George Segal, one of the most eloquent living American artists, supported himself with chicken farming before his career took off during his Pop Art days in the 1960s, still lives and works in the same modest buildings.

This film was made during a period of two years, when Segal was at work on two important public commissions and a major retrospective exhibition. One of the public monuments, a memorial to the students killed during anti-Vietnam riots at Kent State University, became a major controversy, and was rejected by the university as "too inflammatory”.

The central sequence of the film shows the struggle of the artist to find a sculptural solution to a political issue, without selling his own soul.