The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

My name is Skeeter Daddle and I’m an art alcoholic. Stained glass art, to be specific. And now a chicken artist, to be precise. We hopeless addicts find ourselves in baffling and unpredictable predicaments, victims of the vicissitudes of economic necessities. Over the years I’ve made windows to keep neighbors from peering into clients’ bathrooms while they do their ‘business’, I’ve created art for kitchen cabinets that prevent viewing their mismatched dishware, I’ve designed murals for schools in red-leaning areas of the state that weren’t really wanted but were offered as part of a 1% for art program by our leftist government here in Washington. In other words I go where the money leads, no need to prove the adage of ‘starving artists.’

Just before the Covid plague swept the client base pretty much flat, I got a commission to do the neighbors’ barn, a series of five fairly sizeable windows that faced their new house. They seemed hesitant to ask me, assuming no doubt that Picasso wouldn’t paint the side of an outhouse if his neighbor asked, but … like I said, pride is not one of my virtues or vices. Art is art and barn art works just fine for me. And besides, most of my large scale glass murals in the realm of public art commissions were drawn on that barn’s loft floor once the hay bales were moved to the sides. It was actually an honor to do those barn windows.

So when the same neighbors’ broached the idea of another window up at the barnyard, this time for a chicken coop, you can guess, rightly, that I jumped at the opportunity. Chickens need art too, you know, and maybe you didn’t know that a happy hen is a good layer. I suggested piping in classical music, create a veritable chicken cathedral up there, get ready to corner the egg market of the South End. So I accepted the challenge, happy to focus on something other than geo-politics, inflation, pandemic paranoia and partisan warfare. I can now turn my attention to a design that will maximize egg production. And hopefully not make the goats jealous of their cackling brethren.

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