Like many other Americans, I grew up in a family cycling through food fads, not quite sure what to eat. The emphasis in family discussions mostly focused on what was good for us, the consumers, with less consideration for the whole food system Ð the producer, the distributor, the consumer, the land and the animals we eat.
No Harm, No Fowl is a series of paintings and sculptures investigating my relationship to food through the lens of chicken, bringing together both production and consumption. The sculptures, Chicken-less Chickens, mimic the absurdly abstracted form we often find chicken in today at grocery stores Ð like dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets. This too is an abstraction of the same creature, but using a different part of the bird.
The paintings in this series reflect upon my memories of food in my family and my recent experiences learning about chicken production. The paintings are a collection of moments, both pleasant and uncomfortable, that blend grandiose ideas of what local chicken production is supposed to look like and the harsher realities of what eating chicken means. What does it look like when two ends of the food system meet each other?
