The Art of Rogue Taxidermy

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Some people never leave home without their phone or wallet. Minneapolis artist Sarina Brewer never leaves home without a cooler, a hacksaw, and rubber gloves. That’s because she’s always at the ready to find road kill and other “pet casualties” to use as art subjects for her special brand of “rogue taxidermy,” which includes winged monkeys, conjoined squirrels and rabbits, and even a chicken-carp-lamb combo, Bust magazine reports.

She essentially creates fanciful, often irreverent sculptures by splicing together the bodies of various taxidermic animals, or, in other instances, transforming the creature into a freak-show mutant by adding an extra head, leg, or other body part….Unlike traditional taxidermists, who preserve only animal hides, Brewer tries to avoid wasting the innards. As a consequence, she makes a fair amount of carcass art, which she creates by chemically treating muscle tissue before fashioning them into a whimsical pose–like a sculpture of dancing squirrel guts.

Brewer herself is fascinating, having grown up in a family so fond of their deceased pets that they relocated the remains whenever they moved. That same sense of memorializing has been a key influence in her work. The article isn’t online, but you can at least check out some of Brewer’s mutant creations in Bust‘s mini-mag if you scroll to pages 52-55.

Source: Bust

Image courtesy of Sarina Brewer

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