RoadKill Makeover-Have the Rogue Taxidermists defiled an august pastime?

By Steve Marsh

Rogue Taxidermists are coming to Art-A-Whirl. Last October, three founding Members of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists held their inaugural show at Creative Electric Studios, exhibiting their now-controversial pieces of "taxidermy art," such Scott Bibus's "Crab Eating Catfish” and Sarina Brewer's half-cat, half-crow Goth Griffin," Since then, the macabre and often gory nature of the art has garnered international attention, covered in British Front, German FHM and The New York Times.

AII the press has driven once lonely taxidermy artists to the group's website, roguetaxidermy.com. For $25 and adherence to MART's guidelines- only road kill. Avoid wasting organic matter-anyone can join, even if only for the T-shirt. So this month at Art-A Whirl, alongside Bibus's, Brewer's, and Robert Marbury's new work (Marbury describes his stuffed toy animal dioramas as "vegan taxidermy”), will be scenes of anthropomorphized mice and road kill skunk.

At Bibus's Northeast Minneapolis duplex, where an elk's head graces the entranceway, the collective tries to make sense of the attention, both positive and negative. Marbury, a Baltimore native, explains some of it by saying that "Midwestern kitsch is fetishized on the coasts," Here in Minnesota, where many a sportsman’s prize walleye finds its way to the wall, complainants- ranging from PETA members to the taxidermy mainstream- question, in nasty missives, whether the Rogue Taxidermists qualify as taxidermist, artists or pure evil.

The artists seem to relish the angry emails as they do their newly pumped up eBay sales and offers to appear on late-night talk shows-but they don't lilt to be considered freaks, They insist they genuinely appreciate both animals and taxidermy, "Our obsession with natural history and our seriousness about the craft allows us to step back and be referential. Animals do die and bleed, and it’s ridiculous [to imply] that we don't see that. So there's this irony involved in [people defining] what’s acceptable in the presentation of life and death.