Cal is tough. They’ll fail you; they don’t care.”

Oregon was a saving grace for the transfer.

“Once I got here, to Oregon, and I was sitting back and thinking, ‘What do I actually want to do with my life? What would actually make me happy?’ I was like: drawing,” Butler said, looking toward the field through the windows.

“And so that’s what I started to do was just draw, draw, draw, draw — like, non-stop. And then over the summer, before I got here, I was like, ‘I’m going to pick up a tattoo gun. Let me pick, just pick it up; let’s see what happens.’”

And now tattooing was on the resume. It took her a while to get good with the new machine, because it’s very different from drawing on paper. The feeling was almost like having to relearn how to draw. But she found the process of tattooing calming. The constant low humming of the gun, the vibration that came along with it and the task at hand let her completely hone in on the art; nothing else mattered in that moment. She gave her first tattoo to a good friend of hers back home.

“They were in full support of my dream,” Butler said. “They didn’t really necessarily care if it looked good or bad. They were just like, ‘I want you to start. It’s something you really love, and I see that you love it; so I’m going to help you.’”

As nerve-wracking as that first tattoo was for Butler, it got her running. She has since done two others, both being touch-ups to existing tattoos, while she continues to practice her skills on the silicon squares that are supposed to emulate skin to help train new artists.

Though she is still new to the process, the confidence is growing with time, and she is not backing down.

“When I’m really passionate about something, I full send it,” Butler said.

Her dream, 10 to 15 years down the line, is to open her own art/tattoo studio. With a smile and a hopeful look in her eye, she described how she wanted to have a large open space, preferably with a loft, that she can go to and simply create. She wants to give back to the community, offer lessons, create and sell her art and designs while also continuing to tattoo them.

She reiterated her idol again while gazing off, almost like she could see the studio now.

“The dream is, in general, to literally become the next Ed Hardy,” she said. “Like, be able to tattoo, paint and just go home and call it a day.”

With that in mind, that’s not all she wants to do. Away from softball, Butler hopes to open her studio, but is also adamant about traveling the world and hopes that her art can help her do that.

But when it all comes down to it, Butler wants to, “be able to live a life where I literally just do what I love, and just (be) a light for people and (where) people find comfort and solace being around me.”

As her time closes on an incredible collegiate softball career, the dream of the studio inches closer and closer to becoming a reality.