The art of ethical taxidermy: A More Modern Prometheus
Chris
Styles speaks to the ethical taxidermist, Krysten Newby, about the truth behind the art of taxidermy and how she turned her passion for art and nature into a business.
There is something about seeing an animal in the flesh; something you cannot get from an image. It is tangible, you can understand its weight, its height, its literal embodiment.
In a previous life, I studied Zoology and Ecology, and I remember reading books of animal keys (imagine a pick-your-own adventure but in the end, you always end up being an animal of some sort) or books on animal mechanics, where the technical illustrations always looked a little... off.
Even the best illustrations or videos cannot do the real creatures justice. Then, I would step into the university’s Zoology Museum, a lifeless menagerie, full of beasts great and small, and some now extinct. Even if some of these specimens had seen better days, they took up physical space, instilled with a quasi-potential for life.
I think that if you study any form of life, you must have at least a small amount of fascination with death as sometimes this is the only way to learn how the trick is done. When dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but sadly, in the end, you are left with a dead frog.
So here lies the importance of a skilled taxidermist, an illusionist who can seem to bring the dead back to life. Although not the real thing... we can sometimes learn far more from a good approximation. We speak to artist and taxidermist Krysten Newby, about how she sees her craft and selling these ideas to the world around her.