What the hell is a Sqube!?  They’re stacking toys that are apparently becoming all the rage in the designer toy industry.  This one happens to be a 1 inch stainless steel Skull Sqube designed by Playge and available for $85.  If that’s $85 for just one of these tiny pieces of metal, then my Squbes won’t be stacking very high.

[spotted by Carolyn]

“A lonely man turns to frankensteining his utensils to find love, happiness and a dance partner.”  Silly, but fun.

Darren Hanlon “Electric Skeleton” music video

Directed by Natalie van den Dungen
http://www.natalievandendungen.com
New single from the album ‘Pointing Ray Guns at Pagans’
http://www.darrenhanlon.com

...Observatory celebrates the eccentric and nurtures the curious; its oddities delight the eye as well as the mind.

Thanks to Melissa Stern for loving Observatory--the arts/event space I run with 6 other people in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York--enough to write a charming piece about it for this week's Time Out New York.

The piece is entitled "I’m Officially Obsessed with Observatory;" You can read the article--from which I drew the excerpt and image above--in its entirety by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory by clicking here; you can join the Observatory mailing list by clicking here, and can join us on Facebook by clicking here.

The above image is sourced my Secret Museum exhibition, which closes with a party this Sunday, June 6. More on that soon; in the meantime, you can visit the Secret Museum website by clicking here. Image caption reads: Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, Paris, France, Established 1793

Not your average fancy schmancy ring, the Skull Ring by Bits to Atoms is actually created by 3D printing in bronze infused stainless steel giving it a multi-faceted and pitted texture.

Each ring is made to order and takes about 3-4 weeks to complete.  Available via Etsy for $120.  I’m thinking of ordering my own!

[spotted by Jenny]

This wonderfully edgy, yet delicate skirt by Nasty Gal, is adorned with tiny interconnected crocheted skulls.  I love the subtlety of the design.  The skirt is sold out at the Nasty Gal shop, but perhaps, if you ask nicely enough, they’ll bring it back!

[spotted by Peter]

Pretty Gigposter design by Warm.

Above are shots of a Nike Exhibition that celebrated 3 decades of the Nike Air Innovation.  The overall concept of this show read,

Nike Air shoes should be worn with caution as they contain air from the lungs of the world’s greatest athletes.

The show consisted of a pair of 6 feet high, interactive Air Bag lungs which could be inflated when visitors interacted with an air pressure wheel.  Attached to the lungs were three athletic mannequins, whom collected the air from those lungs and passed it on into branded mini tanks.  I can’t seem to figure out how this all works, but regardless those lungs are pretty cool!  Check out the designer’s work here for other creative projects.

Bosch has been marketing their new “fountain of youth”, VitaFresh with a clever ad campaign depicting freshly sealed dinosaur, mammoth, and sabertooth meats. You can watch a video of their supermarket experiment here. Pretty gross, and totally awesome.

[via The Daily What]

They all have to go as the federal government cleans out the National Wildlife Property Repository, a vast warehouse crammed with 1.5 million miscellaneous items containing bits of creatures great and small...

Anyone who has lost a bird dome, a stuffed crow, or an anthropomorphic fox to U.S. Customs over the year take note: your chance to retrieve your lost merchandise--legally!--might have come!

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service--in a series of rolling online auctions--is selling off hundreds of thousands of confiscated items in order to clear out their warehouse and raise funds for wildlife conservation. Items found in the warehouse range from snake skin boots to "a beribboned walrus penis," Cape Buffalo heads to "a caiman, posed with a pipe in its mouth and an ashtray in its claws" (above, bottom image).

It should be mentioned that, "by law, the government can't sell anything containing, or even suspected of containing, an endangered species." Also, much of the higher-end contraband has been already sent to schools, zoos and museums for exhibits, and objects deemed crass are being withheld from the auction, so some of the more exotic, freaky, and museum-quality objects won't be finding their way to auction. Still, this auction promises to be a fascinating and contraversial one.

You can find out more here, compliments of the Wall Street Journal online:

Uncle Sam Wants You to Bid on This Fine Weasel Fur Coat
Confiscated Wildlife Goods Are Auctioned; Boon or Bane for Conservation?
By STEPHANIE SIMON

COMMERCE CITY, Colo.—Uncle Sam is having a clearance sale, and it's heavy on genuine cobra-skin boots.

Also, python boots. Ostrich boots. And stylish footwear made from lizard, eel and kangaroo.

They all have to go as the federal government cleans out the National Wildlife Property Repository, a vast warehouse crammed with 1.5 million miscellaneous items containing bits of creatures great and small.

