Chrystal Chan


Tags: animals, dark fairy tales, deer, illustrations, innocence/menace, modern fairy tales, neo-victorian, pop surrealism, realism, symbolism
A is for Arsenic: Taxidermia
Taxidermia is the new jewelry + apparel collection from Amelia Arsenic/Destroyx‘s brand A is for Arsenic. The black+white-color-themed collection features laser-cut perspex jewelry designs and T-shirts & tanks inspired by taxidermy motifs, Victorian memento mori imagery, and vanitas artwork. The photography below was shot by Melissa Jenkins, with art direction & styling by Amelia Arsenic. See the complete collection here.
{Taxidermia: a graphic world of dark Victoriana, memento mori and macabre taxidermy. Featuring vicious yet elegant designs with a nod to the past, Taxidermia is a thoroughly contemporary art jewellery and apparel collection created and constructed in London.}


Tags: amelia arsenic, animals, antlers, avant-garde goth, black and white, bugs, deer, destroyx, jewelry, macabre, neo-victorian, spooky animal-themed jewelry, taxidermy
Roses and Thorns: The Art of Liza Corbett




Tags: animals, art shows, baroque, bird wings, branches, deer, dolls, fairy tales, flowers, flowers in hair, ghosts, greek mythology, hair, historically inspired, illustrations, intricate line drawings, jeremy hush, little red riding hood, liza corbett, macabre, nature, neo-victorian, red, roses, skulls, soft color, surreal, swan, victorian, wolves
Midori Harima



These are a few of Midori Harima’s installations, made with Xeroxed images from a variety of sources, including magazines, books, and the Internet, which she crafted by sculpting the printed media on hollow structures, to create this eerie, flat, “3Dvs.2D” effect.
Tags: deer, eerie, installation art, macabre, otherworldly, papercraft, sculptures, surreal, weird sculptures, white
Deathly Sweet: Macabre Ceramics by Maria Rubinke



Tags: babies, blood, ceramics, children, deer, dolls, innocence/menace, macabre, porcelain, red and white, sculptures, weird sculptures
Angelspit’s “Carbon Beauty”: Album Art
I love the artwork on Angelspit’s new remix CD, Carbon Beauty (released March 8), which is awesome as always. It features a black-and-white animal anatomy and taxidermy theme, and Destroyx and ZooG in some heavy-duty avant-garde all-black fetish texturific garb.

Destroyx’s outfit for Carbon Beauty album photographyCheck out all the CD booklet images below. All images are clickable for a larger view.
Tags: amazing makeup, anatomical-themed, angelspit, animal skulls, avant-garde goth, black and white, CD artwork, deer, destroyx, exposed anatomy, fascinators, skeleton, taxidermy
Casey LaLonde’s “Thank You”: Album Art
This is the packaging design for Casey LaLonde’s album Thank You centering on a cyborg deer which I quite like:
Click to enlarge Tags: CD artwork, deer, illustrations
Toads and Diamonds: The Art of S.Jin
S.Jin‘s gorgeous drawings and watercolors contrast the daintiness of porcelain-doll Victorian girls with macabre sexuality, bruising trauma, and sinister anatomical metaphors. Her delicate, exquisite linework is sometimes accompanied by magical little poems and pieces of writing that exudes her fairy-tale aesthetic.


Tags: anatomical-themed, animal skulls, animals, antlers, bones, branches, bruises, deer, flowers, innocence/menace, intricate line drawings, modern fairy tales, nature, rabbits, skeleton, teacups, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, victorian
The Trembling Fires of Dreams: An Installation
In contrast to the last “deer-related” post, this is an intriguing installation artwork by Gene Guynn, titled The Trembling Fires of Dreams, which is made from resin, enamel, and yarn, and depicts a lying white deer being circled by two black jackals. The deer has a triangle opening painted on its side, seeming to indicate a kind of vivisection, the exposure of the deer’s internals, with multicolored strands of yarn stretching up and outwards, and also pinning the deer down to the ground on either side. The jackals are attached to all black, frayed strings.



Tags: animals, black and white, deer, installation art, strings, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, vivisected
Tenderhearted Taxidermy: Twin Deer
This is a very sweet, lovingly preserved, and delicately beautiful piece of taxidermy that I rather like. Found on the taxidermy blog Ravishing Beasts, and the accompanying story is touching.

The owner explains:
I came upon twin fawns in the display case of a mom and pop toy and science store in Kansas City, Missouri. It took me two years to win the trust of the shop owner and save the money to buy them. A taxidermist spotted a dead deer by the side of the road. He stopped to properly dispose of the body and realized she was pregnant. He opened her and found near full-term twin fawns, he removed and preserved them.
Deer rarely have twins and the taxidermist retained the uterine gesture of their bodies. I built them a vitrine with a light blue base. Their prematurity exaggerates the delicacy of an incredibly sweet thing. The points of their hooves, the length of their lashes, the spots of their hides, nose to small nose in a cartoonish realism… Viewers’ eyes trick them into believing the fawns are breathing. The tragedy of beauty is its transience.
The twins live forever in their own demise. They are sleeping beauties. They have been muses since I first saw them… We dress death in lilies and bronze the names of our dead sons on walls. We erect altars of toys and hold candlelight vigils to express hope. My twin fawns sleep endlessly on their baby blue block in my studio. The twins never opened their eyes yet their wondrous fatality evokes an acceptable alternative to death.
— Peregrine Honig
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