[Tuesday: April 15th, 2008]
Well, I've done it again. More long months have passed without an update. Well, here you go friends!
Press:
Check out the new edition of NYC24 for an audio slideshow featuring my meaningless ramblings and lots of other Rogue Taxidermy goodness.
The new volume of the art publication Charley, Charley 05, contains images from all three M.A.R.T. founders, including yours truly. Click the link to head on over to Amazon.com and get yourself and your extended family a copy.
I was recently described by the Las Vegas Review Journal as having "...a stocky build and a long, unkempt beard that would be suitable for a mad butcher." Indeed! Check out the full article here.
New Stuff:
Lots of new latex props coming soon! And maybe even some taxidermy! Check back soon, I promise there will be more to look at here!
S. a. a. B.
[Monday: October 29th, 2007]
Hi friends! Halloween is upon us and as the season comes to a close it's time for me to take a little vacation from the prop biz. We had an awesome year at FrightProps and I'm super excited about creating some new props for 2008, but now it's time to relax a little and *GASP* do some taxidermy! So here's a new mount to check out.
I'm dubbing this guy Fallout Squirrel. Partially inspired by my anticipation for the upcoming Bethesda game Fallout 3, this guy also represents some therapeutic taxidermy. Anyone who engages in a craft knows how it feels to get burned out. Sometimes the best way to get passed that is to let go of your self-inflicted restrictions and do something fun. That's all this fellow is. Mutants are cool.
[Monday: June 18th, 2007]
I am turning the long slow corner from not working to working. Trust me friends, there will be more here very soon. Summer is good. My digital camera is broken so I need to get that fixed before I can post any new images. You be patient, I will be penitent.
S. a. a. B.
[Monday: April 23rd, 2007]
Wow. It's hard to believe I haven't updated the site in over two months. I haven't been working on much taxidermy lately. Work has been very busy ever since we got back from a big tradeshow at the end of February. I am still filling orders from that. I got some very nice feedback on some of the new props, including one that I never got around to posting here. This is Skinned Bear:
...I'll add him to the store as soon as I get a chance. As usual, you can buy this prop exclusively through FrightProps.
I don't have any taxidermy to share with you right now, but to prove that I am, in fact, working on new mounts, here's an awesome picture of a cat hide drying on my shower curtain rod:
[Wednesday: January 31st, 2007]
Whew...finally finished something new! I owe the talented, kind, and generally amazing Crist Ballas a great deal of gratitude for helping with this mount. Check out his amazing make-up work here: Metamorphosis Make-Up. This mount was sort of sitting on the shelf waiting for something special to really finish it off. Crist provided just the thing with an amazing set of handmade teeth! So, take a gander at Zombie Rabbit:
As always, check out the gallery for another image. I will also have a new prop to post here as soon as I get some good pictures of it, so be ready for that!
See ya,
S.a.a.B.
[Thursday: January 11th, 2007]
Happy New Year everybody! My resolution is to do more taxidermy and keep working on this site. Tonight I added a new item to the prop section of the store, Dead Dog. You should all buy one for your valentine's day sweethearts...it's right around the corner!
[Sunday: December 17th, 2006]
Well, despite my best intentions these weekly updates have become more like monthly updates. I have been sort of comatose for the last several weeks, but I am feeling the old itch and promise there will be some new stuff to look at here very soon. Hold tight friends!
S. a. a. B.
[Tuesday: October 31st, 2006]
Happy Halloween everybody! It's been a wild month and a fantastic year. To celebrate every Rogue Taxidermist's favorite holiday, me and the other M.A.R.T. founders took a trip to New York City to give a taxidermy demonstration as part of the second annual Great Autumnal Taxidermy Get-Together. The event included a taxidermy contest with notable entries by Takeshi Yamada, Nate Hill, and a slew of other taxidermy enthusiasts. People displayed all kinds of taxidermy, created and collected. Entries were judged and prizes awarded. It was great night and I had a blast doing the demo as this picture (taken by the beautiful and talented Robyn Swank) demonstrates:
Now, make way for new taxidermy, because it's mother fuckin' on its way!
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: October 1st, 2006]
Hello friends. The October has arrived which means things at FrightProps should start slowing up a bit allowing me more time to work on taxidermy. Nothing much to report right now. In what little spare time I have, I've been reading the new Dark Horse collections of Junji Ito's horror comics. The first two volumes of these collections are all selections from his Tomie series. It's great stuff!
That's it for right now. Expect much more soon!
Take care,
S.a.a.B.
[Tuesday: September 19th, 2006]
GAH! No time my friends, no time! I will be back in full force shortly!
[Wednesday: September 6th, 2006]
Yikes! Things have been too crazy at the prop shop to allow for my normal taxidermy shenanigans. Sorry pals. To make up for it, here is a picture of something gross:
Also, like nearly everyone on the planet, I was greatly saddened this week by the sudden death of Steve Irwin. The natural kingdom has lost one of its most engaging advocates.
