Drug Lords' animal cast-offs

I love it when readers send me the strangest things they encounter, and this one is pretty darn strange.  I received an e-mail from Sarah Jacobs who is an artist doing a residency in Cali, Colombia.  On her own, Jacobs is pretty fascinating - she is doing research on drug lord menageries for her art.  It seems that a proper Colombian criminal must have a proper set of beasts: ocelots, lions, baboons, ostriches.  But, as you might expect, the beasts don't always fair so well.  And this is where Ana Julia Torres and her camel-kissing comes into the picture. 

Torres runs a refuge for animals.  Most of them have been rescued from drug traffickers and warloads - can you believe this?  When a cocaine trafficker is murdered, his ocelots go to Torres. She currently has around 800 beasts and birds.  There is the Bengal tiger who ate executed prisoners (at least one hopes they were dead before meeting the tiger), a three-legged puma (not born that way), a near lifeless lion that was fed a diet of narcotics.  Read more about Torres and see a video of the sanctuary here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/world/americas/31colombia.html

I'm getting to the point ... Visitors are not usually allowed in the Sanctuary but persistence and a bag of fish food for the ostrich finally won Jacobs entry.  The animals were all as you would expect, but it was the taxidermy that stopped Jacobs in her tracks. 

In Jacobs' own words:

"Many dozens of badly taxidermy animals fall all over one another. They are former animal residents of the sanctuary, so many are deformed from abuse. Others are deformed from time. The ostrich with no head stands next to an encased monkey. Its detached head rests upon the case. (see left side of image below) Because the display is under a roof in a deck leaves have blown in nearly covering most of the animals, many of which have fallen over, or almost appear to have been tossed in."

"I'm trying to understand the point of this. The man giving us the tour tried to tear me away from it, but I got several photos. Apparently these animals were stuffed either because she loved them so much as pets that she didn't want to see them go, or she wanted to preserve the ways in which they had been mutilated by former owners to prove the cruelty of humans after the wronged animals were no longer alive to prove it themselves."

Taupologie

Not taxidermy, but fun nonetheless.  Here is Ghyslain Bertholon's installation in the gardens of the Hotel de Sully, as the as part of Monuments and Animals installation series.  Read more here: http://www.pariscotejardin.fr/2011/04/taupologie-a-lhotel-sully-paris-4e-75/

Taxidermy Textiles?

Lilli Cowley-Wood (illustrator and screen-printer) met Jazmine Miles -Long (ethical taxidermist) in 2010 and they decided to use their mutual passion for British wildlife to create what they call their Taxidermy Textiles.

Check out their work on Supermarket Sarah: http://supermarketsarah.com/

Strange Sighting

Make what you will of this one ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fengschwing/343787121/

Sad Parrots

I don't know why, I can't quite explain it, but I've become a tad obsessed with badly taxidermied parrots.  That said, I've been slightly obsessed with parrots alive or dead for quite some time. I like reading parrot stories.  I collect old natural history prints of parrots.  I've visited a parrot refuge with nearly a thousand parrots, and got into it with a hyacinth macaw. Currently, I'm winding my way through Buffon's vastly too large section on parrots published in his classic natural history.  In fact, I do believe a forthcoming writing project will focus quite precisely on the parrot world. Here's my latest sad parrot find.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/icopythat/2481175/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Not really taxidermy, but ...

Here's a lovely little skit by French and Saunders on gold card fur culture.

End of History + End of Stoat

I was sent this image during the summer and posted it as my picture of the week, thinking it was "just" an example of decoratively utilitarian taxidermy.  But these squirrels and stoats were actually part of a marketing/product sexification for a Scottish beer company best know for its excessively stiff beers.   At 55%, BrewDog's End of History ale will certainly put hair on your chest -- better yet, twelve bottles were packaged in taxidermied vermin - 7 stoats, 4 squirrels, and 1 hare.  The bottles were sold for 500 pounds each. Fair enough.

Check out the eccentricities of BrewDog in a short video posted on the blog site at  http://www.brewdog.com/blog-article/341.  According to the video below, a battle has been brewing between Scottish and German beer makers for the title of world's strongest beer.  A man dressed as a stoat is killed with a German sausage, which provokes other forest furries to assist the Scottish beer makers in brewing up something spectacularly strong.

The End of History from BrewDog on Vimeo.

Pixidermy

Yes... that's right.  For those of you with a sensitive side, one company has your interests at heart.  Pixidermy is for catch-and-release fisherman who want the best of both worlds - for the fish to live another day, but yet to keep a trophy.  Check out all their fishy prints here + http://www.pixidermy.com/index.html

  

Duck man ... ?

