The Rogue Taxidermy Kunstkammer opens in LA
Please join us for the opening reception Friday May 7th 8-11pm and the Squirrel Masterclass/Gamefeed on Sat May 8th 6-10pm at La Luz de Jesus gallery.
The show features: Scott Bibus, Sarina Brewer, Robert Marbury, Mirmy Winn, Enrique Gomez de Molina, Elizabeth McGrath, Jessica Joslin, Brooke Weston, Jeanie M and Alan Wadzinski.
The Squirrel Masterclass/Gamefeed with be led by Scott Bibus, with help from Jeanie M. Following the Demo, Chef Winter Rosebudd will be serving up Squirrel Chili. A vegan "Mock-Squirrel" Chili will also be available. Beer sponsored by Schmaltz Brewing Company.
Visit the Facebook page to follow along.
Congress of Curious People
Robert Mabury will be giving a talk entitled A Rogue’s Approach to Stuffing It: Taxidermy in Contemporary Pop, Art and Sub-Cultures
on Tuesday night as part of the awesome Congress of Curious People.
Date: Tuesday, April 13th
Time: 7:00 PM
Admission: $5
1208 Surf Avenue
Coney Island, Brooklyn
Jessica Joslin in Scottsdale, AZ
Check out Jessica Joslin's Latest solo show. Make it there for the opening on April 1st and meet the artist.
Brass & Bone
Lisa Sette Gallery
Scottsdale, Arizona
April 1 – 24, 2010
Opening April 1st, 7 - 9pm
http://www.lisasettegallery.com/
Cool, Dead and Stuffed
by Melissa Milgrom
Daily Beast 031110
How did taxidermy become so hip? Melissa Milgrom on why the Victorian fascination with stuffing animals has become the hot new thing among hipsters and urbanites.
Sitting in Observatory, an art galley and events space in the newly hip Gowanus section of Brooklyn, Joanna Ebenstein clicked JPEGs of taxidermy that she has traveled the world to photograph. Her passion for the preserved is as far from country-kitsch as the toxic Gowanus is from the meandering Mississippi. “Taxidermy is more acceptable now. It’s the embarrassing thing in the basement, but now it’s cool.”
For Ebenstein and a growing number of urban enthusiasts, taxidermy is more than just a stuffed animal; it’s an experience, the tactile opposite of a world that communicates in bits and bytes. “It is a deeply intimate encounter,” explains Rachel Poliquin, curator and scholar, whose taxidermy blog Ravishing Beasts began as a post-doctoral project; now it gets around 800 hits a day. Last month, Poliquin curated a taxidermy exhibit at the Vancouver Museum; wildly popular, the exhibit aroused deep empathy for animals in a city the museum thought would balk at the show.
“If the mainstream reaction to taxidermy is to be creeped out—a reaction that produces a strong reaction on its own—the counter-culture reaction is to be fascinated and unflinching.”
Mike Zohn, co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, has sold taxidermy from his East Village shop since 1991. But lately the shrieks of horror have become squeals of delight. No matter that these folks can’t tell a deer head from a moose, or that they were raised in the suburbs and do not hunt. “I just sold a half-dozen antelope, deer, and elk heads to Juicy Couture to use to decorate their stores,” he says.
Walk around New York City and you’ll find taxidermy everywhere. It’s in hip restaurants such as Freemans and in the display windows of posh stores such as Bergdorf Goodman; even Urban Outfitters sells cardboard deer heads. Taxidermy is used as movie props, in fashion shoots, in sculpture, and in shelter magazines. What is Build-A-Bear Workshop but taxidermy for kids? As our collective experience becomes more urban (and suburban), what once was familiar—wildlife and the outdoors—is now exotic.
“Taxidermy offers a unique opportunity: to own an animal. In a big city, a stuffed pheasant is strange. In the country, it is rote,” says Scott Bibus, a taxidermist and prop maker in Florida who co-founded the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists, a collective of artists who use unconventional taxidermy in their artworks.
