The artist is Sarina Brewer, who's a........well she's an artist obviously! Although most would describe her as a Rogue Taxidermist - for those who don't know what that is.......a taxidermist normally is the person who stuffs dead animals and will put them in a scene that is natural to said animal, a lot of these can be found in museums mostly victorian and newer where a new animal is found and therefor brought back as an exhibit.......
A Rogue Taxidermist is someone who will do what a taxidermist does, although they will act a bit like Dr Frankenstein and create creatures that have never existed! The funny thing is that when the Platapuss was first discovered and brought back for exhibit, everyone thought it was a lie and an act of rogue taxidermy - so after accusing the person who found it of putting a duck and a beaver together, they actually searched the animal for evidence of stitching around the bill and tail........when they found none, they didn't really know what to do......so the first platapuss ever taxidermied (??) if you look very closely has a slight part of its bill peeling off from where they tried to pull apart the imaginary stitching :)
Sarina Brewer recycles the natural and turns it into the unnatural - creating a new life for the animals she resurrects. None of the animals she uses were killed for her work, they were all recycled! She uses salvaged roadkill and discarded livestock, as well as all the animals that are donated to her. The donated animals are often casualties of the pet trade, destroyed nuisance animals or animals that died naturally. She keeps to a very strict "waste not, want not" in her studio, so basically every part of the animal is recycled in some way.
Immortalizing either animals or humans by preserving their remains or creating sentimental remembrances out of their body parts doesn't get an amazing response from most of society, which is natural as it is an odd experience to see someone or an animal that you loved in a kind of frozen state. But the practice as I mentioned earlier has been done for many generations and was/is still quite popular with many different cultures. The best example is during the Victorian age where there was such a thing as mourning jewellery - this is where items of accessories were made that had the hair and teeth of deceased loved ones - kinda creepy, but I guess it's the thought that counts right?
Apparently this type of work still exists now with an example being given of the preserved remains of saints on display in Catholic Churches around the world (I haven't seen these, but now I'm kinda curious O_O;; ).
Brewer works with death and doesn't see a dead animal as something disgusting but then again she also doesn't do a damien hirst, she just wants to show the beauty that the animal has in death as it naturally had in life.
her quote which I absolutely love is this - "I call it art, you can call it whatever you want."
So yeah, please visit her site as it's brilliant and you really will be pleasantly surprised......I just wish my computer would let me show some pics of her work :(
http://www.customcreaturetaxidermy.com/Site/index_.html
if you can't be bothered or don't have enough time then click on this link and you'll see one of my favourites which is a siamese twin squirrel fighting over a nut.......... XD
http://www.customcreaturetaxidermy.com/Site/FANTASY_WORKS.html
Anyway...........this was the one picture I took of all the work I'd done today........so yeah, I wasn't lazy and just did one drawing!!
but yeah, I thought this was ok - I was really annoyed with it and called it Gollem for the entire day but yeah it was ok, then I got home and posted it on bookface for a laugh as my mum likes to see what I've done so she knows I'm not just drowning myself in comics and coffee......among other things, anyway the response I got from her was this - "Why does she have a monster face?"
yeah......I was using a big stick of compressed charcoal which is horrible to do tiny detail with, hence I just shaded in the face......admittedly it makes this into a female joker pic in my head, but according to my mother it looks like a monster face that has no eyes and such and therefore is obviously someone I don't like - that's not the case, I've known this life model for a year now and a bit now and she's absolutely lovely!!
But yeah............so that's what I spent the day doing..........looking at the work of Sarah Brewer all over again so I could tell you about her and then doing works of a life model........sorry there's no face art but hopefully this is interesting enough ^_^;;
byes and sorry!
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