All the goods in the warehouse, from the shaggy Cape buffalo head to the beribboned walrus penis, have been seized at ports of entry by agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for violating laws regulating international trade in wildlife.

Warehouse supervisor Bernadette Atencio sends much of the contraband to schools, zoos and museums for exhibits. Ho-hum items that don't have much educational value are destroyed; she recently sent dozens of lizard-trim eyeglass cases to the incinerator. Ms. Atencio also disposes of all the medicinal potions that cross her desk—and the occasional bug-infested trophy leopard.

But she can never catch up. The Congressional Research Service pegs the illegal trade in wildlife products at more than $5 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion a year world-wide. Nearly 200,000 items came into the warehouse last year, overwhelming Ms. Atencio's staff of four.

The solution? Clean house.

In a rolling online auction that started in February and will run through the summer, the Fish and Wildlife Service is selling off 300,000 items.

A dozen fur coats made from Siberian weasel sold for $4,450. A box of 270 acrylic key chains, each encasing "one small black salamander," went for $35. There are table lamps made of clam shells, drums covered with unspecified mammal skin, watches festooned with mother-of-pearl.

And a curious collection of clay dwarfs decorated with bits of python skin.

"What do you call those little figurines, the strange ones?" Ms. Atencio asked her colleague Doni Sprague.

Ms. Sprague had spent the afternoon sorting a jumble of new arrivals: 21 boxes of medicine containing dried sea horse; an antique sword inlaid with sea turtle shell; several bottles of foul-looking wine—purportedly good for treating arthritis—with pickled snakes coiled inside.

She looked up, casting about for a proper name for the figurines.

"They've got big hats," she said finally. "They're bizarre."

The auction disturbs some animal-rights activists who say an agency in the business of confiscating illegal goods shouldn't turn around and sell them because that only spurs demand. But Fish and Wildlife officials say they will use the money to preach conservation, and they've won some key backers.

The agency "needs more resources," said Crawford Allan, regulatory director of Traffic North America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping the illegal wildlife trade. "Rather than burn these things and create excess carbon," Mr. Allan said, "it's fine to sell them."

By law, the government can't sell anything containing, or even suspected of containing, an endangered species. Ms. Atencio also holds back items she thinks are crass.

That includes a belt made from the spotted fur of a Margay, a South American jungle cat. The unlucky creature's head, stuffed and glassy-eyed, is still attached, whiskers and all. It serves as the buckle. "That's just wrong," Ms. Atencio says.

She feels the same about a handbag made from a whole toad—tanned and shellacked, with a zipper down its belly. And about a knickknack made from a crocodilian reptile known as a caiman, posed with a pipe in its mouth and an ashtray in its claws. Looking at it, Ms. Atencio winces. "This is so degrading," she says. "And it's a waste of the resource—just to sit on someone's end table."

Much of the merchandise seized by inspectors is more pedestrian: belts, coats, wallets, jewelry and footwear, including top name brands (though the agency can't vouch for their authenticity). Such items are typically legal to import to the U.S.—but only with the proper paperwork.

When documents are missing, the goods end up here, in a 22,000-square-foot warehouse outside Denver.

Last time the government sold off surplus from the repository, at a live auction in 1999, it raised $500,000 for wildlife conservation.

Ms. Atencio hopes to match that take with the online bidding, run by Lone Star Auctioneers. The Texas company focuses on surplus government property, selling everything from bulldozers to diamond rings to Elvis Presley collectible coins.

Fish and Wildlife items—all sold as is—are posted online in batches, several dozen a week.

Jeremy Reed, an insurance salesman in Spring, Texas, stumbled across the site while looking for used-car auctions. He was drawn to some snazzy ostrich boots. Starting bid: $225 for 19 pairs, none his size. Mr. Reed figured he could resell them to a friend who owns a Western-wear store.

"I'm kind of entrepreneurial," says Mr. Reed.

By the time he started bidding, the price was up to $325. He went to $375—then watched in dismay as four new bidders jumped in. A week later, the boots were sold for $825.

Mr. Reed was disappointed. "There are people with really deep pockets," he says. "That kind of ruins it for bargain shoppers like me."

It's perfectly legal to resell most items bought at auction, so many pop up on eBay as soon as they leave federal control.

That angers Ashley Byrne, a senior campaigner with the animal-rights group PETA.
Ms. Byrne argues that the sale just stimulates demand for weasel coats and python-trimmed figurines. Instead, she says, the agency should donate the merchandise to PETA. She has laid in quite a store of fake blood to splash on the shiny green snakeskin shoes and the weathered leather jackets trimmed with fox fur. She would like to put the bloodied goods on display anywhere she can, next to video monitors rolling footage of "animals being skinned alive or bludgeoned to death."

