I sent my Momento Mori collection to the talented and beautiful Anna Swiczeniuk for her to model and shoot. As always she created beautiful images that never disappoint.

Here is a selection of what she did. For more and to buy from the collection please visit Once boutique.

Recently I have put my mind to doll making. A while ago I made these fascinators based on an idea by S.Jin to make tiny antlers for skulls. My cousin suggested I should extend them into dolls so I did. Here is the first.

His antlers, hoofs and hands are made from polymore clay then painted and varnished. His tail suite is red velvet embellished with ribbon, lace and pearls. His hind legs are posable (he’s very clever, you see).

He is a rather tall gentleman, about 2foot

I think this is the longest I’ve spent on something before as it took me over a week to complete. Im rather proud of him seeing as it was my first time making a doll and I will definitely be making more.

ONCE GIVEAWAY!

Giveaway to celebrate the opening of ‘Once’

HOW TO ENTER

‘Like’ the ‘Once’ facebook page. On the 7th of December I will do a random draw of all entries.

WHAT YOU WILL WIN

The winner will recieve a ‘Once’ tote bag with art by Jon M.D.C, a ‘Once’ top printed with art by S.Jin, an Amore de Mori butterfly vial necklace and a choice of five Amore de Mori mobile phone charms.

You could get this plane to a planet near the earth, about as far as the moon looks. Just above the cloud line but out of our atmosphere.

When I visted there was a building that supported human needs in air and gravity. you could go to a viewing room which had a giant window made from meter thick hardened glass.

The room is dark and cold and I am on my own. Looking out the window my eyes can’t quite comprehend what I see. It is so alien its reaches into a soul I dont have and I am gripped by an anxiety I dont understand. My brain cant access the feeling, I am broken on bended knee staring out at the abyss. A vast beautiful indifference that makes me want to die.

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Shope papilloma virus is an affliction affecting cottontail rabbits which produces large growths mainly around the head and face. The virus infects and mutates the follicle cells resulting in red swelling and eventually produces a warty growth. These warts can lead to malignant tumours but the rabbit often dies of starvation or dehydration before hand.
This is considered to be the explanation for the cryptid ‘jackalope‘

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The ‘mad hatterpillar’ is the larval form of the gum leaf skeletonizer moth. Every time it sheds its skin it leaves the head capsule and gradually stacks them on top of each other. This offers some protection from predators who will attack one of the fake ‘heads’  instead of the real one

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Researchers in memory have discovered that walking through a doorway can decrease your memories performance as opposed to walking the same difference in an open space.

Walking through doorways serves as an event boundary, thereby initiating the updating of one’s event model [i.e. the creation of a new episode in memory]

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Treehopper insects have developed a wide and varied range of ‘helmets’, not all of which the functions are understood. Some are thought to mimic the flora of its habitat, some to mimic other unagreeable insects like ants or wasps.
In a linage thats thought to be at least 40 million years old, the tree hoppers is considered an ideal candidate for the theory of evolution. Having developed the ability to hop from one plant to another (and in some cases never even leaving the host plant) they have discarded the need for flight and their wings have over time come to produce elaborate and bizarre formations.

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Guaraná (paullinia cupana) is a climbing plant relative to the maple family found commonly in Brazil and native to the Amazon basin. Its name translates to ‘fruit like the eyes of the people ’
The fruit contains twice as much caffeine as a coffee bean and is used in most south american soft drinks as well as being made locally into a tea.
It is believed in a myth that Guaraná comes from the plucked eye of a beloved village child. The child was killed by Juruparí (the god of darkness) so to console the villages Tupã told them to plant the eyes. When they did so the Guaraná plant grew.

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‘Drawing hands’ by Escher

The ‘rubber hand illusion’  is a procedure used to determine a persons sense of body ownership. A persons hand is placed out of sight and replaced within the line of sight with a similar fake hand. Both hands are then stroked with a brush and the person asked when they could feel it. Studies show that a participants suffering from schizophrenia is likely to favor the fake hand and ‘feel’ the brush strokes on it rather then those on their actual hand. This is down to a lack of proprioception (also see waxy flexibility)

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The Cottony Cushion Scale (Icerya purchasi) is an insect that has a evolved into a self sustaining hermaphrodite.  The female contains a genetically identical parasitic replica of her father. This will then fertilize her eggs internally, making sex obsolete.

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Inosculation occurs naturally when two branches growing close together gradually rub away the bark and graft as one.
Axel Erlandson realized he could craft living sculptures through this process. In 1947 he opened a ‘tree circus‘  where his most impressive sculptures were installed.

I find myself mentally at a permanent cross road, my thoughts fall like regimented rain.
One voice tells me its scared, another tells it to shut up, one is calling my laptop a fucking whore, somewhere something cries for my mother,  a permanent whine about things not being right, a memory sparks nostalgia, hysteria asks for oblivion, a soft cooing rings out for a kitten.
I want to live I want to die I want to eat ice cream and pet cats and murder children and collect pokemon and destroy foundations.

I hate it when people refer to animals as something other then what we are. I hate it when people elevate themselves above nature or berate themselves to something lower. I find it difficult to refer to myself as a misanthrope as although for the most part I hate ‘people’ I also accept them as part of the vast indifference of a savage garden.

