Eyes

So, the glass eyes I ordered arrived and they aren't too relevant to what I want to make anymore. Neither are they proper taxidermist eyes, so I don't think I'm going to use them for anything on this brief. Maybe they'll come in handy one day in the future..... who knows.

How To Skin a Deer....

This is a lovely video of an American man explaining and showing us how to skin a deer head....

Crit Suggestions....

I just had my first and last Visual Language interim crit before Christmas, and found it quite a good opportunity to hear myself discussing my ideas outloud, and narrowing down more of what it is exactly that I would like to do. I explained that there's a couple of takes I have on taxidermy, and am unsure of which one to follow. Firstly, the ethics of taxidermy, and secondly the actual process of creating the taxidermy. Christian suggested that i try and get hold of some glass eyes as a starting point, and possibly some faux furs, fabrics or other animal bits, that I can use as a starting point to play around with. With these materials I may then stitch and stuff and re-arrange to create odd looking creatures which i can then draw from and photograph.

Nick suggested I even attempt to create a new world or idea of what an animal is by re-creating animals in different ways. realistically I would love to get my hands on real animal and learn how to taxidermy, therefore I am aiming to befriend a taxidermist locally, but until then this will have to do. I have just ordered some glass bird eyes from ebay.co.uk.

"I can sit in that room and reminisce about past hunts.''

I found this quote from a successful taxidermist who lives in North Hollywood. I will never understand how 'the hunt' of an animal can be thrilling. It is pointless and unnecessarily cruel:

If a picture is worth a thousand words A picture is worth a thousand words is a proverb that refers to the idea that complex stories can be told with just a single still image, or that an image may be more influential than a substantial amount of text. A mounted animal speaks volumes. At least to its owner.

What better way to preserve the memory of a gratifying hunt than to bring the trophy head into your home?

``I've got 58 animals in one room,'' said Frank Carlisi, owner of Art Craft Taxidermy taxidermy in North Hollywood, ``and I can remember every hunt in which the animal was taken. I can sit in that room and reminisce about past hunts.''

(found on http://www.thefreelibrary.com/THE+RIGHT+STUFFING+:+ART+OF+TAXIDERMY+OFFERS+HUNTERS+A+DIFFERENT...-a084000220)

I also quite liked to hear this headline: MOUNTING WOES; THERE WAS A TIME WHEN VALLEY TAXIDERMISTS HANDLED DOZENS OF ANIMALS EACH WEEK. NOW, WITH THE ADVENT OF STRICTER HUNTING RULES, THE LIFE IS GOING OUT OF THEIR BUSINESS.

Should I be experimenting more with other ideas?

So, I've done something that I regularly do with briefs. Come up with an idea or theme I'm really keen on using right at the start, and not experimenting with others. I know that some people would tell me that it's better to explore a variety of ideas, but I am really focused on taxidermy because not only does it give me a number of ideas for the content of my book, it is also a subject I'm interested in finding more about and therefore will encourage me to spend a lot of time on.

Is Taxidermy Inhumane?

I've been attempting research in to the ethics of taxidermy; is it mainly done using the bodies of roadkill and animals killed of other natural causes, or is there a sport for killing them simply to taxidermy. I don't know how to feel about it otherwise, as I am obviously against killing animals for sport.

However, it all seems to be very underground in terms of taxidermists explaining how they go about getting their animal bodies. I have emailed a few taxidermists in Leeds and requested a meeting with them to find out more and hopefully have a look at their individual works.

Here's one of the emails I have to sent to a professional taxidermist in Leeds. I'm still waiting for a reply...

Leeds Museum Visit 2: Taxidermy

Leeds Museum has a good selection of taxidermy in their Life on Earth section.








Below is a carved elephant tusk on loan from HM Revenue and Customs. People make decorations from tusks and rind rhino horns for medicine. Although this isn't in theme with the rest of the stuffed animals I've been posting, I still find the bone structure and anatomy on an animal very interesting. I think it's inhumane and cruel to kill elephants and other animals for their tusks or any other part of the body that will be simply used for decoration.

Leeds Museum Visit

Yesterday afternoon I went along to Leeds Museum, mainly to see the taxidermy they have there, but also paid a visit to their room of various collections and collectors. They had examples of hisorical collections in cabinets and glass cases. Thing such as a series of books, writings and illustrations done by the Leeds Savage Club; a group of artists, musicians, writers and journalists which formed in 1898 and disbanded in 1912. They held informal meetings with North American 'Indian' themes and were known as pow-wows, presided over by a 'chief' in full head dress. Many of Leeds leading artists belonged to this club at some point. The photos below are of the large collection of ephemera connected with the club.



This photo is of a collection of Jamaican artifacts collected from around the times that the slave trade existed. I guess this shows how important collecting can be to back up and teach us lessons about history, and important events and times.









These are photos from the ancient Egyptian exhibition at the museum. They show how writing evolved and developed and are an important collection of visuals that prove how something so crucial to our every day life came about.

