I Wonder How Good A taxidermist This Man WouldBe?

HMMM!!! Explains why never a single picture!! Hey....Its 2018...nothing to be ashamed of........much!!!

 

I agree,...just saying that the most talented aren't always the most successful in some areas of the country. Some do OK work but are good business men,..good with people etc,..

 

Artist is a term used way too casually these days. I blame Subway... There are a very few, out of the thousands practicing taxidermy, that I would label as such. There are a lot of good taxidermists knocking on the door, but are under time constraints to make a living. And, there are a lot of beginners that may turn into artists, but first need to know how to correctly mount a specimen, before "art" can even become a concern for them, which may take years. An artist may have little or no concept of time and money. I find it difficult to be creative and produce 150+ quality commercial mounts every year, and, deal with the people that bring them to me. And I don't feel very "artist like" covered in bear grease, fish slime or disease carrying ticks, which we have to wade through, to actually do taxidermy. To my knowledge, no other taxidermist has called me an artist, but, my customers often do, so it depends on whom you ask. I not only cringe when a customer calls me an artist, but, I correct them and tell them "craftsman" is more accurate. Do you know who the true artists in this profession are? You will when you meet them...

 

Love the Subway comment Ron!

The thing about "Art" is the definition is really a moving target. From what I have learned I believe the biggest two distinctions that differentiate true Art from what some do in Taxidermy are, 1) True Art has no limitations. We are heavily restricted by the expected end result. We focus on realism, position and expression of the animal. Again there are obvious limitations here! Habitat and the overall composition is really the only other areas where we can add to the limitations of just replicating an animal or fish, etc.. But, it still has plenty of limits!

And 2) True Art invokes feeling and usually makes some sort of statement. I could send you back to see statement #1 here really for what we do! Again, we're focusing on realism and again those limitations! Statements and feelings are not easy to pull off with just taxidermy. One example to try to see the difference in what I'm talking about would be some of the projects Mike Kirkhart/New Wave have taken on. Not just a fish mount or fish mounts, but the airport decor for example with many species arranged in patterns. Or their huge Sunfish hanging over a canal. Both of those projects invoke feelings and more than just replicating a fish to near perfection. Another example that touches upon what I'm talking about is I have seen some amazing drawings in the Artwork section of this forum. Certainly, some of the stuff I've seen tells me that somebody has incredible talent! For instance I've seen some recent pencil drawings where the person has obviously mastered their medium! They look like black and white photos! All people respect and admire the folks that have the talent to do this! And most consider this "Art". But, is it Art? My profs dinged students in college that had similar abilities! Why? Their responses were always "why didn't you just take a darn photo??" If all you're going to do is copy a photo then all you're really doing is displaying your abilities to reproduce what you see. WHICH, is PERFECT for what WE do! Don't get me wrong! BUT, in the Art world it really doesn't invoke much feeling and the person is limited by the photo they're copying. Oftentimes I think most people identify Art or artistic ability with the ability to replicate realism. Art is not just that! For our industry realism matters most though so call it what you wish, but it's not truly "Art" imo!