viz.

Image Credit: Jon Montmayor photo of "Rejected Brother" by Tildon Humphrey

H/T to Jessica

Partly in the spirit of the upcoming holiday, and partly as a thematic continuation of recent viz. posts, I'd like to introduce you to an Austin-based artist whose work repurposes and reinvigorates "natural history."  Tildon Humphrey's creations look right back at us and ask us to re-think what we see.

Hunting trophies: monuments to man's truimph over nature.  They hang on walls in homes and hunting lodges, natural history museums and country manors.  Often creepy, at times angry, and nearly always sad, these shells of the once-living are paradigmatic assertions of domination.  What better way to prove authority than to hang the dead from the walls?  World leaders did it for centuries, but in the age of human rights, human trophies are abominations that we hope we never have to imagine.  Thanks to the Victorians, however, taxidermy evolved into an art form to enrich any home's decor.  Tildon Humphrey's take on taxedermy, on the other hand, encourages us to think about our objectification of living things

Image Credit: Jon Montmayor photo of "Bereshit" by Tildon Humphrey

Humphrey's artistic beginnings are humble - he rescued two mounted deer heads from a trash heap, saddened at the thought that the creatures' lives would go to such waste.  Yet, like most of us animal-lovers, Humphrey had a hard time looking at the preserved corpses in his living room.  He decided that if, perhaps, the animals didn't look quite so real, their presence wouldn't be so unsettling.  Thus, with some hair dye and hot glue the aristic creations of OpenedHeart.com were born.  Okay, I don't know if he actually used hot glue, but over time, Humphrey acquired several more discarded trophies, and his works continue to evolve despite their premature demise.

Image Credit: Jon Montmayor photos on OpenedHeart.com

Humphrey's work gives each animal a sort of second-life, and I particularly appreciate the recycled/re-purposed aspect of his art.  As hunting trophies, the deer carcasses hung as monuments to their own defeat.  With their new face lifts, each animal reminds us of the sanctity of life - that we can't access (and shouldn't repress) the spirit within others, be they human or beast.  Any dog or cat owner would agree that animals have personalities, so why would deer be any different?

Image Credit: Jon Montmayor photo of "Nirvana" by Tildon Humphrey

The artist is extremely spiritual, and his discussion of his works might surprise you.  They're often inspired by scriptures (and not just disco).  For example, Nirvana, the piece pictured above, is inspired by "a quote from a psalm likening the physical thirst of a deer to the author's thirst for God."  I'll let you look at his site for more detailed discussion of the symbolism behind each piece, but the works are often able to speak for themselves.  They seem to say to us with their silent eyes, "Life is beautiful, and the dead deserve respect."