A while back I put up a post on Facebook about Taxidermy. I found my link! Of course it has Ryan Matthew in it! What a small world indeed! Another person who is pretty famous is Damien Hirst. You know, the guy who put a tiger shark in a tank filled with formaldehyde. He also put cows, sheep, pigs, and a zebra in his stainless steel boxes. My favorite is called "Some comfort gained from the acceptance of the inherent lies in everything", which is the above picture. It's 12 vertical tanks filled with formaldehyde and inside are cross sections of a cow. Viewers can walk around and between the tanks so they can see the segments of the carcass. Remember the movie, The Cell, with Jennifer Lopez? The part when the horse gets sliced up and then gets displayed in pieces? Hirst's installation is similar to that:
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Carl Akeley, (1864-1926) along with William Hornaday was a taxidermist and a conservationist. He attended Ward's Natural Science Establishment several years later after Hornaday.
Akeley specialized in African mammals, particularly the gorilla and the elephant. As a taxidermist, he improved on techniques of fitting the skin over a carefully prepared and sculpted form of the animal's body, producing very lifelike specimens, with consideration of musculature, wrinkles, and veins. He also displayed the specimens in groups in a natural setting (from Wikipedia). In 1909, he began to work at the American Museum of Natural History (one of my dream jobs!) and one of its permanent exhibitions is named after him. The Akeley Hall of African Mammals displays elephants, lions, and gorillas, all made by Akeley. I went to visit the AMNH and below are some of my photos. They are of Elephants, Gemsbok, Colobus Monkeys, Rhinos, Opakis, Greater Koodoos, Crustaceans, Insects, and Mollusks. Continuing with science/taxidermy topics, I am reading a book called Still Life, An adventure in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom. So far it's about her life with taxidermy. She starts off with visiting a taxidermist's studio in New Jersey where she meets the Schwendemans. They are a taxidermy family who worked at the American Museum of Natural History for decades. Check out this video by Martha Stewart when she visited them, here. But before the Schwendemans, was William Hornaday. WH (for short) was born 1854-1936 in Indiana. He studied as a taxidermist at Henry Ward's Natural Science Establishment in Rochester before Carl Akeley (blog coming soon) was there. He also was the chief taxidermist for the Smithsonian National Museum in Washington DC and director of the Bronx Zoo for 30 years. WH was also a hunter but soon discovered the decimation of the American Bison. After hunting in India, Borneo, and Montana, Hornaday became a conservationist. He wrote many books and articles, which you can read one here. Hornaday along with his friend, Teddy Roosevelt founded the American Bison Society in 1905, which led to protecting bison, birds, seals and other wild life animals.
There was a hurricane this week and it prevented me from going out and watching certain movies. I wanted to see ParaNorman, (see previous blog) Frankenweenie and Hotel Transylvania. I am such a slacker! I am sure I will see these movies by myself too, since a lot of my friends don't like stop motion, and the ones that do, don't really watch a lot of movies. Oh well! I love movies! That's what my whole family does during the holidays, and pretty much in general, is watch movies! So as soon as the L train is up and running into Manhattan, I am going to buy my $13 tickets to see all these fun films!
Also, speaking of movies, or shorts, I am coming back to my PMS blog. I started a wedding website and finalize the date, venue, photographer, caterer and dress! So now I can take a break from the wedding business and come back to my normal life of stop motion! Our good friend Joemca finally did the music for my lab video! Check it out!
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My short blog topics include: photography, music, science, crafts, vacation photos, movies, events in NYC, and of course stop motion animation.
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