Wasps lay their eggs in spiders, birds build nests from spit,  lions kill cubs to sever rival bloodlines, we shoot guns and build cathedrals.

The universe doesnt care, the universe is indifferent.
You are always the smallest thing in existence and the largest.
Your insignificance and magnitude is purely subjective.

When I first started sharing Amore de Mori on the internet (about 5 years ago) I can happily say there was very little similar work around. Not to say it hadn’t been done, there have been many people who have used this medium in  fashion. Not to then mention the Victorians and various indegionous tribes.

Victorian seagull set

jewellery by The Idiots

Alexandra McQueen

More and more I have started to become concerned with the message my work with Amore de Mori  is giving to people. I am quite horrified and disgusted in a ‘taxidermy accessory’ trend that I feel I am part to blame for. I feel like I am perpetrating a mockery of the animals that are used in this kind of work when I only ever wanted to make something beautiful.

When Etsy first started I entered ‘taxidermy’ into the search bar and the only thing that came up was work like this. Now if you try the same its a very different story, there are 3,147 results with a good portion of these being ‘taxidermy accessories’.  The reason this bothers me so much is for one a lot of the work is ripped off from myself  and others, the work usually being an unoriginal and poor quality imitation made in very bad taste. Far far more so though is that this is a fade built on the bodies of animals. I know I personally source animal remains within my own code of ethics but I cant say the same for many others out there. I have contacted sellers before asking where they think the remains they use have come from and was told once by a girl that she ‘didnt like to think about it’.
Most of the low quality work I see uses a lot of mink remains. I know these are easy bones to obtain because you can buy job lots from ebay cheaply as a by product from the fur industry. I didnt originally have a problem with this because although I abjure the fur trade I believe strongly that remains should be used and not wasted. Now that so many people are using them though it starts to make me feel that they are feeding the industry rather then making use of something  superfluous.

I would like to feel that my work reflects my feeling and my effort but recently I have become discouraged with continuing. I put in a great deal of time self teaching myself taxidermy and am very emotionally involved with my work. I have a huge passion for natural history and a respect for animals that I would like to believe is reflected in what I do. Right now I am very discouraged that this is the case, I find I have begun ignoring commission requests and rarely involve myself in photo-shoots containing my work. I still very much love what I do but my hatred of  the bastardised version means I have been locked in a limbo not knowing how to continue.

It has been the longest time since I felt enthusiasm but I am very unwilling to let it go. I hope to find solace for this in the future but I am not convinced I will.

I used to think I was an urban creature. I enjoyed the complexity of a city and wanted to crawl the streets as a feral fox drinking in all the memories and crass idiosyncrasies of the people who haunted bars and kept bottom draws. I still held a great fear of the sublime and nature was cold and hollow.
Now I want nothing more but to move away, I find an awesome bond in nature that horrifies and repulses me. I want to sink back into rotting leaves and barren indifference.

“We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

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Crooked forest in Poland.
I’ve  searched a lot to find a definitive cause for this but it appears to come down to one of two explanations. One is that these trees had human interference to make them crooked for possibly furniture making or for ship compass timbers. The other reason is that as saplings these trees were buried under heavy snow.
A less scientific explanation I found was that this is an ‘evil forest’. Something very evil happened here and the trees bent crooked in tribute.

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The bodies of Everest.
Mount Everest has approximately 200 dead bodies that lie where they fell along the path to the peak. some even used as landmarks.
Due to the weather climate many are well preserved. Above is an image of George Mallory who went on the British mount Everest expedition in 1924 where he met his fate
When asked why he wanted to climb Everest he replied ‘because its there’

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Lichtenberg figures lightning  flower.
Lichtenberg figures are the the branching  arms of electrical discharge. This fern like marks are made by capillaries bursting as the electrical charge pass’s through the body when struck by lightning. These marks last hours or days and are sometimes used to determine a cause of death.
I find these amazingly beautiful

Victorian death photography became popular after the invention of the daguerreotype (the first commercially successful photographic process). Most families couldn’t afford to have a portrait painted so instead they would have a photograph taken. Infant mortality rates were very high and this was sometimes the only image of a child that parents would have.

Early memento mori photography usually depicted the child as if alive posed with a favourite play thing or relative. Sometimes details were added to the photo like painting on open eyes or a rosey blush to the cheeks. Later on images started to be more of the dead in a coffin surrounded by relatives and funeral attendees.

Memento mori photography reminds me in a way of taxidermy. Something dead that is made to appear alive. The last moment recorded in the creatures body and face and then suspended forever. A glimpse of something transient made eternal.

Recently i have made a line of jewellery inspired by these photographs.

These will be for sale at my stall for the Norwich body art festival and then eventually online

Things have started to really get going with ‘Once‘ and some artists were kind enough to give multiple submissions. I will be holding a stall at the Norwich body art festival with my friend (and amazing artists) Ruby Wolfe and I will be selling shirts for ‘Once’ there as well as new memento mori jewellery (blog for this coming soon) and work from Amore de Mori.

I recently got some test prints back which turned out amazing!

art by Jon MDC

art by Ruby Wolfe

art by S.Jin

There is much more to come and I will be setting up an online shop soon. If you happen to be at the Norwich body art festival come over and say hi