more things I did in roseburg!
art and craft day with the roseburg kids.
Today we had arts and crafts day here in Roseburg. I made these three sets of weights! Jimmy made a split sheet of flash, and Zack made a painting, and Annee made a pair of earrings with beads. Here’s some photos of everyone crafting and drawing.
I grew up the oldest of a bunch of kids. Until my brother was born, I was the only kid in a house full of people, uncles and aunts and grandparents and cousins. I love when there are a bunch of other people around making art, crafting, doing things. The energy of a group really makes it easier for me to work somehow. Even just someone in the other room writing, feeds my energy and my ambition to see things through.
Today was great.
luck dragons, fishies, and red glass beads.
Here’s a tattoo photo or two from the other day, by the way. Aquarium piece- we did the clownfish at a convention nearly eight years ago. This is on the fellow who makes Glasswear Jewelry, my friend Ryan. They aren’t the greatest photos, as my camera is in the shop. Thought you might like them anyway! and check out his stuff…he has a new site up for people in southern oregon too, to find stuff to do or add events- you can find it here.
You can get tattooed by me by emailing me… resonanteye at gmail dot com. I’ll be here til friday then in seattle next week.
Here’s a new set of plugs/wooden weights I’m working on. They’ll go up on the etsy soon. Two of the pairs I made sold so I need to make a few more to list! I can make custom sets as well, if you want something similar but don’t see quite the right length or gauge.
sketches, lavender tattoo, ear weights.
finished, one of a kind set, 7/16″
lavender
finished
on my throne
study for a thigh tattoo
fall plans, discount for prints and shirts, and saying hello to lurkers
Discount code for all the prints and shirts:
Discount on everything this week at my redbubbleshop!
15% OFF EVERYTHING! USE CODE GET15
yay for a sale at redbubble!
http://www.redbubble.com/people/resonanteye
ALL the prints and shirts and things get the discount! Only for I think this week!
ALSO, running low on the signed copies of the Horrors coloring book. Better get one soon if you want a signed copy. http://resonanteye.net/2014/08/22/the-horrors-orders/ they can be got through squareup, paypal, or etsy.
How to prepare specimens safely.
How to get the bones from animal remains you find that still have a bit of meat on them, and which are not dried out:
Wear disposable gloves. Wild animals carry loads of diseases which you can in fact succumb to, such as rabies, flu, and even leprosy (YES, leprosy).
This is the low-investment method. You can also bury or macerate the remains to get the bones; but maggot cleaning will be less involved. You could get a beetle box, but maggot cleaning is less upkeep.
- DO NOT BOIL OR SIMMER BONES. Cooked bones can and will ROT! Boiling breaks the fibers that hold bone together, making them brittle, and thinning them. Let nature do the work for you! (and keep the stink outside!)
- Put them on a piece of window screen that is twice their size, and wrap them up in it. Fold over the edges to close it like a pocket, leaving a one inch opening on one end for flies and other insects to get in.
- Hang the corpse-pocket up outside. You want it up out of reach of cats and dogs, but low enough that you can reach it. I hang remains from a tree limb near my house. You can also wrap the corpse this way and then bury it a foot deep or less. Either way, insects will do the cleaning for you. This will not work in winter though.
- Wait a few weeks, less if it is hot/humid. check on your developments. at some point the bones will be fully exposed, and all meat will have been picked away by insects.
- soak the bones in HOT water and blue Dawn dish detergent. Change out the water/detergent mix every day. It can cool off overnight, just use hot water to refill it each day. Use about two cups of Dawn per gallon of water. Do this until the bones are not yellowish with fat anymore.
- Scrub the bones in cold water with more dish soap. Then soak again in HOT water, mixed 1:1 with regular old store-type peroxide. YOU DON’T NEED BLEACH; BLEACH WILL MAKE THE BONE CRUMBLY AND WEAK, AND SOFTEN IT. Peroxide and hot water will disinfect just as well, when used in conjunction with the soap soak. refill/continue soaking until the bone is as white as you’d like. I find that it usually takes three water changes to get the ivory-cream tone I prefer.
- Dry the bones thoroughly, NOT IN THE SUN. Then spray, with a coat of matte UV protectant. Sun exposure, like bleach, degrades and weakens bone.
- The best way to hang a skull is to string it on thick, soft twine through the orbital bones, then hang that on a hook on a mountboard. I like to attach the jaw as well, and pose and articulate bones- I’ll go over that stuff in a later post.