This is a first. Yesterday Alex Mazitelli performed a very odd event in West London dressed in a get-up that included a black wire face mask/head basket blobbed with taxidermied ducklings. In the words of Salon Contemporary:

"Dressed as a very strange, avant-garde looking 'Duck Man', Mazitelli began by standing outside the gallery asking passers by to donate money for eggs. An hour later, collecting a whopping £6, the artist stopped by Sainsbury's (with an interesting response!!) and made his purchase. Mazitelli then proceeded to make egg paintings in the window of the gallery, handing his work out to an intrigued audience watching outside!"

Fair enough. I would have certainly stopped to watch. Read and see more here +

TV: Oddities take to the airs

A new Discovery channel program takes an look at the rather unusual Manhattan store, Obscura Antiques & Oddities.  Aptly named "Oddities," the program explores the oddly mesmerizingly emporium of everything you couldn't have imagined would possibly exist and the people who collect it.  Of course, things taxidermied and mummified are abundantly on view. The website is great with tons of videos and images. Check out all the crazy stuff here + http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/oddities/

Piggy on Wheels

Animated Taxidermy

Something different ... a short animated film on taxidermy by Eduard Nazarov (1979).  A little boy wanders into a hunting shop and images how we could rescue the already dead beasties.  Winner of Best Film (Kiev, USSR, 1979) and Best Film (Huesca, Spain, 1980).

Alice: the creepy taxidermic rendition

Just a youtube teaser of Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer's surrealist take on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  The opening sequence shows a stuffed white rabbit pulling itself out of a diorama - it bites out the nails and spills its sawdust stuffing.  The scene is constructed with stop motion animation with taxidermy.  Very dark.  Very strange.  And the film itself gets even darker from here.

Bad Taxidermy

Who knew, but there is a Flickr group dedicated to images of bad taxidermy.  Quite the assortment, I must say, posted by many photographers from many countries.  Check out the images here http://www.flickr.com/groups/848170@N24/pool/ but a few highlight pieces ...

Merry Christmas!

From a reader

A letter from a reader:

I came upon twin fawns in the display case of a mom and pop toy and science store in Kansas City, Missouri. It took me two years to win the trust of the shop owner and save the money to buy them. A taxidermist spotted a dead deer by the side of the road. He stopped to properly dispose of the body and realized she was pregnant. He opened her and found near full-term twin fawns, he removed and preserved them.

Deer rarely have twins and the taxidermist retained the uterine gesture of their bodies. I built them a vitrine with a light blue base. Their prematurity exaggerates the delicacy of an incredibly sweet thing. The points of their hooves, the length of their lashes, the spots of their hides, nose to small nose in an ur-cartoonish realism ... Viewers' eyes trick them into believing the fawns are breathing. The tragedy of beauty is its transience.

The twins live forever in their own demise. They are sleeping beauties.They have been muses since I first saw them ... We dress death in lilies and bronze the names of our dead sons on walls. We erect altars of toys and hold candlelight vigils to express hope. My twin fawns sleep endlessly on their baby blue block in my studio. The twins never opened their eyes yet their wondrous fatality evokes an acceptable alternative to death.
— Peregrine Honig

Guy Maddin's giraffe

Canadian director Guy Maddin explains his love affair with a giraffe head in Air Canada's EnRoute magazine.

Deyrolle on fire

The amazing Deyrolle taxidermy boutique [read about it here +] in the heart of Paris sadly suffered a major fire on February 1st, 2008.  The fire consumed most of the eccentric cabinet of curiosities on the first floor.  The insects and butterflies were the worse hit, and Deyrolle is currently seeking an entomology vendor to help replace the collection.

Read all about the fire, the store's resurrection efforts, and all the posted letters of sympathy on Deyrolle's blogsite here in French or here in English. Even Gerard Depardieu is quoted: "there are no words - it's very violent."  

Thanks to Steve Plant for letting me know the news.

Not specifically taxidermy, but ...

Described as a "dark carnival of jet-black humour ... that suggests a collision between David Lynch, the Chapman brothers and Monty Python," Hungarian director György Pálfi's new film Taxidermia promises to be something rather different.  As the ad offers, come find out "what connects the man who shoots fire from his penis, the perilously outsized speed-eating champion and a taxidermist who lives with giant cats."  The film is showing at the Institute of Comtemporary Art in London from July 13th until August 2nd, 2007.

[more +]

Matt's Taxidermy Quest

Matt's Taxidermy Adventure: one man's quest to acquire a stuffed pet dog.  On YouTube, in four parts, some parts quite long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHsBNiXJZxg&mode=related&search=