When shopping for my home, I love to go to flea markets and garage sales. I often buy broken things. A crack here there does not bother me. When I first started making #fauxbois furniture, I was always checking out concrete objects. I ended up with two concrete chickens; one was minus its head, and its tail feathers were damaged. Instead of throwing away the broken chick, I hung on to both - something about “like a chicken with its head cut off” was intriguing. That headless chicken hung around my garage for years, it made a good weight. When I started working in bronze, one of the first things I did was up-cycle the headless chicken with a new bronze head and tail. I sculpted the head and tail feathers in wax mixed with grits and grass. I made a mold of them, and then burned out the wax grass and grits and then cast them I bronze. I like the idea of giving new life to objects no one wants. I think these chicken could be seen as my first environmental pieces. They are not only upcycled chickens, but all birds also play a critical roll in nature. Fowl keep pests numbers in balance. All living organisms are connected.

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