Flesh, blood and bone featured from Fuller

Using flesh, blood and bone, artists created works that question life and death. The artwork went on exhibit at the Margaret McCalla School on Friday as part of the Fuller Project “Flesh, Blood and Bone.”

Featuring artists William Fillmore, Peter Kenar, Edmond Gettinger, Marla Roddy, Natasha Holmes, Rosalie Lopez, Bryn Taubensee and Kimberly Waite, the exhibit has unusual yet creative works of art.

Standing next to a tower of fudge covered in taxidermy mice, Taubensee explained the inspiration for her work.

“I knew that I wanted to do something with mice because I’ve always been fascinated by them, and I have experience in taxidermy,” Taubensee said. “I had some fudge leftover from a previous project.”

A work of art called “Sunrise Sunset” by William Fillmore involved a slowly turning rusty wheel. Inside the wheel was a dead hamster that continuously slid down the sides due to the constant turning of the wheel.

“On the surface, ‘Sunrise Sunset’ is simply a metaphor for the cyclical and relentless nature of life,” Fillmore said. “But on a deeper level, this piece is a response to a rising fear of death in America.”

Fillmore killed the hamster himself.

“In a post-Disney world, everyone seems to live in this illusion where killing to survive has vanished from our lives. We buy chicken at the grocery store one breast at a time, and no one thinks about how the chicken was killed,” Fillmore said. “I got asked at least 10 times if I killed the hamster myself. When I told them I did, each of them looked shocked. I used the hamster in my work, and I feel it was necessary for me to kill it myself.”

The room pulsated with music and created an ethereal atmosphere for art viewers.
Resting on a velvet pillow was a piece by Marla Roddy. It was a scapula with blood and intestine intertwined to create an illusive appearance making it not quite fit its description — the piece was titled “Flesh, Blood and Bone” and was inspired by the exhibit theme.

“This piece was pretty formal and straightforward,” Roddy said. “I got an animal bone, painted and dripped blood on it and wrapped it in a thin layer of intestine. It was inspired, quite simply, by the name of the show. I wanted to take these materials that people find grotesque and don’t want to touch and present it in a beautiful way. The velvet bases help take these objects that people may find grotesque and separate them from their immediate space, while also elevating them to a precious status.”

Other pieces, including “Ojos de Tristeza” by Rosalie Lopez, decorated the wall. They were screen-prints of a girl with very large eyes, created using blood as ink.

A piece by Peter Kenar titled “Glutton or Narcissist” involved pigskins pasted over wide, staring eyes.

One of the final pieces of the exhibit was a sheep kidney covered in salt. The piece, titled “Preserving the Preserved” by Roddy, was inspired by her thesis work.

“I’m in my MFA thesis semester, so when I was asked to be in the show, I wanted the pieces to relate to my thesis body of work,” Roddy said. “‘Preserving the Preserved’ is kind of an oxymoron because the sheep kidney is already preserved in formaldehyde, but in an almost desperate attempt to ‘save’ it, I placed it in a salt solution to grow salt crystals on it as an extra preservative measure. It relates to my thesis work in that I’m making ritualistic objects in a traditional craft mode that relate to my father’s health issues.”

The people who went to the exhibit viewed the art and engaged artists in conversation.

“Though it was hard for us to keep the show serious and not overly dramatic, the conversations that it generated made it all worthwhile,” Fillmore said. “I had a lot of trepidation about putting this show together because of the nature of the subject matter and how it might have been misinterpreted, but it went really well.”