TEAL DEER:
DON’T FUCKING BOIL OR BLEACH BONES! IT DESTROYS THEM!
How to disinfect feathers (legal ones- domestic and game birds)
Find out if they’re legal to own!
Wear disposable gloves.
Be especially cautious with feathers, because bird flu is an actual thing. So is west nile virus, salmonella, and more…
- Figure out if it is a land or water bird. Water birds have oil in their feathers, land birds do not.
- Figure out if the feather is legal to own or not. You can check the list here to find out.
- Spray with alcohol (land bird) or tea tree oil, almond oil, or oil-based castile soap (water bird) and let dry.
- Soak a paper towel with full-strength hand sanitizer, and wipe feather gently, in the direction of growth. Soak the feather well.
- Tie a string to the base of the shaft and hang the feather, shaft up, overnight to dry out.
- Using hot water, wipe the feather down again. Let dry. Use almond oil (water bird) or a damp cloth (land bird) to smooth the feather to shape it again. Again, let it dry completely.
- Smooth out with your fingers to re-shape the feather and re-attach each strand of it.
- To dye land-bird feathers, use translucent, lightfast inks (FW, or diluted liquid acrylics) and wipe ink onto feather surfaces in the pattern you want, or better yet, spray it on lightly. let it stand until the ink has dried, then wipe gently with a damp rag, using your fingers to smooth the surface and attach the strands.
- To dye water bird feathers, use an oil paint, diluted with almond or walnut oil. Make sure to re-shape the feather several times during the drying period, or the strands will clump together.
TEAL DEER? MOST FEATHERS ARE ILLEGAL, DON’T BE A DUMBASS.
(you can find my work in these materials here or here)
originally written on: Aug 1, 2012
updated today
skulls, bones, dead things, and where they come from.
Originally published on 11/16/2013
I want to talk a little bit about my materials. Mainly because I read a lot of forums and craft and art blogs, and tend to see the same comments over and over about artists that work with taxidermy or animal remains.
Nature isn’t cruel or kind; it’s just hungry.
I get a lot of questions about various things I use- mostly about bones and skulls, but a lot of people have asked about other things too- plants, rocks. Usually people are just being dense- “did you kill all those raccoons?” or “who do you have buried in the crawlspace?” or, even better, “ewwww it’s dead!” A lot of people saying this also eat fast food, buy meat at the grocery store, and let their cats roam outdoors…
I work humanely- in a sense. I don’t kill anything to make my art but yes, they are real bones and skulls. I get them from a lot of different sources. Most of the game animal bones and skulls I get from hunters- I have friends who hunt for food, and who will give me remains to work with. Most of the deer, elk, and turkey skulls and bones I use come from these sources. I also get bones from family farms- chicken, pig, and goose or turkey bones, even a few ostrich and cow remains. Most of these animals are also killed for food.
I don’t use anything from factory farms, just farms where the animals are treated well. I know this is enough to upset some people but since I also eat meat I don’t feel bad about it- I WOULD feel awful using factory-farmed items. However if I came across some, or had a source, I might use them; that piece would probably be pretty damned dark though. I tend to work with the feelings the animal’s remains give me, to make a piece that expresses the creature’s life.
I know a lot of artists who work with animal remains are a bit more humorous than I am, or more light-hearted about it in general. I do see the remains as a medium but at the same time I don’t feel good making jokes at the animal’s expense. Very rarely I get a skull or part which is light, and happy- I will sometimes make a brighter piece with those. Usually though animals live difficult lives, and their bones speak to me about this, so I don’t work very light very often.
I get questioned partly I think because of artists that do slaughter animals in the context of their work. While I don’t do this, I don’t find these artists offensive at all, it’s just not my own way of working. I don’t think it’s horrible. I have hunted for food myself, and been present for slaughtering at farms. Again- I don’t think it’s awful if you eat at KFC, either. I just personally don’t.
Some of my pieces come from road strikes. I have been working steadily on a series of photographs and an extended essay about roadside nature and roadkill, about human safety and how highways affect the animals that live near them. As a consequence of this work I have come across a LOT of roadside remains. I did get a license to collect roadkill in several states (not all states need one, but some do) and have spent a great deal of time working with these remains. A lot of these wild animals are obvious survivors of repeated injuries (fractures and old healed injuries in their skeletons attest to this) and the way they interact with the road fascinates me.
No, I have not used anything I myself ran over.
