This little piggy had roast beef & this little piggy had none

2005 (2) pieces 24x18x18” (each approx.) leather, wood, sand, thread

Perhaps the most complex and necessarily intimate relationship that post-agrarian humans have with other animals is with the ones that they eat.

We have a communal image of meek, happy farm animals with wholesome names that form interpersonal relationships with their pastoral peers. This image is at odds with a consumption pattern that requires feedlot mentality that results in frightened downer-cows, crowded cannibal chicken houses and lagoons of swine feces that threaten entire watersheds.

There is also the moral dilemma of killing and eating sentient beings, not to mention breeding, feeding and engineering practices that result in animals that cannot adequately bear their own weight. Contemporary processing, packaging and marketing practices present meat as product rather than body part, allowing the consumer to dodge that dilemma.

Bucolic fantasy meets industrial reality.