In the Victorian era, taxidermy was a craze. As naturalists brought exotic species home from other continents, armchair enthusiasts filled their parlors and drawing rooms with domed birds, butterfly cases, even their stuffed pets. Back then, every hoof and claw was transformed into some exciting new object: everything from “zoological lamps” (kerosene lamps made out of preserved monkeys, swans, and other creatures) to “His” and “Her” elephant heads. Some hairstyles even incorporated preserved humming birds. Soon every town in England could support a part-time taxidermist. In fact, taxidermy was a prerequisite skill for any serious naturalist—including Charles Darwin, who hired a freed Guyanese slave to give him lessons; otherwise he never would have qualified for the position of naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.
Book Cover - Still Life Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy. By Melissa Milgrom. 304 pages. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $25. We may need the illusion of nature more than the Victorians needed the exotica of it. As animals vanish at an alarming rate of 1,000 times faster than in the past, we crave facsimiles. No wonder taxidermy is making a comeback; nothing is a more visceral souvenir. Because taxidermy uses “derma” (skin) to create a lifelike replica, a preserved creature triggers deep emotions in us. Indeed, the 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire likened the “brutal and enormous magic” of dioramas to theater: “These things because they are false are infinitely closer to the truth.”
We, like the Victorians, are ravenous collectors. Yet in addition to being a generation of “cabinetists” (people who form collections of natural history artifacts), we are increasingly willing to get our hands bloody because that’s an even more direct experience. Brooklyn-based Melissa Dixson has become the media’s poster child for urban taxidermy, even though she’s only been a taxidermist for three years. “I’m in my thirties. I’m not part of the hipster subculture. But at the same time I get emails every day from art students and they’re all women—vegetarians who want to learn taxidermy.”
Dixson recently competed in the Secret Science Club’s annual taxidermy competition. The Secret Science Club is an underground lecture series based in New York City. Only two or three actual taxidermists out of a crowd of 500 people attended the 2009 contest, but who cares? Unlike, say, the World Taxidermy Championships, where hundreds of taxidermists celebrate mechanistic perfection, here people want to be shocked and entertained by the distorted and the bizarre. “For the urbanites, it’s not just straight taxidermy—it’s more twisted—and fun. Everyone loves a jackalope postcard and this is taking that to the nth degree,” says Secret Science Club co-founder Margaret Mittelbach.
“Part of being cool is to appear fearless in the face of the intentionally ignored and frightening. So if the mainstream reaction to taxidermy is to be creeped out—a reaction that produces a strong reaction on its own—the counter-culture reaction is to be fascinated and unflinching,” says Bibus.
Unlike Victorians fascination with freaks (two-headed lambs; pickled Siamese piglets) and anthropomorphic scenes (kittens dressed as brides; athletic toads), traditional taxidermists prize the ideal specimen, the archetype. No two animals are alike, so each mount is one-of-a-kind. It is an incredibly difficult and exacting process. And when you consider that a fleshy-faced gorilla is nothing like a delicate tree sparrow or that a rhino’s thick hide is completely different from a python’s scales, you can understand how far-ranging a taxidermist’s anatomical knowledge and artistic skill must be. Some taxidermists actually remove and reinsert each whisker individually by hand to support their biological narrative. A tiger’s whiskers can purr or attack depending on how they are manipulated. This striving to duplicate what nature has already created is the taxidermist’s gift to a culture that has become estranged from nature yet desires it, and it’s fascinating to watch urban enthusiasts re-contextualize this in their own idiosyncratic ways.
In a digital culture where images are disseminated in nanoseconds, taxidermy is a tactile reminder of what it means to be human, an integral part of the natural world. “You might feel distanced from your food, then read Omnivore’s Dilemma and want to explore sustainable agriculture,” says Rogue taxidermist Robert Marbury. “This is also a means to battle disconnectedness.”