[Sunday: August 27th, 2006]
Hello everybody. Despite the continually insane volume of work coming in at the prop shop I managed to squeeze out a new mount this week: Bluegill with Boils
When I first started doing taxidermy I was inspired by the idea of creating mounts that bucked taxidermic traditions and depicted animals in states other than glorious life. That included mounts of animals posed as if they were dead and also mounts of animals obviously afflicted by disease. This is my first experiment with the latter category. This poor Bluegill has some nasty pus-filled boils and ulcers. Definitely not your traditional trophy mount. It feels really good to get back to working with more fish. There should be many more aquatic mounts to come!
Take care,
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: August 20th, 2006]
Hi everybody.
Finished a new mount this week: Parrot Fish Cocktail
As usual, check out the gallery for another image.
That's all this time around!
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: August 13th, 2006]
Hi folks. Really nothing to report this week. I have been very busy over at FrightProps filling orders for the Halloween rush.
I rented out a few pieces of taxidermy for use in the upcoming Showtime original series Dexter.
I have also been spending too much time playing Capcom's latest zombie game Dead Rising.
I am glad to find a game that capitalizes on the two things that attract fans of the zombie genre: zombies and stealing stuff....plus you can kill zombies with frozen dead fish while wearing a pink dress...and I support that.
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: August 6th, 2006]
I finished a new mount this week: Guinea Pig--Front Half.
You can see another picture in the gallery section.
Work has finally begun on the M.A.R.T. Guide to Rogue Taxidermy. I will be posting some of the writing as it progresses.
Take care, friends.
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: July 30th, 2006]
Not too much to report this week. I added a links section to the contact page and the gallery has finally expanded into its second glorious section with the addition of an old mount I recently reworked. It's a mount of a small eel pout...belly gaping open, intestines and the remains of a small fish spilling out.
They say smell is the most powerful sense tied to memory. I certainly remember my time at taxidermy school mostly through smells...the wet towel sticky-sweet smell of green deer capes, the smell of duck grease bridging the formerly disparate worlds of slaughter house and kitchen table, and the long list I call: The Most Horrible Smells Imaginable. This mount was inspired by one of these smells. Early on in my taxidermic education, I was skinning a small Northern Pike. It is much harder to skin a fish without puncturing its guts than it is a mammal...the insides of a fish just seem to all slide together, flaking meat gives way to entrails at the softest push. Pike smell fairly bad whole and alive...sort of like warm pickle brine...but the inside of a Pike is a truly brutal mess. As I was slogging my way around this former fish's innards, my scalpel slipped and a once plump section of greasy tubing deflated with a hiss. I am tempted to use Lovecraftian descriptors about this smell...to tell you that it was a smell so horrible that by even attempting to describe it to you I would surely go completely mad. Let's just say it was one of the Most Horrible Smells Imaginable. Being a man of copious curiosities, I decided to find out what was producing this vile miasma. As I dug through the animal's colon I found a fairly large, half-digested perch. I never really knew what half-digested meant before. I had seen the phrase in some Steven King books I think. But this perch was truly half digested. It had been swallowed tail first...which at least testifies to the intelligence of the perch. The head was rotten and partially dissolved by stomach acids...the tail had already turned to fish turds. Sometimes it is hard not to think of my body as little more than a factory that sucks in pieces of recently dead animals and squirts them out the other end as shit. That's a grim view of the human condition, isn't it? We living animals...splendid in our bio-diversity, walk the world in endless ranks sucking up life and squirting out shit, imbued by a toilet-humored god with an incessant urge to propagate.
Good night, friends.
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: July 23rd, 2006]
Hello everybody.
This week I added yet more pictures to the gallery, including a picture of a new mount: Housecat 2.
Created as companion piece for an earlier mount (Housecat), this mount completes the tandem sculpture Bookends.
I found both of these cats killed on the road near the FrightProps workshop. I am interested in the relationship between the disconnects that allow us to use animals for clothing and decoration, and the disconnecting function of explicitly violent images. Does sitting on a leather couch serve the same function as viewing comically gory images...allowing us to brush against the edge of a great fear? Two different kinds of ignorance...removal of evidence, and discrediting of source information. These are my current excuses.
Also new on the site this week is a short bio on the contact page. The illustration is by renaissance draftsman Jacob de Gheyn II, who has been a great influence on me. His illustration entitled Head of a Skinned Ox helped to guide the creation of my Severed Bull Head prop.
...I continue to be powerfully moved by renaissance era illustrations of dead animals and people.
Take care friends,
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: July 16th, 2006]
Hello everybody.
This week I added some more pictures to the gallery. I have a lot more to add and will be working on that for next week as well as hopefully having a new piece to share with you.
If you would like to hear some of my thoughts regarding the anatomical exhibit Body Worlds, I posted the answers to some questions posed by a local reporter on my myspace blog here.
Thank you to everyone who gave me feedback on the new web design, I will make good on some of your suggestions soon!
S.a.a.B.
[Sunday: July 9th, 2006]
Welcome to my new website.