Dead Animal Lamps: Add This to the List of the Offensive and Tasteless

From TreeHugger today (commentary to follow the extract, after the jump):

Taxidermy, the Victorian art and tradition of stuffing animals, is becoming fashionable again. Only this time round with young artists who see it as an ethical design choice. If the animal is already dead, why not preserve it in a new and cutting edge way.

Alex Randall has made chandeliers from pigeons in flight and lights with squirrels climbing the wall. She uses dead animals that have been shot as vermin and left to die which she sources from British farmers. As she says "What I love is the character already installed in objects. They hold a memory of their own."

She considers her work to be reclaimed, not recycled, because she doesn't alter the beauty of the object. . . .

The pigeon chandelier of pigeons in flight, is made out of 20 pigeons, suspended in a cluster. She thinks that they are beautiful creatures; it's a fatal attraction: "they are regarded as flying rats to most but to me they are little angels."

Another light is made out of a mature male mallard duck. You can tell its a male because the feathers are curling at the tip of his tail. Randall says that she is "bringing some justice back into his life or afterlife." Available in several different species.

Excuse me, but . . . is this woman freaking serious?! First, it's creepy. Simple as that. Creepy. But the language the designer uses to describe and elevate her "work" is bizarre and out of touch too. Dead animals who were intentionally killed (the write-up says "shot," but I wouldn't be surprised if many are poisoned too) are "objects" with "character" and a "memory of their own." And she doesn't "alter the beauty" of these "little angels" but rather provides them with "justice."

No, ma'am, you're providing them with nothing. They're dead, and all you're doing is further disrepecting them, turning them--and their deaths--into odd little conversation pieces, further enforcing the idea that animals, in their life and in their death, are here for our use and amusement. Their "beauty" has already been "altered"--life is what imbued them with beauty, and their dead bodies are just sad.

Tell you what, after your Uncle Ted is killed by a neighbor for no other reason than that the neighbor thought Ted was in the way, and he wanted Ted's land and house for himself, provide your Uncle Ted "justice" and respect by turning him into an armchair and selling him for lots of money. Then maybe I'll buy these preposterous justifications for your so-called art. In the meantime, if you want to help and show respect for these "little angels," maybe you could use your creativity to get people to stop killing them.

And of course, I should remark on this as well: "Taxidermy, the Victorian art and tradition of stuffing animals, is becoming fashionable again." Is this true? I'm not up on my taxidermy news, but if this is true, it's a sad day.