(Above, clockwise from top left: white-tailed deer mandible, white-tailed deer skull [WIP], white-tailed deer metatarsal, unidentified bird skull, in process with white-tailed deer lumbar vertebra, white-tailed deer mid-thoracic vertebra, raccoon skull.)
I like to fish and I like to explore new places to fish and this involves tromping through the woods and tromping through the woods involves, if I’m lucky, discovering animal bones. I collect the bones, bring them home, clean them up, paint them with a coat of primer, then, for lack of a better term, bedazzle them with tacky glue and glass rhinestones that I buy at Michaels.
Cleaning them can be tricky, but I learned that you don’t use bleach because that makes the bones brittle. First, you soak them in water with Dawn to get the grease off. Well, even before that, if there is soft material (fur, muscle, cartilage, etc.) still clinging to them, you have to macerate them in water for a couple of months so all of that sloughs off. But hopefully you find bones in which nature (coyotes, maggots, bacteria) has done all that work for you. After the Dawn soak, you sanitize them and the best sanitizer, as near as I can tell? Hydrogen peroxide, the kind you use on your hair. Like, from Walgreens. The hair stuff is a higher concentration of hydrogen peroxide than the stuff that bubbles up on cuts and scrapes.
Applying the rhinestones involves tons of repetition, which is, in some way, very soothing to my brain which is always going in a million directions at once. Putting sparkling things onto bones, just as a concept, must include an enormous tip of my hat to Damien Hirst and his 2007 sculpture For the Love of God, which is one of my favorite pieces of art ever made. Whereas I use woodland animal bones and glass rhinestones, Hirst used a human skull and real diamonds. Let’s say I don’t yet have the patronage for that. Whereas his piece is a deeply soul-shattering momento mori meant for contemplation, the stuff I do is more like booth-at-state-fair-meant-to-be-won-at-the-shooting-game-best-enjoyed-with-a-funnel-cake. Which is fine by me.
I’m just saying. I love to write. And being a writer involves exploring the weirdest corners of existence and exploration means much more than looking and sometimes it means the remnants of dead animals get the rhinestone treatment.