You’re safe. The only skeletal remains that can be sold are ones that were in the market before the protective laws were passed
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If you wonder where an obsession with the macabre might come from I will speak for myself. I can tell you that it isn’t driven by novelty or morbid curiosity or some other part of the great American spectacle.
Talk of death and the taking of one’s own life below
I don’t own any human remains that weren’t gifted to me by the dead. I own the bone ash of a friend who took his own life. The third peer in my life to die prematurely. He stipulated in his note that I was to be granted 1/3 of his cremated remains for use as bone ash in both bone china and glazes that require bone ash as a stabilizer. He was another person who was transfixed by the death and dying but his story his his own and not for me to tell
Where mine comes from is part growing up in the country and being an explorer. I would constantly find dead animals in various states of decomposition. At the age of 4 whenI was allowed to go out on my own and into the woods, I was already a deeply traumatized child and I was so frightened of these things that I felt that I had to keep my gaze and look and see in order to understand. That somehow understanding would break the spell panic had over me almost constantly but especially in those moments. These ideas really crystallized in my mind and have made up an undeniable part of who I am. I’m grateful that I did not grow up to be cruel or without empathy because I dread to think what the forms these fascinations would take. Instead I have channeled them into creation. When I read the Metamorphoses and I read about Orpheus descending into Hades to drag back the rotting corpse of Eurydice I have connection with Ovid believing that he too was drawn to these things. When I read about David Lynch showing his dad a bunch of rotting animals in his basement I know he too has experiences comparable to mine that led us to a similar place.
The second thing that had profound influence on me was my mom taking me to Dickson mounds. An exposed Mississippian burial mound in eastern Illinois and open to the public as a museum. I don’t know why she took me, we were quiet for the trip. She is Potawatomi so I can probably guess at why and be close to right. My thoughts going through this hanger full of the dead is that it was to send a message as a kind of propaganda that native people, their culture who they were and what they could ever be was of the past preserved and buried. To be catalogued and placed in a white sterile room as testament to their death. I was 12. I didn’t yet have the language to speak about it but the same feeling that I had then exists in me now that give rise these words. She bought me some souvenir photographs sold in the gift shop that I have kept so as not to forget. I hope I’m using the spoiler tag correctly, sorry if I haven’t.
Christ and frustrations I don’t know how to use this board. Can a mod spoiler tag the second paragraph? I’ll try to do it but I don’t have faith.
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Did I expect such profound musings to be downstream from a dildo post? No, but I shouldn’t be surprised.
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That is signature me.
Also I wrote about these things for dual purposes. The first being that I want to create a space where people can feel free to be vulnerable I have to lead by example. The second is nobody talks about vulnerable things on the information superhighway for what should be obvious reasons. It’s spread to even spaces that can be more safe. With this purge of the intimate I have seen that we no longer have any dialogue about the qualities that make people different and the same and how we get there. It’s left for fiction and sometimes our romantic or therapist partners to shoulder this weight. We don’t have the stories of the people living today and how we hurt and suffer because we’re scared that we’ll be cringe or something.
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I wonder whose hand that once was. Probably some guy who was at Gettysburg
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She had no provenance as it was a gift from her San Francisco friends group before she moved here, Champaign, IL. It’s an immaculately articulated hand so it was probably part of a medical model. I have heard that a lot of medical models come from India but I don’t know for certain
Also to ease your mind, at one point I wanted part of my last rights to have my skull cleaned and preserved and kept in the family as an heirloom when I died. When researching how I could set that up, I found (In the states at least) that’s nearly legally impossible. And I only use “nearly” because I am holding out hope.
So even if you WANT your body parts hanging around, it’s very difficult.
As an aside, part of me also hesitates because I imagine having my skull around might make my kid more upset than necessary after my death. But my future grand/great grand kids might think it’s cool that my skull is still lingering around and haunting the joint!
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Look at me normal posting . I found a solid black walnut side table at my local architectural salvage. It was severely water damaged but with a ton of sanding it looks better. I forget how forgiving walnut is with stain because I usually can’t afford it. It’s like 35 dollars a board foot so I’ll just go with red oak thank you. Also, you can put a sticker for a 7 dollar pine board on a 100 dollar red oak board and go through the self check out at the Home Depot and nobody working there will either notice or care. I have never done this it’s just an anecdote.
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I’m 4.5 hours into inking a comic because I decided to enter Kadokawa’s wordless manga contest, but I didn’t find out about it and start until last month. I’ve had to sacrifice some quality and will need to go back to pretty up some fairly simplistic linework.
Here’s a boomer-ass picture I took of my Cintiq of a horse sitting like a dog.
Back to the grind!
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I’d say that was my favourite panel but I just finished inking this one.
Can’t wait to skap some half tones in and (hopefully) pull it together.
Trust the process
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Here’s another entry in my Little Myths series, Squirrelves.
Accompanying music track / To-K - DJ Babatr
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I love this so much
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Okay I started peeking through the other entries you have on your site and this series rules.
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Made a bunch of tiny frames for my haunted paintings to put in the dollhouse. This one is from a friend’s series she did on The Aleph
Edit: the only frame I truly made was the oval one. The rest are cut from small pieces of wood and plastic trim I’ve found at an architectural salvage over the years.
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Do you all like to do curated arrangements? When I can’t be arsed to put in the emotional labor to make something from scratch I like to go through my junk in storage lay them out and make a simple arrangement. I lean on symmetry and shadows because that’s what comes easiest to me. I’ve had a near life long love of Mary under an arch in classical painting so why not make the arch from the shape of moose antlers? Why not made the shape imitate her veil? Why not make the light vaguely a halo insinuating that the horns are part of Mary. So much fun to be hand making the different parts sing to each other.
Anyway show us your arrangements.
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That looks dope as hell. It’s such a creative use of lighting!
My partner likes crystals a lot so there are a handful of arrangements of fancy rocks on our shelves. She does the same with the many Amibos and little blindbox/gacha things she hordes. It’s quite elaborate, though not really my place to share her stuff with strangers so you’ll have to take me at my word haha.
Totally understandable not to share with out consent. My partner is also crazy for blind boxes. The weirder the better. She sometimes gives me duplicates if she orders a few. I think I only have one out right now. It might be from the garden of early delights. Nope! It’s just a series of muscly birds with defined butts. Yep. That’s my girl friend.
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Nice work! I can see them pretty well when I zoom in
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