I wanted to do something with barrels, barrels and cars. Something about pollution and how fossil fuel wasn’t a really sustainable fuel source. I had an idea that involved a pyramid made of barrels with a Hummer on top, but the sketch I did wasn’t really interesting, and was too simple. I also had made a mold of a toy cow, so I tried to find a way to relate the two, the cow and the oil barrels. Nothing came to mind, until I was referred to the book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan, and how in the book it was revealed that it took one barrel, per cow, to raise it, feed it, transport it to slaughter and to restaurant, and to cook it. This I had never heard of, but now I had a topic for my piece.
It’s said that America consumes more beef than any other country in the world, and when people think mass production of beef, they think hamburgers, and when they think hamburgers, they get hungry for Mac Donald’s. Mac Donald’s is one of the largest producers of hamburgers in the world, selling Happy Meals in countries all over the world. Obviously hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a year is used to transport this beef around the world.
The oil barrels are the base of the piece, representing all the gallons of oil used to transport the beef to market and restaurants. The plastic grass surrounding the box implies the ground, with the barrels underneath, insinuating the origin of the oil. The three plaster cows are casted from a mold of a plastic child’s toy, making the piece cynical yet innocent, also representing the free toy in every child’s meal, 90% of the reason for buying the meal in the first place, the food, which took thousands of dollars to get there, becoming second. The cows are being led up a ramp into a red, smiling happy meal box, almost like if it were a herd of cattle being led into a slaughter house, and the mouth of a smiling child. Inside the happy meal slaughterhouse is a hung cow carcass, cleaned and prepared for freezing and shipment, ready to be part of a child’s Happy Meal.
(Photo Credit to Roscoe Wilson)
