If that does not interest, we have many more offerings in the weeks and months to come... full info follows. Hope very much to see you at one or more.
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Death in America and the Green Cemetery Movement
An Illustrated lecture by funeral director Amy Cunningham
Date: Thursday, November 7
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $8
Location: Observatory, Brooklyn (543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215)
Each year in the U.S., the death care industry buries enough formaldehyde to fill eight Olympic sized swimming pools, enough metal in caskets form to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge, and enough concrete in burial vaults to construct a two-lane highway running halfway across the country. While our cemeteries are rich with national and local histories, natural habitats and remembrances of the dead, they’re also a blazing locus of waste and pollution.
In tonight's illustrated lecture, funeral director Amy Cunningham will share the history of American death practices from Victorian family-centric rituals to contemporary ideas of the "green cemetery," a grassroots movement dedicated to the development of ecologically responsible and meaningful end-of-life rituals.
Amy Cunningham is a New York licensed funeral director and celebrant who specializes in helping families plan sustainable end-of-life rituals. A former magazine journalist, she maintains a blog called TheInspiredFuneral.com.
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Ermine Taxidermy Class with Divya AnantharamanDate: Sunday, November 10
Time: 12:00pm - 6pm
Admission: $185
*TICKETS MUST BE PRE-ORDERED AT http://ermine-taxidermy.brownpapertickets.com/
***Offsite at The Fabricoscope (41 Willow Place, #2, 11201 Brooklyn) (MAP)
Subway: Court St, Borough Hall, Jay St. Metro Tech.
In this hands-on class, we will study the wiley ermine! Also known as a white weasel (they are actually brown in the summer, and turn white in the winter), this small creature used to be harvested by the hundreds for the plush robes of royalty-but not so much anymore. It has become less profitable since they are small animals (and do not yield lots of fur like the more popular fox or coyote)-so much that the ones used in class were collected from a game farm and tannery downsizing business and discarding old stock of unwanted frozen animals. Students will create a fully-finished mount in a naturalistic or anthropomorphic position. Students will learn everything involved in producing a finished mount - from initial preparation, hygiene and sanitary measures, to proper technique and dry preservation.
The class will teach how to create a wrapped body form using the ermine's own body as reference. Students will have the choice of cleaning and reconstructing the skull, or carving one using the natural one as reference. The use of anatomical study, reference photos, and detailed observation will also be reviewed as important tools in recreating the natural poses and expressions that magically reanimate a specimen. A selection of props will be provided, however, students are welcome to bring their own bases and accessories if something specific is desired. All other supplies will be provided for use in class.
Each student will leave class with a fully finished piece, and the knowledge to create their own pieces in the future.
Divya Anantharaman is a Brooklyn based artist whose taxidermy practice was sparked by a lifelong fascination with natural mythology and everyday oddities. After a journey filled with trial and error, numerous books, and an inspiring class (Sue Jeiven's popular Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class at Observatory!), she has found her calling in creating sickly sweet and sparkly critters. Beginning with mice and sparrows, her menagerie grew to include domestic cats, woodchucks, and deer. Recently profiled on Vice Fringes, the New York Observer, and other publications, she will also be appearing in the upcoming season of Oddities-and is definitely up to no good shenanigans. You can find out more at www.d-i-v-y-a.com
Also, some technical notes:
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- We use NO harsh or dangerous chemicals.
- Everyone will be provided with gloves.
- All animals are disease free.
- Although there will not be a lot of blood or gore, a strong constitution is necessary; taxidermy is not for everyone
- All animals were already dead, nothing was killed for this class.
- Please do not bring any dead animals with you to the class.
Date: Thursday, November 21Mother Machine: an ‘Uncanny Valley’ in the Eighteenth Century Illustrated lecture with Dr. Brandy Schillace
Admission: $8
Time: 8:00 PM
Location: Observatory, Brooklyn (543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215)
Known by a variety of names—“this most curious machine,” “this mock woman,” and the “celebrated Apparatus” —Dr. William Smellie’s mechanized obstetrical phantom was both science and spectacle in the eighteenth century. Strangely, however, though crucial to the training of at least 900 man-midwives in ten years, the machine disappears from both the actual and rhetorical "scene" of 18th-century obstetrical science.
This illustrated talk will explore the mitigating factors contributing to the machine's disappearance. Why was such a valuable teaching tool auctioned to the public after Smellie’s death? Why did famed obstetrician William Hunter agree to sell his own copy of the machine to Dr. Foster of the Dublin Rotunda? And why—after so much popular debate—does the machine disappear from public notice by the latter part of the century? Dr. Schillace will also document her own rather circuitous journey of discovery, that is, the necessary labor of unearthing (if not birthing) a medical artifact’s unusual history.
