The Old Scare or Chicken Warrior

From a letter to Harvey Bjornlie, who commissioned it, dated February 13, 1971

The Old Scare or Chicken Warrior is a combination of motifs which makes up my style of ceramic sculpture. It contains human, bird and plant images that interact and offset each other causing a more or less static unit. I keep returning to an idea when I look at "Chicken Warrior," which is fragmented but revolves around the thought of a "fear being released from something that should not be fearful." Maybe the chain of events that time works upon the living--not only the fear that people have about personal death, but, also, time puts limits on the entire scope of possibilities that anyone's mind can contemplate concerning growth, decay, and new life growing from that decay etc. Life and time which seems contained and static in one's mind will emerge when one dies.Then even the most detailed effort to project some effect on the future and its new survivors will only exist as memory and that will also pass and change into something else as time continues.

Taking the sculpture one section at a time, which is the order in which the piece was constructed and conceived, some of the above thoughts may find their visual counterpart. First the flat base is more or less a personified landscape. The personified landscape is a half skinned figure whose face reads terror and whose hand is trying to cover exposed ribs with some receding turf vanishing across its back. This leads to speculation that the entire skeleton may become exposed. On the other end of the slab, long wormy coils or plant-like extensions seem to co-exist with some structured designs and alphabet letters which are of course devices of man and suggest building. The right leg or trunk-like cylinder is pushing up through both the turf and plant-like extensions as well as the man symbols which form the logic that this is a new development on the landscape that is separate and not co-existent with it. The left leg is visually separate, and, in fact, stepping on the turf and beginning to sprout human elements like toes and noses. Both cylinders rise and form a fat cup not unlike a strange flower. Many feathery succulent petals cover the underside of the cup adding to the flower image but also suggesting some sort of covering for a man's crotch area.

As you can see I've developed a strange collection of strange elements used to build this piece. My old ceramic sculpture prof. (Rudio Autio) was a great abstract expressionist; however, I enjoy an objective approach to my work which causes slabs and clay coils to become more than areas of interest and line. I try to personify these elements and make them suggest more than pure design. Many of the elements that I use have been worked out over a period of five or six years now. It is important to notice the freedom or looseness with which the elements are applied and combined to suggest literary content. This freedom of mixture is as important to me as the freedom to abstract was to my teacher.

In the second section there is the opportunity to either continue segmenting elements that were begun in the first section or to reinforce certain elements to project some logical pattern to what had been going on. I, of course, with my love of complexity have tried to follow both directions.

The right arm-like extension is related to the wormy soils on the base slab and seems to have some affinity to a snake. In fact, rather than an extension this snake-like form is moving into an old hole or possibly wound area. You will notice that the brightly colored armor-like and shell-like area of the mid-section is cut open to expose a more fleshy inner core that also has a hole in it through which the snake appendage is flowing. This movement sets up several elaborate visual puns. First, the highly glazed area reinforces the ideas concerning the growth of that strange flower. The section can be viewed as the fruit of that possibility. Second, there is the shell and bird symbolism where the right side is being broken into and decaying while the left side is hatching into an arm. The shell area which is brightly colored is not unlike some Easter eggs I have known. Also the shell area can read as armor covering a crippled chest area which extends the human elements including the virile left arm that is hatching. A new element in this section is being held in the hand of the left side. It is a personified machine device that may be the single most ominous element in the sculpture. There is no way to tell what this object will do once released. It might just develop into another co-existent element--it might be the cause of damage to the right side--or maybe it's the seed for the entire strange new organism. Perhaps if dropped it will fall and create a hole like that which the right leg is standing in, from which another being will grow--can you imagine a row of "can-can" dancers composed of these sculptures growing only to the left side of each other. But the personified machine is now bomb-like and designed for nose dives as well as kamaikasi actions.

The third section or head begins with a collar. This collar pulls the armor ideas into focus that are present in the mid-section. There is a neck in the collar that extends into the face of a middle-aged man who seems to be contemplating all the possible action. Covering the man's head or part of his head are feathers which pull bird images into focus again. The feathers extend into a head and neck of a chicken. The chicken head is equally as realistic as the man's face In fact, at certain angles of viewing the sculpture there is a chicken with a man's face on its breast, a man wearing a chicken headdress or simply a chicken standing on a lot of other stuff. The chicken appears alert to whatever is happening in about the same degree as the human. To be fair, a viewer should probably analyze the whole sculpture from both points of view.

As you can now see, there are a number of possible conclusions that the viewer can make concerning the piece. I enjoy offering many possibilities so that viewers will become involved and project their personalities into the work. You of course have made a large commitment when buying the sculpture. I've given you some outlines so that you can direct your friends into the sculpture and see what conclusions they reach. The piece is very much a visual and mental game. I hope that when I hear from you again, you will be able to relate other attempts to figure out what The Old Scare or Chicken Warrior is really all about.