"Der Huhnermensch"

Have you ever looked closely at a plucked chicken or duck from the market, the ones with their heads and feet still intact? As morbid as they may be, for a creature designer like me, it's a subject rich in texture, detail and delicate colors. And they really lend themselves to being sculpted in polymer clay, with subtle washes layered up over the already translucent polymer material.

I'd been planning to do something involving a plucked chicken for a long time, but it couldn't be a mere study in still life. At some point I got the idea to put a human face on it, so I did this piece. The title is in German, because the idea reminded me of something Heinrich Kley might have done. Kley was a German cartoonist of the early 1900's who drew a lot of grotesque things with a sarcastic edge to them.

The weird thing is, after designing this piece, I read in a book of Forteana that in the 1800's, a farmer in Jersey reported a chicken with a near-perfect human face on it. Maybe it was channeling through me.

Photograph by Steve Unwin.