Sketches and Mixed Media
This is a phrase from the movie Babe, which was also told to me when I was growing up in the rural Midwest when I started questioning why people commonly killed animals and ate their flesh. The cutesy sheep, the too neat and overly soothing quote, and the twee fabrics in the background contrast with the wild red wool which is representative of blood and the uncomfortable and commonly unexplored truth that eating meat means killing living beings.
The main idea behind this piece is that even when a person plans and organizes and thinks they know exactly where things are going, events can turn out unexpectedly. This unexpected outcome might be more interesting than the anticipated outcome and the person might learn more from it, perhaps, but the way things actually turn out was certainly not what the person originally thought was going to happen.
This is a mixed media portrait of one of the sassiest ewes on my parents’ farm. Beatrice is incredibly nosy and spunky. She stands up by the gate and sticks her head out as far as she can to monitor what is happening in the barn, and she will kick anyone who does not give her a back scratch. She has a beautiful silvery/blue fleece, which I used to add the crinkly wool texture to the portrait.
These panels explore the differences between individual sheep and their wool through a different kind of natural fiber- wood. There are some sketches made with pencil and others made using an engraving tool, and the wools are made from various colors and textured of crumpled paper and wood shavings, and feature wool or body parts of sheep.
This is my sister Alaina, perched with her first violin on a line of music that continues on to the distance. The first few notes that can be seen are from the first piece of music that she worked on: "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." The music shows her progression with the violin, with the last piece that can be seen being Bach's Concerto #1 in A Minor, which was her most recent piece when I made this. The dimensions for this are 20x30 inches.