The following is our son's poem he wrote when he was 17, as a result of my helping a farm cull some chickens for winter. Below is the responding sculpture. This can be seen at Greenfield Community College, along with other sculpture October 6 through November 7, 2015 in Greenfield, Massachusetts
My Mother Killed
My Mother killed
Some chickens in our backyard.
At night the coyotes come to lick the grass.
Charles Milliken
My Mother Killed, duck feathers, hardware cloth, 10x2', 2014
riday, September 18th, 2015
6:30pm, presentations begin at 7pm
$5 suggested donation
at Park Hill Orchard, 82 Park Hill Rd, Easthampton
Heather Beck, metalsmith
Petula Bloomfield, painter & mixed media
Kait Brink, fiber art
Susan Halls, sculptor
Nancy Winship Milliken, sculptor
Dawn Howkinson Siebel, painter & sculptor
There will be five opportunities in the next few months to hear slide show artist talks and a walking tour of Boston Sculptors Gallery at Chesterwood, by yours truly. Hear about sculpture in the New England landscape and my newest project Contemporary Pastoralism, in which I have traded studio for farm in a collaborative effort to redefine our contemporary understanding of small farms.
Saturday August 29, 11:30-1:00 at Chesterwood, in Stockbridge, MA
Thursday, September 3, 6:00 at Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, MA
Friday, September 18, 6:30 Artsalon at Park Hill Orchard, Easthampton, MA (home of the well visited Art in the Orchard exhibition)
Wednesday, October 7, 12 noon, south Gallery at Greenfield Community College, Greenfield, MA
Friday, November 20, 6:00 at Boston Sculptors Gallery, Boston, MA
Visiting DeDee Shattuck Gallery this Thursday at 5:00 to talk about outdoor art, small New England farms and the environment. Join me and hear about the studio's project, Contemporary Pastoralism.
image by Megan OBrien
Join us for an artist talk at Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA. See More.....
image by Olivia Decker
Here is a link to a write up of Boston Sculptors Gallery at Chesterwood for the summer 2015. Very proud to be in this show of incredible fellow artists
Wonderful video of installation day in Westport, MA, Many thanks to Jon Alden for coming into the field to capture it!
At Dedee Shattuck Gallery through October.
Catalog of Windscape, an environmental installation at Shelburne Farms, in Shelburne, VT, for Burlington City Arts' Of Land and Local 2014 exhibition. on sale, online now! Lots of process images and thoughts about the unique installation
Windscape-Westport, 2015, at Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA
New placement of Windscape for the summer in an installation called Windscape-Westport. Salt and wool, field and stone, cedar and hay, coastal breezes: heaven. Up through October 2015. @Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport, MA. Many thanks to Jim Wood for the loan of his field, to Richard Sisson and his crew, Charlie McElwee and Olivia decker, and the Shattuck Gallery crew for their help in the installation of 16 meadow sails.
Landmark I, II, III are installed at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where Boston Sculptors Gallery is exhibition its outdoor group show from May through October 2015. Twenty-foot tall sight-specific spires celebrate the textures of New England with century old barn board, New England raw wool, field stone wall, and even reclaimed horse hair from cello and violin bows. From sketch to onsite assembly the following images demonstrate the process from start to finish. Hover over the image for more information.
At the welders, after months of design with an architect to make sure it was safe
weaving steel wool. Interns earning school cedit have helped along the way. This "wool" will rust and change over the seasons.
The beautiful barn of Peg Holcomb, where we took the century old siding off for a much needed facelift
Dunan Herman-Parks painting a wonderful mixture of lanolin and wax to help ward off rust on the frame. This is used by farmers for their machinery
Tim Holcomb pulling boards off. The money from the studio used to buy the boards will help pay for new boards to take the beautiful barn into the next 100 years
I got used to a ladder as you will see
pulling beautiful square head rusty nails out of the boards
we got to set up a frame inside and took design ideas from the existing boards on the barn
Horse harness from Vermont, cleaned with TLC and lanolin
finally arrival day. Many thanks to Andrew Milliken
preparing on the ground before they stand up
The spires are anchored with a magnificent earth anchor four of them per spire, four feet long.
Dry stone mason, Kevin Donegan came down from Vermont to help. we had a glorious falling-down stone wall surrounding the field to gather our design ideas.
best laid plans...I wove these reclaimed children's cello and violin bow strings in the studio, all to be taken out again and woven while on a ladder
Last day and final touches. Charles Milliken provided stellar support to his tired Mom. Here he is inside Landmark I about to crawl out and attach the last boards.
over heard while these two worked "I bet no one has asked you to crochet horse hair cello bow strings into hardware cloth before"
Many thanks to this fabulous duo...Kevin Donegan and Studio Manager North, Charlie McElwee
UMass student intern Annie Conant sorts out all of the misc. nuts and bolts
The studio is now on twitter! @MillikenNancy!
First tweet image.... Landmark I, II, III, at Chesterwood May-October 2015 with Boston Sculptors Gallery, Stockbridge, MA
Charlie McElwee joined us this summer helping out with the residency at Shelburne Farms. He has continued to work with me in my outdoor "studio" in Vermont and manages anything coming his way. He will now be traveling with me for all of the installations lined up this summer as my new Studio Manager North! Fantastic!
Windscape is sailing south for the summer to farm and sea country,Westport, MA. Deedee Shattuck Gallery will be harbor for seventeen sails all enclosed in a beautiful rock-walled field. There even may be sheep! Stay tunes for more information of Windscape-Westport and installation documentary.
contact: nancy@nancymilliken.com
