Maxwell's Lair 2007-2009
Maxwell’s Lair departs from the life and works of Martha Maxwell, a nineteenth-century American naturalist, who had at the time the largest collection of taxidermy in the US. She killed and prepared most of the animals in her collection while living in Colorado in the 1870s, first establishing a museum of taxidermy and natural historical curiosities in Boulder and later representing the state of Colorado in the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. In both of these “installations” she was one of the first natural historians to exhibit specimens in naturalistic settings—including appropriate flora and landscaping (caves, waterfalls) and sculpting the animals into action poses: eating, sleeping, hunting or capturing other beasts. In the middle of this life-size diorama was a small grotto where, in Philadelphia, Maxwell lived for most of the exhibition, too poor to afford other lodgings. Though the Fair’s many viewers were stunned by this new and spectacular definition of “Women’s Work” (as the exhibition was titled), Maxwell was never able to secure a permanent home for her collection or continued funding for her work, and died destitute. I’m fascinated, then, by this sequence in which a small, frail woman (barred from most scientific culture—but eager to make contributions to it, and to ecological awareness more generally) tracks, kills, eviscerates, sculpturally reanimates, lives among and eventually loses control of hundreds of wild animals,
For my project, Maxwell’s Lair, rather than track Maxwell’s fauna with a shotgun, I engaged in a contemporary form of hunting—amassing used stuffed animals from lost and found bins, yard sales, community thrift stores and Craig’s List—and transformed them sculpturally into creatures that evoke both Maxwell’s own exhibits and the larger dynamics of her life as hunter and taxidermist. The sculptures use some traditional taxidermy materials such as armatures, glass eyes and claws to restructure the creatures and put them into appropriate poses. Rather than arrange the animals in a pristine display, though, the drawings and sculptures in Maxwell’s Lair capture the processes of evisceration, reanimation and disintegration to which her specimens were subject. To this end the sculptures are sutured together and “distressed.” Meanwhile, the graphic works zoom in and out at different scales, depending on which part of Maxwell’s world they investigate. Working with Martha Maxwell is not about illustrating her life or her work. Instead, it is an attempt to get at the dynamics of her scientific investigation—and thereby to highlight a stranger, more fluid natural world latent within the materials of the one we think we know.
For my project, Maxwell’s Lair, rather than track Maxwell’s fauna with a shotgun, I engaged in a contemporary form of hunting—amassing used stuffed animals from lost and found bins, yard sales, community thrift stores and Craig’s List—and transformed them sculpturally into creatures that evoke both Maxwell’s own exhibits and the larger dynamics of her life as hunter and taxidermist. The sculptures use some traditional taxidermy materials such as armatures, glass eyes and claws to restructure the creatures and put them into appropriate poses. Rather than arrange the animals in a pristine display, though, the drawings and sculptures in Maxwell’s Lair capture the processes of evisceration, reanimation and disintegration to which her specimens were subject. To this end the sculptures are sutured together and “distressed.” Meanwhile, the graphic works zoom in and out at different scales, depending on which part of Maxwell’s world they investigate. Working with Martha Maxwell is not about illustrating her life or her work. Instead, it is an attempt to get at the dynamics of her scientific investigation—and thereby to highlight a stranger, more fluid natural world latent within the materials of the one we think we know.