We built a chicken house. A short time after we moved to our present location near the city of Golden, CO, we decided to do some chicken farming. That idea wasn't so far fetched when you know my high school and college years were intensely albeit constructively influenced by a Conservative Mennonite community. At that time in my life it didn't matter that my family lived in the city. Our thinking--and our daily discourse--was connected to the adjacent agricultural community.
So, in building a chicken house with my wife and children we revisited (for me) some of these old and familiar skills, sights, sounds,...and smells. A parallel universe? "Chicken Universe" is about those skills, sights, sounds...and smells. It's about the chickens' world, where they live and play. It's a tightly routinized environment defined for them by the coop, the straw on the floor, their yard and its toys, and the fence that separates those things from the rest of our world. I'm a foreigner there. For all practical chicken purposes the outside world is surreal. It exists largely as a topic for intense chicken intellectualizing and speculative discussions. Beyond such chicken brain-expanding exercises--and maybe an accidentally open gate permitting a wider "free range"--this is the Chicken's Universe. (16 X 20, Acrylic orig; $180, Geclee)
