In tenth grade, in order to see his girlfriend on weekends, he commuted between Palestine, Texas, and Earle, Arkansas on all-night passenger trains.

Butler had been reading Vonnegut's novels and felt a kinship with his characters, especially those who "struggle with the absurdities and injustices of this world".

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.

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.

[8][14] After adopting other names like Sweeney Todd, he settled on buZ blurr, which represented boxcar icons who were like a "buzz word in current vogue going by in a blur".

This situation made him "widely unknown", a tagline he adopted as a caption for Colossus of Roads and that was later used as the title of a group art exhibition in New York.

[16] 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".

[12] 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, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and Dylan Golden Aycock have named songs after Colossus of Roads and its captions.

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).

[21] 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).