#petpreservation

Paw preservation / taxidermy pet memorial by Precious Creature

(SOLD btw, Thank you!)

George the opossum’s skull is finished as of earlier today. I previously posted a photo of George’s adorable feet, and I’m very happy with how well his skull has cleaned up. His is definitely the largest opossum skull I have processed (look at his huge crest and teeth!!), and he will be going back home to his human parents very soon. The rest of George has been very kindly donated to me to work with, and I have been very honored to work with such a lovely family for this memorial preservation. *George was rescued from a bad situation when he was a baby, and his human mom had previous experience with wildlife rehabilitation. George needed and received special care, and an opossum is not a suitable pet for everyone. (I am posting this, and any future updates, with permission from George’s mom. George is a beloved family member, and only kindness will be tolerated.) • If you have lost a furry, feathery, scaley, or even spikey friend, and are interested in any of my memorial services, you can contact me anytime. I offer a variety of options, including (but not limited to): skull/skeleton cleaning, articulations, fur/skin preservation, wet preservation, and more.

Boa constrictor Ares’ completed skull preservation bundle: head, columella or inner ear bones, 3 additional vertebrae, and a tiny potion bottle containing his floating, regenerating teeth.

Saturday night articulation station

The pet was a large tortoise named Tank who roamed free-range in my house in the mid 1970’s when I was growing up. A few years after he died, I covertly dug up his bones and hid them in a secret container on a rudimentary shrine in my bedroom. His remains were the first I ever kept. Over the years that followed, I saved a handful more from other pets and the esoteric shrines became more elaborate. Later, while in college, I began incorporating their cherished remains into memorial artworks. Over the years a lot of articles about my art have mentioned the above practice. However, in an attempt to sensationalize my work, none of them ever mentioned what sort of animals the pets were or specifically what I created with them. Writers intentionally left that up to the imagination of readers in order to conjure up images of me digging up cats and dogs under the light of a full moon. To this day some writers are still eager to capitalize upon the “dug-up-her-dead-pets-and-made-art-with-their-bodies” angle. You would think by now people would have grown bored of this tagline. Sadly, people tend to be narrow-minded so anything outside of Western social norms remains an eccentricity to them. After working tirelessly for 3 decades to legitimatize my belief system and my choice of art materials I still receive invitations from galleries asking me to participate in their “Halloween exhibitions” and get approached by death metal bands and horror book authors for cover art. To avoid fostering further typecasting, I politely decline. After 30 years of working with animal remains, I still feel somewhat disheartened when people interpret my work as morbid. Unless you are an artist yourself, you have no idea how intensely personal a piece of art can be to its creator. And unless you have worked with the body of an animal, you don’t know how much more intimate the connection to the work is. My work is a celebration of life, not a spectacle of death. This isn’t for shock value. My art is my religion

Ah! Finally finished reassembling Ares’ skull! Here it is, next to his death cast. Special thanks to his devoted caretaker @titaniumorchid for allowing his preservation journey to be shared with everyone! 🐍🌌