NOT Chicken, 2011. image cite

Liz Sibley Fletcher is an artist from Mason, NH, she works in sculpture and is concerned with the health of local rivers. She writes that “making art and protecting the environment have been the two strong threads of my working life” (ava).

Her sculptural forms contain a combination of human and animal characteristics and gestures. Fletcher writes,”I love to shape clay into creatures and strange beings whose combinations of human, beast, and bone embody the interpenetration of the natural and human worlds, of geologic time and daily life” (ava).

This piece, “NOT Chicken (2011)” is of particular interest to me. I find it’s posture quite familiar, one I catch myself making in protection from situations of discomfort. The piece makes material my sense of being commodified. This is not so cut and dry (pun intended). It is sculpture; in my reading, a human form has taken the appearance of a chicken. This chicken is not so pleased with the confusion of itself with an animal to be eaten. Catch me in Union Square with my arms crossed, but I’m NOT chicken.

Perhaps the artist shares my commitment to the specificity of things. Through a resolute process of elimination, she has built a foundation from which to see the piece. Whether my interpretation of the piece can withstand scrutiny remains to be seen, but we must agree that the form is NOT a chicken.