Yesterday I was cruising my favorite website in some of my spare time, and stumbled across an article about taxidermy. The article profiles a young female taxidermist who considers herself a 'recycler' of dead animals into art. She basically goes around finding roadkill or dead animals and recycling them into artistic poses or functional pieces. She seems completely fine with skinning and stuffing animals, but the whole idea of de-fleshing a carcass of an animal completely grosses me out but fascinates me at the same time. If I had a stronger stomach I might even consider watching a youtube video of how the process is done. Anyway, what brings me to write about this article I read was one of the last comments in the interview. The interviewer asks the woman whether or not she would ever consider doing taxidermy on a human! She says that if it was legal, she wouldn't shy away from the idea. This idea actually links into the blog prompt for this week quite nicely. If we had other options other than cremation or graves, how would you like to be 'disposed of' (for lack of a better word). I'm not sure I'd want to be a full life sized feature of someones home (that might bring about a bit more anxiety than love of seeing a stuffed human hanging out on your couch in the living room). However, if there were other options, I think I would be fully on board with doing something creative with my body after death. I think I would have my body compressed into some sort of jewellery that my family could wear and take with them. I think that would be a good way of remembering versus stuffing me and having me chilling in the house. I can only imagine how frightening it would be if someone decided to play a joke and start hiding stuffed Stephanie around the house. ... in the closet, behind the coats, behind the shower curtain....... Only someone with as terrible a sense of humour as I have would even consider doing that.
Here is the article I was reading if you'd like to take a look. It's pretty neat!
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/if-its-dead-nicola-jayne-hebson-will-stuff-it
Cheers!
I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of taxidermy on a human and how the woman interviewed seems completely on board with it but I do think your idea of being made into some type of jewelery would be really cool.
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