Wonders of Nature

Do you know how much I love taxidermy?  I constantly have a book on the subject lying around.  Right now, I'm reading The Breathless Zoo (finally!), and it is rather lovely.  The premise is that all forms of taxidermy (the author suggests 7 kinds: hunting trophies, natural history specimens, wonders of nature (2-headed creatures, etc.), preserved pets, home decor and fashion, fraudulent creatures, and anthropomorphic displays) are rooted in longing.  At the end of chapter 1, "...taxidermy always tells us stories about particular cultural moments, about the spectacle of nature that we desire to see, about our assumptions of superiority, our yearning for hidden truths, and the loneliness and longing that haunt our strange existence of being both within and apart from the animal kingdom."

Fascinated as I am by the subject-- to the point where I read manuals on how to skin and properly preserve critters-- I could never actually do it myself.  Maybe I've already mentioned this, but my grandpa stuffs animals in his basement, and it is a MESSY business.  I've seen one too many skinned animals already in my day-- I'm good, thanks.  Though, if I had the scratch, I'd definitely buy one of these head mounts or sculptures by Brooke Weston, and I'd hang it in my living room or study.

I'm not sure how Weston's work fits into the categories of taxidermy Rachel Poliquin defines in The Breathless Zoo.  Is "animal as art" its own category?  Or, since the original purpose of the piece was as hunting trophy, does it simply fit in there?  How much of any of these categories fall under "art?"  Poliquin typically refers to it as the "practice" of taxidermy, rather than the "art." Things to consider, I guess, as I work my way through the book.

I had the choice to go this weekend to the Field Museum or the Art Institute.  It was a tough decision, because the Art Institute's "Picturing Poetry" exhibit looks incredibly relevant to the work I'm doing these days.  I just finished stitching up an erasure poem from a piece of Sand County Almanac for the collaborative art/poetry project I'm working on for the end of March, and I'll be writing a poem in response to Ellsworth Kelly's prints at the MMoCA.  Yet, when I consider the amount of art I've been/will be imbibing, I think a trip to the Field Museum is necessary.  While I know art informs art, art cannot be the only information art receives.  Natural history it is.  (And the art of dioramas fascinates me to no end, so I will get a fair dose of art nonetheless.)

So! We're off to Chicago, bright-n-early this morning! My goal is to collect words for poem-a-day this month (I'm already a day behind!).  We're heading to the Field Museum, then we'll eat at The Chicago Diner, where I will have seitan wingz and a veggie reuben (Egads! YUM!), then, per Carter, we're going to walk around the city all evening ("like we used to do in New York").  We're all missing city-life quite a bit these days.





These animals (besides the jackalope above) are just a sample of the many my grandpa has preserved.  Most of them in the "hunting trophy" category, others in the "preserved farm animals" category?  Rachel Poliquin may count these as preserved pets, but there wasn't really any pet-love for the sheep who now serves as cane-holder... The garage is like Noah's Ark, if Noah was asked to collect two heads from every beast instead of two whole bodies.












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