ZooBotanical Simulated Specimens
My MFA thesis project was a collision of jewelry and natural history. I knew I wanted it to involve the collecting culture of natural history museums, but I didn't want to collect actual specimens from nature. So I turned to a common facsimile of natural organisms: artificial flowers. Upon exploration, I realized that they are like Legos for botanists! They are all put together using the same connecting systems, so I could not only disassemble and reassemble them, but I could *recombine* them into new forms.
So, I made my own "unnatural history" collection and christened them "Zoo-Botanical Simulated Specimens" (ZBSS): cohorts of recombinant faux organisms that were suggestive of animals, but composed of plant-part simulacra. I treated them as a scientist would to catalog, preserve and display collected specimens. I gave each 'species' and individual a number and attached an aluminum wildlife tag with the appropriate numbers to each specimen. I put them in museum jars with 47% isopropyl alcohol (a commonly-used preservative), I arrayed them on cotton in iconic Riker mounts, displayed them in acrylic boxes, and I embedded them in plastic and sectioned them as you would for microscope slides. The resulting objects were strangely beautiful, with the fantastical allure of imagined creatures, but grounded and validated by their scientific settings.
I also "set" the ZBSS's, both sectioned and whole, into jewelry, which is a ubiquitous souvenir item in museum gift shops. In doing so, I explored the relationships between geologic, animal/vegetable and cultural specimens on display in natural history museums and their referents and relatives in the gift shops. The commercial interaction between museums, their patrons and collectors was brought into play with the creation of a Thesis Gift Shop, where a large selection of the ZBSS, in their jars, mounts and jewelry, were offered for sale during the duration of the thesis show. Sterling silver silhouettes of particular specimens were included in each of the items offered and stood in for the "type specimen": one member of each ZBSS species cohort that I retained for my own personal collection. Thus, the ZBSS souvenirs, while available for purchase, nonetheless retained a suggestion of the mystery and desirousness of actual museum specimens, forever unattainable by consumers.
So, I made my own "unnatural history" collection and christened them "Zoo-Botanical Simulated Specimens" (ZBSS): cohorts of recombinant faux organisms that were suggestive of animals, but composed of plant-part simulacra. I treated them as a scientist would to catalog, preserve and display collected specimens. I gave each 'species' and individual a number and attached an aluminum wildlife tag with the appropriate numbers to each specimen. I put them in museum jars with 47% isopropyl alcohol (a commonly-used preservative), I arrayed them on cotton in iconic Riker mounts, displayed them in acrylic boxes, and I embedded them in plastic and sectioned them as you would for microscope slides. The resulting objects were strangely beautiful, with the fantastical allure of imagined creatures, but grounded and validated by their scientific settings.
I also "set" the ZBSS's, both sectioned and whole, into jewelry, which is a ubiquitous souvenir item in museum gift shops. In doing so, I explored the relationships between geologic, animal/vegetable and cultural specimens on display in natural history museums and their referents and relatives in the gift shops. The commercial interaction between museums, their patrons and collectors was brought into play with the creation of a Thesis Gift Shop, where a large selection of the ZBSS, in their jars, mounts and jewelry, were offered for sale during the duration of the thesis show. Sterling silver silhouettes of particular specimens were included in each of the items offered and stood in for the "type specimen": one member of each ZBSS species cohort that I retained for my own personal collection. Thus, the ZBSS souvenirs, while available for purchase, nonetheless retained a suggestion of the mystery and desirousness of actual museum specimens, forever unattainable by consumers.