Thank you for your comments. I appreciate that animals are not deliberately killed to create these objects.

I don’t have an issue with people using animal skins, bones, etc. for other purposes. I wear leather. I have skulls and skull replicas as well as fossils of many kinds on my shelves. I’ve used found skulls and bones to create artwork.

I don’t have a problem with taxidermy either, per se. It’s not my cup of tea, but if people want to preserve animals as mounted specimens, well, that’s up to them. If it were not for mounted museum specimens we would not know what some animals and birds, now extinct, looked like. Even displaying flayed carcasses could be considered educational, although it certainly takes some getting used to.

The thing is, I’ve spent my whole life caring for, treating, and studying animals. I believe that animals’ remains should be treated with respect. Even if they are roadkill. Displaying preserved animals in naturalistic poses is one thing. I would not want a mounted deer’s head, etc., but I don’t condemn those who do. Maybe it’s just my nature-worshipper hippie philosophy, but creating jackalopes and chupacaras and such seems to me disrespectful and obscene.

That’s my purely personal opinion.

I use no animal remains whatsoever when I make my stuff, which is a personal thing…I even make teeth and nails.

But when an animal is already dead the shame is ‘wasting’ any parts of it if it can be used for creative and or educational purposes. I used to do painting on rabbit skins. The rabbits were food stock out of Spain, they were not killed for their skins. An old Indian thing ya know to use it all and honor the death.
So be it. Hook a hey.

I once had a woman at a Flea Market make a big scene for my using the Rabbit Skins to paint my artwork on…she was loud and trying to embarrass me. I asked her if the Oysters had volunteered their Pearls for her necklace. She shut up.

But then how can you have a ‘fake’ of something that doesn’t exist in the first place? A fake legend? A fake myth?

“That’s not a real Feegee Mermaid! It’s a fake!” or extended…”That’s not a real Giant Eyeball from Mars with Teeth! It’s a fake Giant Eye Ball from Mars with Teeth!” extended further with a slight curve…”That’s not a real Giant Man! It’s a big fake selling tires!” and further…”That’s not real art! It’s fake!”

Of course you CAN have a fake Mummy…BUT since the actual Mummy of an Egyptian King is also a GAFFED up carcas, a representtation of the formerly living King made by the hand of man, is that not also a fake from the get go as opposed to a Mummy from Peru which is naturally mummified? Hmmm. (excuse me while I enjoy this conversation with myself…)

The mummy of a ‘Chupacabra’ adds that other element to the scene by twisting the reality of a natural mummy of a dog into an imaginary creature that really can’t be faked because it never was in the first place. A rubber Godzilla suit IS the REAL Godzilla, technically. An animation cel of Fredf Flintstone IS the REAL Fred Flinstone.

Once a CLAIM is made as to exactly what it is supposed to be…the results are all depending on the disappointment factor in the viewers expectations and the level of urge for raising their hand in the back of the class for a gold star…”That space ship from Jupiter was fake, I could see the wires!”

A simple sign of ‘What Is It?’ will have far more interesting results than a Claim that it is something it’s not…which causes some to prove you wrong rather than to consider the possibilities.

I think it’s great piece whatever it is or it’s origin, nature or hand of man or both.

Thanks for allowing me to speak with myself on this issue.