The juxtaposition will make would-be shoppers queasy, Ms. Byrne promises. "As opposed," she says, "to perpetuating the idea that it's OK to turn an animal into a keychain."

You can read the full article and see the full slide show--from which the above images, by Matt McClain, were drawn--by clicking here. The action house dealing in this merchandise--Lone Star Auctioneers--can be accessed by clicking here.

Thanks to Michelle of Lapham's Quarterly for letting me know about this rather intriguing happenstance!

This Saturday night, animator GF Newland and School of Visual Art professor Trilby Schreiber will be launching "Oxberry Pegs Presents: Animators Are God?", a new series at Observatory that seeks to investigate the human drive to animate--to give life or the illusion of life--in the broadest of senses. The series will be extremely wide-ranging in its focus, spanning "from Winsor McKay to Ren and Stimpy, the Golem to video games, phantasmagoria to animatronics, Pygmalian to puppet theatre, automata to Avator," and will include performances, screenings, lectures, presentations, and workshops.

Confirmed participants thus far include Kevin Brownie of Beavis and Butthead, Bob Camp of Ren and Stimpy, Jonny Clockworks of the Cosmic Bicycle Theatre, John Dillworth creator of Courage the Cowardly Dog, animator Bill Plymton, Mike Zohn of Obscura Antiques and Oddities on the History of Automata, and Joanna Ebenstein of this blog on The Golem; To find out more about this series and see a full list of participants confirmed thus far, click here.

The series will launch this Saturday night at 8:00 with "The Clay Animation of Jimmy Picker," in which clay animator and bon vivant Jimmy Picker--whose oeuvre includes the clay animation sequences from cult-classic 80s film Better Off Dead and the 1983 academy-award winning short Sundae in New York--will discuss his work and screen his latest project.

Full details for the event follow. More on the series here. Hope to see you there!

The Clay Animation of Jimmy Picker Screening and conversation with Academy Award winning animator Jimmy Picker
Date: Saturday, May 29th, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M. Admission: $5
Day one of the Oxberry Pegs Presents Series

This Saturday, May 29th, Oxberry Pegs presents the first night of our Animators are God? Series, featuring the clay animation of Jimmy Picker. Nestled in the bustling Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, is Motion Picker Studios, where Jimmy Picker has been making hand-made films for nearly 30 years. He’s received several Academy award nominations along the way, and won the Oscar in 1983 for “Sundae in New York”, a musical animated short, with characters modeled on iconic New Yorkers, and staring a plasticine Ed Koch. Upon receiving the famed golden statuette, Picker remarked, “Now no one can say I’m a bum!” And how, Mr. Picker!

So, come to Observatory this Saturday and meet Jimmy Picker in person. Hear him talk about the art of clay animation, see his award winning shorts, and gawk as his lesser known cult-favorite clips, like those dancing hamburgers from the film Better Off Dead starring John Cusack. He will also screen his latest work, the “Age of Ignorance,” a clothing-optional creation story!

To find out more about the "Oxberry Pegs Presents: Animators Are God?" series, and to see a full list of participants scheduled thus far, click here. If you would like to recommend a participant, or are interested in participating yourself, email gfnewland@gmail.com. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: "Yasutaro Mitsui poses with his own steel humanoid, Tokyo, Japan, in 1932."Via Retroliciousdesigns

Dutch designer Tomáš Gabzdil Libertiny built a glass vitrine and suspended this martyred figure in the middle during Design Miami/Basel 2010 back in June. He then released 40,000 worker bees over the course of the event to create a wax honeycomb structure over the figure.  Libertiny infused the figure with a natural red pigment that tinted the entire honeycomb structure red. This came to represent flesh and blood.  Read more about the religious theme behind this work here.

I must admit, the site of this is a bit creepy, but mesmerizing at the same time.

[spotted by JTS via Designboom]

The Secret Museum is now a website!

I have just launched a full website for The Secret Museum, my exhibition of photographs (as seen above) exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world. The website includes information, links, and, of course, a full gallery of photos, installation and otherwise; You can check it out by clicking here.

The Secret Museum exhibition proper will be on view until Sunday, June 6th at Observatory; please consider yourself cordially invited to a closing party that evening, featuring a last perusal of the museum, a bit of wine, a dimly-lit chandelier, and some esoteric music complements of Mister Friese Undine. The party--which will run from 6-10 at Observatory--is, of course, free of charge, and should be good fun. Address and travel details can be found here.

Hope very much to see you there!

