New limbs for some historic mounts

We're just finishing up the restoration of a number of pieces for the American Museum of Natural History's new Extreme Mammals exhibit and a few needed new tree limbs for their cases.
We thought this would be much more simple than it was. ...Isn't that always the way? The armatures had to be steel in order to withstand the weight of the older mounts, withstand the abuse of a traveling show, and with some of the pieces being so old, the limbs are the only thing holding them together! Once again you'll see Mike Vernelson working his tree magic here on the steel and sculpting.

George

 

Thanks guys! I couldn't have said it better myself John, Mike simply knows trees and he's passionate about it. Field study and reference are a must with any artform. We're constantly in the field taking photos, making casts and most importantly.....just observing. I think we take a lot of these things for granted when we start to build, we all assume or think we may know what a tree or rock looks like until you actually take the time to study one carefully. You'll be amazed at what you might learn, and that's the exciting part!

DDavis, the bark is sculpted in an epoxy compound from Polygem.

Bill, I do not have a list as of yet, but we have so much stuff here in the shop it's crazy, and we're constantly adding to it. For the time being, feel free to contact us and let us know what you're looking for if it's something in particular.

Right now in process we have some large stumps and logs, as well as various tree parts and fungi. Water panels, insects, baitfish, Barnacles, coral, plant and animal models, etc. With every job we do there's always some molds made for something and we have so many I wouldn't even know what to list. For instance, we have molds for hard to find specimens like Galapagos Marine Iguanas and Sally Light Foot crabs.

This is one of the main reasons we're offering our service as a company as well. We fabricate most of the custom components we need, and can make just about anything you want.

George

 

Hey George,

Thank you for the kind words, and it's great to be here! I am truly bless with the team I have and they constantly amaze me.

George

 

Hi Steve,

Thank you. Yes, the traveling exhibits seem to be doing very well for them. It's funny you mentioned Darwin, as I think that was their most successful. I believe it's six different Darwins now we've worked on for all over the world. That is a large exhibit as well, but it's sometimes broken up into smaller pieces to accommodate different venues. Very nice exhibit!

The Iguana specimens are all packaged up, ready to go. Thank you once again for your help, it's greatly appreciated. I used a combination of texture molds made from your specimens and some from AMNH. The models are 90% sculpture with the textures stamped into epoxie.

We had to make so many in different positions with limited time, we found it easiest to just make each one from scratch. As you know time is always an issue when producing these exhibits and we never get to put as much time into these as we'd like. I'd love to go back at some point and really work one up and re-mold it.




The Blue in this one did not represent well in the photos...looks a little "washy."

 

Thank you Steve! We are so fortunate to have access to these collections, it makes a world of difference when sculpting.

I did not know about Wisconsin, very interesting. I believe Darrell handels most of our curatorial reviews from Herpetology. We can't let a model go until it goes through the final approval process and he signs off on it. He's a great person.

I am saddened by these changes as well. Times have certainly changed from the role a taxidermist plays in museums today right down to the way he is look upon by others in the community. It also amazes me how the use of real specimens is diminishing so quickly in exhibits.

 

Hey Wayne,

Thanks for the welcome. I do remember that seminar, I always seem to worry about filling the time slots and then wind up babbling on past the limit anyway. Hope it was helpful. They're a great bunch of guys up there as well!

George