Broken hearts, broken dreams, and broken self-worth; a piece about fairy tales and the never ending quest to fulfill them.
TITLE ~ The Price of Love (Loved To Pieces)
MEDIUM ~ Taxidermy
Squirrel skin with surgical staples over a urethane form mounted to faux brick.
“Hair dye, hair extensions, hair removal, make-up, permanent cosmetics, fake nails, fake eyelashes, fake eyebrows, fake noses, fake tits, liposuction, lipo injections, Botox, facelifts, lingerie, high heels, designer clothing, designer workouts, vanity, insecurity, anticipation, disappointment, extrospection, introspection, self-loathing, skeletons, demons, monsters. Outrageous looks. Outrageous acts. Outrageous justification: All in the name of finding love. Then attempting to hang on to it.”
This is the most recent piece in a series of Frankensquirrels that I began making in the late 1990’s. The series was inspired by the patchwork stuffed toys that my mother’s best friend sewed together for me as a child from her fabric scraps. Part of the foundation of my work is a strict “waste not, want not” policy so I began making franken-animals as a way to recycle severely damaged roadkill that had limited salvageable parts. I have worked exclusively with humanely sourced animal remains for the entirety of my career and I was one of the pioneers in the realm of no-kill taxidermy. These tenets were later used by two colleagues and myself to construct the genre of Rogue Taxidermy in 2004. Link to read about the artistic movement we spearheaded and how its ethics platform played a role in the reframing of taxidermy and its subsequent revival