All above images from The Secret Museum; captions from top to bottom:

1. "Femme à barbe," Musée Orfila. Courtesy of Paris Descartes University
2. Venus Endormie (breathing wax model), Spitzner collection Collection Spitzner, Musée Orfila, Paris Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
3. Opération de la Cesarienne, (wax model of Caesarean section) Collection Spitzner, Musée Orfila, Paris. Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
4. Skeleton and hand models for "la médecine opératoire" Musée Orfila, Paris. Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
5. Plaster Models in Pathological Cabinet, The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow
6. Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands
7. Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands
8. Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands

An Horse does it again with their with their “Postcards” music video from their debut album “Rearrange Beds.”

Directed by Celeste Potter and David Rusanow.  They mounted a camera on the ceiling and took a picture every five seconds for the five and half hours it took to complete the anatomical man.  It’s mesmerizing watching them create this sad little guy.

The video was inspired by an animated sketch Celeste did of which she simply said, “I think I will make a whole video like this.” Click here to see the animation.

[spotted by Alex]

Friend-of-Morbid-Anatomy Suzanne G. of the incomparable Wurzeltod website and Tumblr, asked me to help get the word out about the upcoming exhibition: "Many Dead Things: The Specimens of Alex CF." The opening reception will take place on May 17th and the show will be on view until June 12th.

Full information following; check it out!

MANY DEAD THINGS – THE SPECIMENS OF ALEX CF
27 May – 2 June 2010
Opening reception: 27 May, 6 – 9 PM | 28 May – 2 June, 12 – 6 PM daily

Superette Gallery
66A Sclater Street, Off Brick Lane
London, E1 6HR, United Kingdom

In his first solo exhibition, following the release of his monograph, artist Alex CF offers the public a unique opportunity to see his bizarre specimens in person – objects that have so far only been witnessed by private collectors, such as Maxime Chattam (author) or Reece Shearsmith (actor, League of Gentlemen) who wrote the foreword for his book, and will be lending pieces from his own collection for the show.

Alex has spent the last five years crafting wondrous relics of an alternate past – a rich tapestry of 19th century cryptozoological artifacts and creatures that challenge our understanding of the natural world: The mummified remains of a vampire child, the taxidermied corpse of a 7-foot-tall adult werewolf, the trappings of scientists and archaeologists pertaining to the study of these species in the form of antique research cases, amongst many other fascinating objects.

The show will encompass a number of works including 6 new pieces and Alex will be signing his book.

Alex’s work has been featured in a number of well-known publications both online and in print, such as Weird Tales, Bizarre, BoingBoing, and io9. His work has also been featured on book covers, and in a number of independent films.

Click here to download press release.

To find out more, visit the exhibition website by clicking here. To visit Suzanne's amazing Wurzeltod website, click here; to visit her equally if not more amazing Tumblr, click here.

Image: By Alex CF, from exhibition website: L’enfant Diabolique, mixed media, 2010

Tomorrow night--Tuesday, May 25--Megan Prelinger, co-founder of San Francisco's inspiring Prelinger Library and author of the new book Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957 - 1962, will be on hand at the 86th Barnes and Noble to sign copies of her book and present an illustrated lecture about her research into science fiction advertising from the late 50s to the early 60s.

Prelinger's book, while not anatomical in theme, does feature a smattering of spectacular space medicine adverts, a few of which you can see above; Perhaps this should come as no surprise, as the book is published by Blast Books, which is (in)famous for its more corporeal offerings such as the Mütter Museum Books and Calendars and last year's best-selling Dissection.

Having had a peek at this book while it was still in production, I can assure you that the non-anatomical images which fill this book are as awe-inspiring and surprising as those you see above, and tomorrow's presentation is sure to be fantastic in every sense of the word!

You can find out more about the event by clicking here; You can find out more about the book by clicking here or here. To find out more about the Prelinger Library, click here.

Thanks so much to Blast Books' Laura Lindgren for sending these wonderful images my way!

Kristen Holbrook created this out-of-this-world triptych for a digital painting assignment as an art student in Brooklyn.  She based it off of Mucha’s elegant female figures and combined it with anatomy from the Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery.

Holbrook says of her piece, “I wanted to put together two things I loved, which was how beautiful the insides of a human could be combined with the outside. From left to right in the triptych the skin is coming off.”

A great mash-up of elegance and grotesqueness.

For those of you unfamiliar with Mucha’s females, here’s a reference photo that Kristen used for her piece.

For many of you who are interested in pursuing medical illustration or just want to know more about the field in general, the Association of Medical Illustrators website (ami.org) is a resource rich information portal.  It contains everything you need to know about medical illustration including career information, tutorials, artist galleries, graduate program information, and much more.