Playing Around With Taxidermy Collage

Humane Felt Taxidermy

On www.etsy.com, I found 'humane felt taxidermy' which is recreations of taxidermied animals made out of material. Below is an example of a rabbit foot made from felt and some fur fabric, and a felt deer.

www.crappytaxidermy.com

Whilst researching in to taxidermy, I stumbled upon the website www.crappytaxidermy.com. Along with some really funny and BAD taxidermy, I didn't think it was all crap! A bike with real antlers is pretty amazing (although unnecessarily humane). Looking at abstract uses of taxidermy gives me ideas for illustration surrounding the collection of it, and is a theme I would like to play around with. I would like to create some illustration based on the idea of using taxidermi for other purposes e.g. antlers as bike handles....

Taxidermy: Sarina Brewer

As part of looking at the idea and themes of collectors and collections, I am quite interested in looking at Taxidermy. Although it can be seen as grotesque and sometimes inhumane, there are artists who do this as their main practice and exhibit often. For example, Sarina Brewer uses only salvaged bits of roadkill, discarded pieces of livestock, and other donated animal items to 're-imagine the boundaries between species and between myth and concrete form' (http://www.ravishingbeasts.com/contemporary-art/). "I call it art," she writes on her website, "you can call it whatever you want." One example of Brewer's work is called North Woods Chimera; three vulture heads sprouting from the body of a cat.

Book Binding: Making a Pocket and Rounded Bind

Today in Vernon street, I had the opportunity to make a mock up of a pocket bound book. You start with a length of paper, and we began by marking along every 10cm with a pin and then scoring these along. This is then followed by a series of folding corners and tucking in and out. It's quite a fiddly process, but eventually you are left with a series of tiny pockets that you can slide each page in to. (an example of one the folded sections is shown below).



Rounded Bind is a much longer process. You begin with marking, stitching and gluing your sections, and follow it by putting your sections in to a clamp and bashing round the edges with a hammer until they swell.




Directly above is an example of the stitched and glued book, before a cover is put on it, and above that are the phots of my completed book. You can see that it is a rounded bind, rather than the usual flat one.

Book Binding: workshop 1

Today I had my first session in Vernon Street print room on how to book bind. Initially we had the opportunity to have a look through a variety of mock up books bound in various ways. Here are a few examples:

Full section bind: This is a pretty standard bind, and you have the choice of either a flat or rounded spine. It can be nice to add a dust jacket to these, or put in a box case, and you should consider and plan the layout and order of your pages before you print and bind.

Japanese bind: Very simple and Good for photo albums.

Coptic bind: Folded sections, exposed spine that has been stitched over.

Childrens board book: A consertina, with all images printed on one side and the other sides stuck together to create a small book.

There are also tools you can use such as the corner cutter and paper folder. We were reminded that it important to make a mock up of your book before you bind your final prints.

Artists Books

Today I went to the library in Vernon street and had the opportunity to have a look through some of the artists books they hold there. A number of these were done by previous viscom students. I feel like I have more of an idea now of what my options are when it comes to styles of book binding. An example of an artist book is Tattoo Mystique, by Angelique Houtkamp.



Below is the cover of Artists Books: Structures and Narratives. It is available in the Vernon Street library and is contains a mini catalogue of examples of artists books they hold in the library.

Visual Language

A new brief. And fortunately, one that excites me. I definitely need to improve on my book binding and layout skills!

Rationale: I want to explore the theme of taxidermy through illustration and book making.

The Day of the Dead Prints 2

This is my second attempt at CMYK printing one of my posters. I had trouble with printing this one, and not because of the image but because of the brown tape I used to mask off each unused image. The tape the print room had been sent was a bad batch and was unusually sticky. Therefore, even once thoroughly blast washing the screen down in the booth, when I peeled off the tape it left a sticky film which turned out to be almost impossible to remove completely. I had to rinse the screen as usual, then clean it with a special screen wash using two cloths on each side and scrubbing. Then rinse it again and wait to dry. Sometimes I had to repeat this process twice, which meant it took me over an hour just to screen print one colour.








I had a second problem, which was that because of the amount of screen wash I had had to scrub with, it had left parts of the screen worn down and the ink wasn't taking through the areas of holes through the screen. This meant areas of the image were slightly blurred, or areas of colour would appear on the image where there shouldn't be any. I managed to eradicate some of the unwanted marks by simply masking over them with tape on the underneath of the screen, but it still wasn't perfect.

I'm not completely happy with how these prints turned out, purely because if you study them you can see the areas of imperfection. However, I realise this is all part of the learning process. At least I now know to double check the tape I am using, and be less vigorous if possible with certain screen wash.

The Day of the Dead Prints

One of the most frustrating things about screen printing is that the printing itself doesn't take much time at all, it's the preparation, cleaning and drying of the screen that becomes laborious. However, I feel that once a print is completed, you have a feeling of satisfaction that you don't get with digital printing. These were my first CMYK prints and the success of the outcomes surprised me; it's still a strange concept to me that with just four colours you can recreate the colours used in a photo nearly exactly.



Above is an example of a completed CMYK print on to a fairly expensive linen blend of paper. I'm really pleased with a few of my final prints, although understandably some of them aren't aligned exactly. That is one of the downfalls of screen printing- despite having your guide, it is still never 100% reliable that your various colours will line up. I produced the image below by removing the magenta from the printing process. I like the way the colours of the text below the image came out .








I left some of these as single colour prints to show how they layer up and create the full image. I also played about with layering single colours with black, which also turned out quite nicely, but obviously lack too much detail to use.