'Weird' Mouse Taxidermy a Revived Art Rage
United Press International
Feb 14, 2011
A New York City gallery taxidermy class in which dead mice are used to create human-like figurines sold out in 4 hours, the teacher said.
Observatory Art Space in the trendy Gowanus neighborhood of New York's Brooklyn borough offered the $45, 3-hour, "anthropomorphic taxidermy" class, and has had to add three more sessions to meet the demand, the New York Post reported Sunday.
The art form is a "bizarre Victorian hobby that featured mice, squirrels and cats in various forms of dress, the Post reported.
Once popular in high Victorian society, such stuffed animals were sometimes set up in tableaux and were featured in Scudder's American Museum in scenes of weddings and banquets, the Post reported.
Mouse taxidermy was featured in the 2010 movie "Dinner for Schmucks," in which actor Steve Carell removed dead mice from the street to stuff and arrange them as humanized figures, the Post said.
The Post did not speculate as to whether the movie influenced the renewed interest in the art form.
The gallery will have a Hamlet mouse dressed in a cape and a green-haired punk-rocker mouse to inspire the students in the class.
"It looks less like an animal and more like a weird art project," said the teacher, taxidermist Susan Jeiven, 39, who also is a tattoo artist.
Jeiven said she procures the frozen mice from snake-feed shops, thaws them out and draws out their blood with a syringe.
Students will scrape out the animals' entrails with razors and remove the bones. Borox and strong chemicals are use to preserve their coats. Students will then create clay mold and sew the skins on, using wire to set the vermin in the desired pose, Jeiven said.
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Copyright 2011 by United Press International