Most of my feathers come from friend’s farms. Almost all of my plant matter comes from my own place- I live on the edge of the Siuslaw, and not only the yard/forest of my house but the clearcuts nearby furnish most of my lichens, moss, and wood. I do a lot of beach collecting too. I live in Oregon, and it is legal to collect many things here, since all beaches are public. I do refrain from collecting in park areas, since those are restricted. I also don’t collect or mess with the remains of pinnipeds, or vertebrate fossils- just invertebrate fossils, collected in nonrestricted areas.
I have a few skulls and things which I have purchased. A few mink, fox, and beaver skulls which I am certain are fur trade castoffs- these items have a very dark feeling to them, and so the pieces built with them reflect that. I also have used vervet monkey skulls- the importation of these was a pain in the neck, and they are killed as a nuisance animal- so they too have a very dark feeling. Like I said, the horrors of life, death, the hard times most animals go through, are the reason my work is not light-hearted and silly. I don’t use anything illegal, and I avoid using items which may violate CITES or the MBA. (More information on the legality of animal remains is available here, if you are interested.)
I don’t work much with animals that are domestic pets, but I occasionally get some materials this way. Usually these are used for commissions for the previous owner. Some of these are more light and happy. I’ve worked with a very battered stray-dog skull, just making that piece was very upsetting. It wasn’t a joke to me.
I’ve worked with human bones too. This is where people tend to be most alarmed- although in reality it is easier to buy human bone than many animals! I get most of my human bone specimens from places which sell vintage anatomical displays, or from places such as necromance (among others) which sell oddities. Yes, these bones are legal. No, I didn’t kill anyone to get them. And YES, they are expensive for a reason. Again- most of these works are dark. I don’t get silly feelings from death.
I’ve sold work and done commissions for vegans- for people who are animal and conservation activists. My work is intended to speak about the way people are oblivious to the natural world. Nature is full of drama, death, struggle, and strangeness. I try to use the materials I have to portray that. Reminders of mortality are not for everyone. Horrific art is not for everyone. There are people who cannot sit through a horror movie and people who cannot listen to a description of how their hamburger was made. My work is not for these people, really- although knowing that my work may have given them pause or made them think about these things, about the darker side of life, is kind of the point.
Originally Published on: Apr 19, 2012
burning my face off
I love fire. I was afraid of it as a child, but as I grew older and began to challenge myself to other new and frightening experiences, I decided it was time to meet flame and make a connection with it.
A few years ago, in the middle of a bad relationship, I watched my lover breathe a huge fireball. In a very unsafe and exaggerated manner. But Oh! it was beautiful, billowing out of his mouth. I was hooked. I learned through friends who had been doing it more carefully-to look up into the sky and send the breath with the flame, to sputter just right so as not to splatter, to use the right fluids…to wet down my hair and tie it back, to clear the area first…all the standard precautions. I began to breathe fire often, at most occasions, dancing under fireballs at parties, on the beach, even alone, in the desert, on a solitary road trip. Just to see it dancing. Just to feel the glare on my face.
I love fire.
print edition of poetry book!
The print edition of my poetry book is now available!
For those of you who prefer actual ink on paper.
The book of essays goes to print tomorrow, there’ll be a kindle edition of that one as well. Pick one up! Or get both, that’d be awesome too. Or share the link with people who like poetry, the kooky bastards.
I’m pretty excited about all this. I’d never have done it without prodding, but now that it’s done and published I feel good about it. I’ll post links to the second book tomorrow once it goes live, and probably put a few new paintings up later tonight too (I have one or two things almost finished)
UPDATE: Print and kindle editions of the essay/art/tattoo book are here!
The third book in the series will be mostly images: that one won’t be out til nearer the end of the month. And I am planning a kickstarter this month, for the horror coloring book, I’ll update when both of those projects begin!
Originally Published on: Oct 4, 2013
landscape paintings.
All watercolors are on arches 140lb paper (some hotpress, some cold) and oils are unframed, on gallery-wrapped canvas.
All are painted from memory and photo reference I took, OR on site, en plein aire. When I travel, which is often, I go by car. This gives me a lot of time for landscape painting, photography, and just stopping to look around. I tend to look for places with a big vista. I grew up on the east coast and the sky out here west still seems so massive to me, crowding down against the ground in every direction. I’m a little bit obsessed with the sky out here,
Usually I include the road in my landscapes. This is because I love the road, and to me it’s the central reason, the thing I want to speak to and about, in any landscape. Whether it’s a dirt logging road, or a major highway, it’s a vein connecting all my experiences in the world.
Some are available as prints, here. Some are available as originals, if you click the images.