Dr. Brandy Schillace is an interdisciplinary, medical-humanist scholar. She writes about cultural production, history of science, and intersections of medicine and literature. She is the managing editor of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, an international journal of cross-cultural health research and a guest curator and blogger for the Dittrick Medical History Museum. Dr. Schillace was the keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the Archivists and Librarians in the History of Health Sciences 2013, and is the recent recipient of the Chawton House Library Fellowship (for study of 18th century women writers) and the Wood Institute travel grant from the Philadelphia College of Physicians. She has also an edited book collection under contingent contract with Cambria Press: Birthing the Monster of Tomorrow: Unnatural Reproductions. For a selection of recently published work, please visit http://fictionreboot-dailydose.com/publications-and-press.
Image: A late eighteenth-century “birthing phantom.” Unlike Smellie’s machine, these were not intended to be exactly like the living body, but rather a basic replica allowing midwives to understand the position of the child in the birth canal. By permission of the Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum
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“Children of the Night”: Dracula, Degeneration and Syphilitic Births at the Fin de Siècle
Illustrated lecture with Dr. Brandy Schillace and custom cocktails and DJed music by Friese Undine
Date: Friday, November 22
Admission: $10
Time: 8:00 PM
Location: Observatory, Brooklyn (543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is often read as a narrative of reverse colonization, revealing fears of degeneration at the fin de siècle. Anxieties over the decline of empire and—as both symptom and consequence—the degeneration of masculinity in Victorian Britain resulted in a number of dystopic narratives, each revealing an uneasy relationship between evolution and devolution, sexuality, sexual identity and mental health. However, the signal terror of Stoker’s vampires lies not only in their overt sexuality and promiscuity—but also in their fecundity. As Van Helsing warns, the vampire is not a single foe but a potential army. Both “father” and unnatural mother, Count Dracula is capable of reproducing the undead—and yet his victims do not, it seems reproduce themselves.
In this presentation Dr. Schillace will explore accounts of syphilitic infection as a means of understanding the complexities of infection among the “innocents,” Lucy Westenra and the children she victimizes. Culminating in a re-examination of the only human birth in Stoker’s novel—Mina Harker’s son Quincy—this project seeks to provide new insight into 19th century anxieties about degeneration’s naissance.
Dr. Brandy Schillace is an interdisciplinary, medical-humanist scholar. She writes about cultural production, history of science, and intersections of medicine and literature. She is the managing editor of Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, an international journal of cross-cultural health research and a guest curator and blogger for the Dittrick Medical History Museum. Dr. Schillace was the keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the Archivists and Librarians in the History of Health Sciences 2013, and is the recent recipient of the Chawton House Library Fellowship (for study of 18th century women writers) and the Wood Institute travel grant from the Philadelphia College of Physicians. She also an edited book collection under contingent contract with Cambria Press: Birthing the Monster of Tomorrow: Unnatural Reproductions. For a selection of recently published work, please visit http://fictionreboot-dailydose.com/publications-and-press.
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Small Rabbit Taxidermy Class "Trophy Plaque" or Full Size Mount with Divya Anantharaman
Date: Sunday, November 24
Time: 12:00pm - 6pm
Admission: $250
*TICKETS MUST BE PRE-ORDERED AT http://smallrabbittaxidermy.brownpapertickets.com/
***Offsite at The Fabricoscope (41 Willow Place, #2, 11201 Brooklyn) (MAP)
Subway: Court St, Borough Hall, Jay St. Metro Tech.
In this intimate, hands-on class (limited to only six students), we will study the happy and hoppy rabbit! Students will create a fully-finished rabbit mount in a naturalistic or anthropomorphic position. There is also the option to create a "trophy style" shoulder mount (where the head and shoulder is mounted on a wooden plaque). When purchasing ticket, please specify which you would like to do.
Students will learn everything involved in producing a finished mount - from initial preparation, hygiene and sanitary measures, to proper technique and dry preservation. The class will teach how to create a wrapped body form using the rabbit's own body as reference, and how to reconstruct a rabbit head using the skull as reference. Students will also be introduced to the techniques of ear turning and ear carding. The use of anatomical study, reference photos, and detailed observation will also be reviewed as important tools in recreating the natural poses and expressions that magically reanimate a specimen. A selection of props will be provided, however, students are welcome to bring their own bases and accessories if something specific is desired. All other supplies will be provided for use in class.
Each student will leave class with a fully finished piece, and the knowledge to create their own pieces in the future.
Divya Anantharaman is a Brooklyn based artist whose taxidermy practice was sparked by a lifelong fascination with natural mythology and everyday oddities. After a journey filled with trial and error, numerous books, and an inspiring class (Sue Jeiven's popular Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class at Observatory!), she has found her calling in creating sickly sweet and sparkly critters. Beginning with mice and sparrows, her menagerie grew to include domestic cats, woodchucks, and deer. Recently profiled on Vice Fringes, the New York Observer, and other publications, she will also be appearing in the upcoming season of Oddities-and is definitely up to no good shenanigans. You can find out more at www.d-i-v-y-a.com
Also, some technical notes:
- We use NO harsh or dangerous chemicals.
- Everyone will be provided with gloves.
- All animals are disease free.
- Although there will not be a lot of blood or gore, a strong constitution is necessary; taxidermy is not for everyone
- All animals were already dead, nothing was killed for this class.
- Please do not bring any dead animals with you to the class.
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