Mouse Girl at the Academy of Science SF
Local retail treasure Paxton Gate is well-known around the city for featuring a diverse collection of "treasures and oddities inspired by the garden and the natural sciences". For this week’s NightLife, they will be showcasing such wondrous oddities as fossils, plants and taxidermy and relating them to specimens and science that we have here at the Academy. Learn the history and significance of taxidermy with a live demonstration by San Francisco-based artist Jeanie M explore fossils that are millions of years old, and see a truly bizarre and beautiful plant selection that will highlight the interdependence of plants and animals in their natural habitats. It should prove to be a truly unique experience!
Academy of Science
March 11th, 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm
55 Music Concourse Drive
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 379-8000
If you are in NYC, Make sure to check out the book release of Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom. She will be speaking at the American Museum of Natural History with Special guests Bruce and David Schwendeman, former chief taxidermist at the Museum.
Also, She will be speaking at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Tyler School of Arts in Philadelphia.
If you made it to the Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest at Bell House, Melissa gave the opening talk. She will be speaking around the city as well, so keep your eyes open or go to her website.
If you missed it, here is a video clip of Allen Ferguson of Austin, Texas stealing the trophy for "First in Panache" at the 2009 Carnivorous Nights Taxidermy Contest, the Bell House in Brooklyn.
We are very happy to have new MART beer Koozies for all of your camping/fire pit needs. $5 each or 5 for $20.
Time for the Secret Science Club's yearly Taxidermy Contest. Not to be missed.
Come down and have a drink or five with us.
Info below
• Where: the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues), Gowanus, Brooklyn
• When: Sunday, November 15. Doors and pre-show at 7:30 pm. Taxidermy talk at 8 pm. Contest at 8:30 pm!
• Cover charge: $4
Blanco Texas Chupacabra
If you have heard about the Chupacabra found in Blanco Texas, then you will be excited to see what the Blanco Taxidermy School will do with it. If you want a critique of the find, Cryptomundo is the place to go.
Loads of interesting stuff from walking sticks to turtle shells. Even a mummified human hand and a wall mounted two headed calf. check it out
Takeshi Yamada at Dreamland Amusement Park
Six rogue taxidermy human babies created by using the real skins of Takeshi Yamada are now on display for pay-per-view circus sideshow (freakshow) at Baby Museum at Dreamland amusement Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York. Coney Island once was the world center of entertainment industry bigger than Hollywood and Las Vegas 100 years ago. Many varieties of human oddities were displayed for public as family entertainment then. Time has changed, and due to the state regulations and laws, displays of live human baby oddities and dead human oddities (often ion a glass jars) have been completely banned in the United States for many decades. This rogue taxidermy human babies of Takeshi Yamada are barely legal (using the real body parts of the artist), and possibly being banned by the censorship of the US government within a few years.
If you are in Minneapolis this weekend, make sure to check out the second installment of Live Music/Dead Meat, put on by Stuffed Pheasant Productions.
From their Facebook Announcement:
This time we'll be at the Nomad, where we'll grill up some fish for you to taste (for free!), and will be giving away some fantastic prizes to facilitate all sorts of summer outdoor adventures.
Fish and fishing poles and things'll get rowdy with music from:
The Guystorm
Old James (Reunion time - the guys are comin' back up from Austin!)
10w40
Communist Daughter
Plus, Johnny of Communist Daughter and of The Boxcar Restaurant in Prescott, WI will be our local celebrity chef for the evening.
As always, expect also to try a little elk or buffalo or deer or some such thing. Because, you know, you oughtta live a little.
$6 cover, 9:00 door
Hope to see you there!
Stuffed Pheasant
Cabinet Screening And MART Talk, BKNY
Co-Director Robert Marbury will speak following a screening of the 2005 Stuff the World
Info is:
Date: June 9, 2009
Location: 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY
Time: 7-9pm
Also if you missed it, and it does not matter outside of the awesome possibility deferred, but Gunter Von Hagen of the Bodyworlds claimed that Michael Jackson was to be plastinated
Summer in the City
So our Members are busy everywhere and it is hard to keep up. But that is how the summer goes. Hopefully I will be able to post some show announcements up here soon.
