Harmony Hammond evokes a person and place with an old quilt, sheets of rough and rusty roofing tin, and painted text. Chicken Lady is partially based on a real person, who lived on the marshy land along the waterfront in Milford, Connecticut at the periphery of class, geography, and society. The painted text is from a letter the artist received from a former intern describing the Chicken Lady. The hard industrial metal sheets frame the soft, hand sewn fabric (the work of fellow artist Ann Wilson), calling to mind a view through a window, a house, or structure.
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Hammond has been a critical part of the 1970s feminist art movement as a founding member of the Brooklyn, New York A.I.R. Gallery— the first nonprofit, artist-run gallery for women in the country—and of the Heresies collective, a group of feminist artist that published a journal by the same name. She attended the University of Minnesota 1963-67 and had her first solo show at the student union gallery.
