2009-2010

Since the 1950’s the most predominant method of meat production has been factory farming, which is a form of intensive agriculture where the main goal is to create the most profit by producing the greatest amount of animal product (meat, dairy, and eggs) with the lowest amount of care, space, and food for the animals. Factory farming focuses on a quantity over quality standard where many animals live in a designated space that is only slightly larger than their bodies for their entire life. Most animals never go outdoors, while some cannot even turn around. They are fed a low-quality and unnatural diet that contains growth hormones so their bodies will produce more product to sell. The diet also contains antibiotics to offset the many diseases caused by stressful, unclean, and crowded conditions.

My work focuses on the raising of veal calves, where infant cows are chained in wood crates in order to restrict their movement resulting in a more tender meat. In an attempt to reveal qualities present in a veal factory farm, I have reduced it down to three elements I view as inherent to the process of calf production. I’m choosing to focus on scale, repetition, and the idea of confinement, all of which are present within the sheds the animals are raised in. I used the veal crate as a starting point and have further reduced the sculptures from there in an attempt to show factory farming’s minimalist structure. Each sculpture also works to show the vast scale on which factory farming operates, and the repetition of the animals in their crates. The work is vibrantly colored in an attempt to create a child-like feeling, which draws attention to the fact that veal calves raised and slaughtered are in fact children themselves. My color choices are derived from objects of youth such as crayon and marker sets in addition to board games, in particular Candyland.