Mary Mullen

I’m Mary Mullen. As a kid I raised bantam chickens until one day when we came home from church, we saw that our dog Red had killed every one of them and left them lying in the yard. Twenty-five years later I tried again as an adult, raising a flock of five in Madison. I’d asked the farmer who supplied them to give me chicks as different from each other as possible. I named them rather unimaginatively from light to dark, One, Two, Three, Four, and Roostie. Roostie, the only male, as an adolescent, worked at teaching himself to crow day and night. I had to put him down. The hens eventually met their end, most tragically. Now, since late 2022, I’ve been making my own paper flock of chickens that don’t face the fate of those from long ago using the colored part of address labels that come incessantly through the mail free. These hens, roosters, pullets and chicks that I’m sending out into the world speak in shades, textures, breeds, and postures bright and varied as all the myriad chicken cooing, clucking, cackling, and crowing you could hear in a real flock. I’ve also created address label collage pictures of other fowl, cats and dogs, people, and landscapes. I’m a former high school and elementary school teacher, introduced to art as a child by my mother who got the entire family involved in the Wisconsin Regional Art Program. I enter my label collage art in the WRAP exhibits and fundraisers. My work has won awards each year I’ve entered.