I have gotten a bunch of emails about whether or not the MART has a museum in Minneapolis. Sorry to say, we do not, but if you have started a Natural History/Taxidermy foundation and you want to have your name associated with Rogue Taxidermy, drop me a line.
btw: the image of the elephant hiding is from my trip to visit my younger brother and his wif, who are in the Peace Corps in South Africa. If possible, everyone should visit the Kruger National Park. it is amazing.
MART Masterclass/Gamefeed 3
MART had its Third Masterclass/Gamefeed this March at Museum 52 in Manhattan.
The first Masterclass/gamefeed was in Minneapolis and featured Squirrel; the second at Union Hall in Brooklyn and featured Chicken; and the Manhattan one featured Rabbit.
Scott Bibus presented a masterclass on preparing a Rabbit skin for taxidermy and Robert Marbury served Bunny Chili and vegan Mock-Bunny Chili.
Thanks so much to Museum 52 and David Brooks for inviting us and for everyone for attending.
The Turf Club was the place to be tonight. too bad life caught up to me out on the east coast and I could not make it to the amazing music show and Game Meat tasting. hopefully Nikki will keep it up and we can even have a joint event.
Keep your eyes out for the next MART masterclass gamefeed in NYC. details soon
Valentine Updates
The MART has been busy with a bunch of new members, publications and show.
Check out this month's issue of BUST magazine, which features co-founder Sarina Brewer.
Also in print, Metamorphosis 2, published by beinArt, which features the work of Sarina Brewer and working member Jessica Joslin.
If you are in Westchester on March 8th, keep your eyes out for new rogue Rena's show, or contact her for show locations.
AND if you have not heard, Rogue Nate Hill has retired from taxidermy and has started Club Animals. Check it out here or keep your eyes on the street for a huge fish.
If you are LA, come out Saturday night to support the MART. Info is:
Clockwork Circus
January 10- February 7, 2009
Opening reception: January 10, 7-10pm
Billy Shire Fine Arts
5790 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, California
http://billyshirefinearts.com
Clockwork Circus is now online at
jessicajoslin.com
Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays from all the Rogues. This has been a great year with new members and alot of interest internationally about Rogue Taxidermy. keep your eyes pealed for some big shows in 2009 to celebrate the 5th year of MART. We plan on having coastal shows with one in Brooklyn, one in LA and, of course, we hope to keep the homebase of Minneapolis warm.
The MART shop will be closed until January 5th, but feel free to reach out digitally.
As the year ends, it is time to think about all the strange and unusual animals that are working so hard to resist the changes in the environment. This list is awesome and there are some bizarre things out there.
Two Pygmy Tarsiers were trapped in the tree tops of Central Sulawsi, Indondesia. These tiny bugger have sharp triangular teeth, claws (not nails) and can rotate their heads 180 degrees. The last sighting of them in the wild was in 1921. Go Texas A&M!!
check out the great article in the NY Times about the fire last February at the Deyrolle, the 177 taxidermy shoppe in the heart of Paris. Last night was a Christie's Auction to benefit the Deyrolle.
NYTime Link here
If you are in nyc, you have two more days to check out the excellent Banksy + installation on 7th ave. inspiring! tough to say which is my favorite, but the CCTV fits my urban beast sensibilities.
If you are in Tuscany Italy, drop by the local nature preserve and visit lil "Unicorn" the resident celeb deer.
The incredible Nagi Noda has died. If you have not seen her work, please spend the time looking through her site. There is no doubt in my mind that she was genius and that her work will influence artists and art greatly.
"Her death was apparently due to complications from surgery she had after a bad car accident last year. She must have known she was going to die, because she got dressed up for it—she was wearing a Mark Ryden dress, Chanel boots, and Viktor and Rolf black lace eyelashes. "
If you are like us, you love Natural History Museum. This site is awesome for documenting some of the most famous dioramas as they are being created.
Thanks to the AMNH for creating this resource.
how awesome is this news....
now if we can support conservation and devalue poaching...
a slightly questionable story about a pig/monkey in Fengzhang Village in China, but it does show how the internet and cell photos become the new sideshow. gotta up the ante.
Make sure you check out the incredible work of Custom Creatures Taxidermy and maybe take home some!