The AMI did an amazing job updating their website from what was once a very outdated resource so I highly recommend browsing through all of the fresh resources on the site.  And if you’re in need of a medical illustrator, check out the online Medical Illustration sourcebook.  Many of my favorite illustrators and animators are listed in it, including Hybrid Medical Animation, AXS, Anatomy Blue, and Bryan Christie.

The AMI is also introducing a trial membership for a special fee of only $100!  This is a great opportunity to join the community and network for basically the price of a student membership. I highly recommend joining!

As many Morbid Anatomy readers already know, for many years now, I have been traveling the world with my camera, in search of obscure medical museums, cabinets of curiosity, dusty natural history museums, privately-held cabinets, untouched collections, and idiosyncratic assemblages of all sorts, front-stage and back, public and private. Some of the fruits of my labor make the way to the pages of this blog, or into various exhibitions such as 2007's Anatomical Theatre and last years Private Cabinets.

My latest project utilizing this material is photo exhibition at Observatory gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The exhibition, entitled "The Secret Museum," will be on view until Sunday June 6th, and features photographs of public and private, front-stage and back-stage collections from The United States, England, France, Poland, The Netherlands, Italy, and more. You will find in this exhibition photographs of taxidermied animals and humans (!), a life-sized breathing wax doll from the 19th century, Anatomical Venuses and Slashed Beauties, a fetal skeleton tableau from the 17th Century, backstage views at a number of natural history museums, an overlooked cabinet of curiosity in Paris, the untouched Teylers Museum of Haarlem, and much, much more.

Above are a just a very few of the many photographs included in the show (captions below); you can see a full collection of photographs (and some installation views as well!) by clicking here. Many photographs--all limited edition and signed giclée prints, handsomely framed and matted--are still available for sale, and quite reasonably priced! Please email me at morbidanatomy@gmail.com if you are interested in finding out more.

Also, if you are interested in a guided walk-through of the collection, why not come out for Atlantic Avenue Artwalk, which will be taking place over the weekend of June 5th and 6th? I will be on hand all day at Observatory and its next-door-neighbor The Morbid Anatomy Library, and happy to guide any interested parties through the exhibition.

Full details follow; hope you can make it!

The Secret Museum
April 10 - June 6th
3-6 Thursday and Friday
12-6 Saturday and Sunday

An exhibition exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world in photographs and artifacts, by Joanna Ebenstein, co-founder of Observatory and creator of Morbid Anatomy.

Photographer and blogger Joanna Ebenstein has traveled the Western world seeking and documenting untouched, hidden, and curious collections, from museum store-rooms to private collections, cabinets of curiosity to dusty natural history museums, obscure medical museums to hidden archives. The exhibition “The Secret Museum” will showcase a collection of photographs from Ebenstein’s explorations–including sites in The Netherlands, Italy, France, Austria, England and the United States–which document these spaces while at the same time investigating the psychology of collecting, the visual language of taxonomies, notions of “The Specimen” and the ordered archive, and the secret life of objects and collections, with an eye towards capturing the poetry, mystery and wonder of these liminal spaces.

To download press release, which includes sample images, please click here.

To see the entire exhibition in a virtual, on-line fashion, click here. To find out more about Observatory, including directions, click here. For more about the Atlantic Avenue Artwalk, click here. For more about the Morbid Anatomy Library, click here. For more on Anatomical Theatre, an exhibition about medical museums, click here. For more about Private Cabinets, an exhibition about privately held collect
ions, click here.

Click on images to see much larger image; full collection to be found here, caption list here:

1. Femme à barbe (Bearded Lady), Musée Orfila, Courtesy of Paris Descartes University
2. Tim Knox and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan Collection, Private Collection, London, England
3. Wax Department Store Mannequin, Early 20th Century; From the Home Collection of Evan Michelson, Antiques Dealer, New Jersey
4. Wax Model, Musée Orfila, Paris. Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
5. Venus Endormie (breathing model), Spitzner collection Collection Spitzner, Musée Orfila, Paris Courtesy Université Paris Descartes
6. Bird Collection, “La Specola” (Museo di Storia Naturale), Florence, Italy
7. Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands
8. Natural History Museum Backroom, Netherlands
9. Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Rouen, Rouen, France
10. Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy, Paris, France, Established 1793
11. Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands, Established 1778
12. Plaster Models in Pathological Cabinet, The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow

Check out this oversized and hand-painted ribcage jersey shirt by Sass & Bide.  Of course it isn’t cheap ($100)… butttt it’s sexy!