| User | Rokhal | | Topic | Taxidermy | | Message | Seriously, I can’t even express how much I admired that weird guy in the 101 Dalmations live action version, The Skinner. The guy with the dark, dank taxidermy shop and the dead python in pickling fluid and the humongous scar on his neck from some dog that savaged him. That guy is like my role model!
So yesterday I finally skinned and stuffed a young robin that hit my window. He looks pretty fine, for a dead bird / first completed taxidermy project, sitting up on my desk with his feet taped to a ruler to dry.
My thinking is that taxidermy is like an homage to the animal’s species. As morticians, we can’t get to know the bird personally before we take his skin off and pull it over a styrofoam mold, but we know the generic image of a robin, and we conform the posture and expression of the mount to that ideal. One way to look at it, we elevate the bird to an ambassador of his entire race.
So, glass-eyed animals as art objects. Creepy? Tacky? Transcendental?
I think they’re awesome. |
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| User | Toxic_Rayne | 2006-08-06 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | taxidermy rawks! me and my dad hunt deer and stuff, and we have loads of taxidermied animals at our house, it’s cool
*tox* |
| User | Rokhal | 2006-08-06 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | I certainly read you on the roadkill thing, WolfStar.
For the eyes, I used round black beads. That ought to work for any animal that’s said to have "beady little eyes."
I don’t know about demeaning . . . little dried toads frozen for eternity, humping each-other---that’s demeaning. An armadillo keeled over on his side with a beer bottle glued to his claw---certainly not what he envisioned for his memorial.
But in the end, what the armadillo don’t know, don’t hurt him. |
| User | WolfStar | 2006-08-05 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | Interesting hobby, I suppose, but a little demeaning for the animal maybe? I don’t know. Personally I would be a little concerned about disease of some kind from random dead animals...
I have a fixation with dead animals sometimes. I tend to stare for a really long time. I saw three dead birds in one week once, and a dead cat. And I just watch them; I watch insects and animals eat them, think about what life means for them, what it means in general. Dead animals make me think.
So... did you replace its eyes with marbles or something? |
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