My work walks the line between taxidermy, toy and sculpture. Each sculpture is meticulously fabricated to create an unnervingly accurate but uncanny version of the natural animal. Evolution and anatomy hold a particular fascination for me, informing how I create and group the animals in my work. As I’ve studied and dug through museum collections to research my pieces, Western science’s mania for labeling, codifying and collecting has stood out. More so, we categorize animals in two ways; scientifically and emotionally. Despite all of our efforts to map out how life evolved, carefully defining orders and families, we still by and large judge animals by an irrational system of emotional morality.
Over the past few years, my work has focused on two of the most anthropomorphized animals in our culture, bears and rabbits. Bears interest me as they are the ultimate stuffed animals: both the iconic plush toy and the prized taxidermy specimen for hunters. A stuffed bear is the enduring toy of childhood. The fierce predator declawed and defanged to become a child’s best friend and sense of security. While both bears and rabbit start as beloved childhood characters, our attitudes towards them quickly diverge. Bears, both revered and feared are treated with far more respect. Our treatment of rabbits is more complex. Our attitudes range from adoration of their cuteness to contempt. Rabbits are animals that everyone has encountered, starting with Peter Rabbit, the Velveteen Rabbit and Bugs Bunny. Rabbits evolve from childhood toy to pampered pet, garden pest, science experiment, dinner and clothing. With the rabbits I play with peoples’ expectations and emotions; peel away some of the preconceptions and expose the unease of our relationship with these animals and how we symbolize them.
Fragility and vulnerability are central to my work. The sculptures become an inverted anatomies showing the interior organ structures on the body’s surface. The sculptures in revealing their raw vulnerable interiors create a tension between the reality of the animal and our cultural concepts; the wild and the tame, the beautiful and grotesque.
Many people assume my sculptures are created from taxidermy. They are not. I make everything by hand, starting with painted sketches and sculpted maquettes. I embroider samples to figure out the linen and fur colors, floss colors and stitch directions. I then sculpt the body, make the fabric pattern and sew the linen and fur together. I hand embroider the organ systems onto the linen. The head and paws are then sculpted in polymer clay, baked and the fur carefully glued on. All the parts assembled and permanently attached. The finished object is important to me; like the stuffed toys that are the first objects we treasure, the sculptures become beings completely contained within themselves.
