FEW THINGS MATCH the harshness and beauty of the New Mexico desert like bleached skulls and clean, smooth bones. While cow skeletons and Día de los Muertos calaveras are a big part of our Southwest aesthetic, a growing number of artists have begun creating jewelry and three-dimensional art—sometimes called “oddities” or “death oddities”—featuring materials like intricate squirrel bones, two-headed snakes, and human teeth, hair, or ashes. This artistic genre takes a sidestep from taxidermy and old-timey freak shows, and displays a healthy amount of love for animals and respect for the natural process of death, often by creating memento mori pieces that honor those who have passed. “It takes the stigma out of the scary things, like death, dying, and dead things,” says Rose Hutson, owner of the Crow’s Nest oddities shop, in Santa Fe. “You’re able to look at it and turn it into something beautiful.”
“I’ve always been a weirdo,” says Carnuel artist Amanda Martinez. The owner of Lust for Dead Oddities began dabbling in resin jewelry before using the process to create memorial pieces that incorporate hair, teeth, or ashes from dead loved ones or pets. These days, she sources bones that have been cleaned naturally (by way of dermestid beetles) from responsible dealers for jewelry and domed-glass displays. Her booth at the Albuquerque Downtown Growers’ Market, among other pop-up events, features artistically designed earrings and necklaces strung with bison teeth, snake vertebrae, or badger baculum. “So many different people love this,” Martinez says, “[folks] who you wouldn’t think would be fascinated by it.”
Like a scavenger, Albuquerque artist Piper Tasoulas takes bits and pieces of magazines and books to craft collages that speak to her inner challenges, struggles, and musings about mortality. “Collage has always been my first love,” she says. “It’s the only time I can express myself.” Numbered and labeled medical illustrations of human body parts are surrounded by beautiful background textures, small animals, reptiles, and other curious objects. “What draws me to anatomy and death is that society has deemed it as bad, taboo,” Tasoulas says. “I see it as a celebration.” She also dreams up tiny landscapes and packs microflora into teacups and glass globes. Her gumball-size key chains often include a dead thing—a taxidermy duckling, animal skulls, preserved butterflies and moths, and giant beetles. “I see death as a different part of the journey of life and not the final,” she says.
Rose Hutson’s shop gives plenty of these creators a place to showcase and sell their work in Santa Fe. “When I announced I was opening,” Hutson says, “there were like 200 artists wanting to get their work on the shelves.” At the Crow’s Nest, which opened last December, wet specimens suspended in glass, painted animal skulls, haunted dolls, and antique medical instruments grace the walls, shelves, and cases. Hutson got the idea for the shop after attending one of the first Oddities & Curiosities Expos in Albuquerque. “That showed we had interest,” she says. “I saw the need for it.”