SI5

Artist Statement:

For this project I decided to focus on cartilogenophobia, which is the fear of bones. I used the turkey bones from Thanksgiving and black paint marker to make this.

This phobia sprouts from general anxiety, and tends to get worse over time. A lot of times, people obtain this fear from watching horror movies with a lot of gore and detail, and bad occurrences from doctors. I started this project 4 days before it was due. I spent a whole day boiling an entire turkey carcass and picking off the flesh, ligaments, and tendons. I picked out a few and did a deeper clean of those ones and threw the rest in the woods. I used the humerus and breastbone, many of the others ended up breaking. I did find a deer carcass in the woods and was planning on using some of the ribs, but they were too far gone to be usable. I cleaned them with water and picked off all of the cartilage, and used sandpaper to file off the spongy bone that stuck out in weird places. I had them sit in a bucket of hydrogen peroxide window cleaner for a few hours then let them dry. I started adding the designs on them but I had to do it in spurts because I couldn't handle the smell for too long.