Leave the animals alone. Quit torturing them in labs, quit imprisoning them where they don’t walk a day in their lives, quit force feeding them, quit slaughtering them, and quit shooting them for fun. Quit eating them too. That's Gale Hart's message. Only she's working on delivering it in a sly and oddly funny way. Through cartoon drawings, found object sculpture, cast resin images and multiple other mediums, she is creating a body of work based on the idea of "why not eat your pet." You wouldn't eat your faithful yellow Labrador. How have you managed to detach yourself from that wooly little lamb or gentle brown cow whose body was paralyzed with terror on the killing floor?
"Ninety-eight percent of the animals people eat are tortured," Gale says. She's up on factory farming, canned hunting and animal physiology. Knowing all of this about the animals drove her to a new place in her work where she's moving on from the huge paintings that have made her a success in a field where few find success. She's using more mediums that we have energy to list here. She says she needs all of the different mediums to express all the various issues surrounding animal rights.
The works are darkly funny: one sculpture of a cow in a body bag is titled "Got Compassion?" One adept drawing shows Marvin the Martian about to shoot Pooh Bear with a 22 caliber hand gun and Popeye aiming a Saturday Night Special at Fred Flintstone. This current work will be in a series of shows beginning in March at Exploding Head Gallery in Sacramento. Be advised not to show up wearing a leather jacket. For more on Gale, visit www.galehart.com
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