Eugene weekly., May 30, 2019, Page 13, Image 13

The Bone Collector
How to Skin a Cat
Tuesday, May 7, 9:17 pm, I get a message from Jessica
Kinser: “I took on a pet memorial today. I have him in my
freezer and probably won’t be able to start processing
him until next week … You want to watch me skin a cat?”
How does one answer such a question? Having put
down one of my dearly beloved cats last year, I know
what the coward in me answers: No way. I do not want
to watch a cat get skinned! It took everything I had to be
present when the vet put the needle into my cat’s leg vein,
knocking him into deep and irreversible slumber, followed
by the killer dose that stopped his heart forever.
Watching my cat die was an impossibly profound
experience, heart-rending in its free fall of sorrow and no-
take-backs finality, and I will be forever grateful that I faced
down my fears in order to see him out. Love conquers all.
In a way I can’t quite explain, it was a beautiful experience.
We had his paw prints cast in clay, and that’s all that’s
left of Buzz. That, and the memories, which will die with me.
But Kinser had something altogether different in mind
with this dead pet. Yes, there would be paw prints, and a
basically turned Charlie inside out, making slow incisions
along the legs and torso as she peeled the cat’s skin away
from the meat inside. She worked gently but swiftly,
with authority, but also with a kind of casual gravity that
balanced reverence with acceptance.
There were limpid continents of white fat hiding beneath
Charlie’s skin, and the thin tendons that feathered his
muscle shone an unearthly silver. Hesitantly, at Kinser’s
behest, I touched the fat that swaddled Charlie’s belly,
and was surprised at how firmly pliant it felt, like melted
cheese half cooled again.
The fur around Charlie’s head — his face, basically —
stayed intact until the end, which was disconcerting and
oddly sad and touching, like watching a picture fade to its
most beautiful point. Several times, Kinser spoke to the
cat, softly, urging along the process in consoling tones.
At last, with a newly bladed scalpel, she meticulously
removed the connecting tissue around his skull, the
snout, the eye sockets, and then the outsides of Charlie
were forever separated from the insides. It’s shocking
how tiny a cat’s head is.
From here, Kinser will treat and tan the cat’s hide,
carving a heart-shaped patch of fur for the owners as well
as providing a base for his reconstructed skeleton. It’s a
long process.
“Charlie was actually one of my more emotional ones,
because he did die in my arms,” Kinser tells me afterward.
“I felt that energy leave, but I also feel like I’m doing him
justice, because he died in a traumatic way. Instead of
having the end being that traumatic event, she’ll have
Photo s b y Tod d Co ope r
Between her junior and senior years in high school,
Kinser killed her first and only buck while bow hunting.
She decided to have the carcass processed by a
taxidermist, but didn’t have the money for it. So she and
her mom painted the taxidermist’s house as a trade for
his services.
“I saw his shop and everything was in different phases
of being processed,” she says. “I was amazed. There was
so much artistry and work. It’s such a complex process,
and I wanted to know more.”
Throughout college she also worked at Cabela’s, and
doing time in customer service at the regional outdoors
supplier, with its massive stock of rifles and knives and
bows and camouflage, as well as taxidermied animals, kept
her tied to her childhood roots. “Hunting, and death in
general, has always been kind of lurking in the background
of my social life,” Kinser says.
It’s here, precisely, that Kinser’s yearning to make art
came into contact with a sentimental attachment to her
own childhood, as she began to see the stuff of her past
with new eyes. Instead of rebelling against her upbringing,
she wondered if the skills and values she learned at the
feet of her parents could be translated into something at
once personal and aesthetic.
“I had no idea the work that was put into it,” she said
of taxidermy. “I wanted to study under somebody, but I
didn’t really know who could do that.”
Wanting to mentor with a professional who processed
of animals turned into necklaces, artifacts, tokens and
still lifes.
“That was a very big value that was ingrained into me
from the beginning,” she says, “to not discard things that
can be used just because it can be a tricky process to
make it usable. A lot of my art is to push people to think
what can or can’t be discarded and reused.”
animals into art — a taxidermist or leather-maker,
perhaps — she reached out on social media but, she says,
she was met with animosity.
“There’s a lot of sexism and a lot of elitism,” Kinser
says of that community. “The culture around it is very,
very conservative, and very dismissive. They have a very
big chip on their shoulder when somebody up-and-coming
wants to learn. They basically want to keep the monopoly
to themselves.”
So there’s the rub, the challenge: Nothing quite sparks
a creative spirit like saying the gulf between past and
present can’t be bridged. Kinser took the resistance she
met and turned it into inspiration. “My intention is to
disrupt that behavior,” she says of her lack of access to
the predominantly male culture of taxidermy and animal
processing. “I want to be a conduit of change in that
aspect of the culture.”
Besides, she says, “my mom’s a painter and I didn’t
want to be a copycat.”
Tapping into the knowledge and skills she learned from
her father (“I already was pretty decent at butchering
and skinning,” she says), Kinser turned her attention to
salvaging the already dead and discarded and turning it
into art — not mounted big-game heads, but the remains
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
nose print, but also a tanned hide, a swatch of fur and a
fully articulated skeleton, which the owners would receive
as a pet memorial.
Charlie was an 11-year-old Russian blue that actually
died in Kinser’s arms after the cat went into shock
following a tough surgery. Kinser, who was visiting her
friends at the time, attempted CPR, but Charlie was too
far gone.
Charlie’s people asked Kinser to do a full pet memorial
— which would be her first.
Thursday, May 16, 6:37 pm, message from Kinser:
“Charlie is ready…”
Friday, May 17, 4:52 pm, message from Kinser: “I just
got home and made some salt dough.”
If I were still a drinking man, I would have taken a couple
belts of something strong before I arrived at Kinser’s
that Friday.
The small shed behind her house is where Kinser does
the majority of the work. In the entryway I pass a small
plastic bucket that holds the macerating remains of a
baby goat. The smell, when you get your nose up close,
can knock you to your knees.
Nothing stinks like death. It takes your breath away.
For the better part of three hours, I watched as Kinser
beautiful artwork to stay in her home. It helps accept that
the energy is gone, but you still have these pieces to cling
to. It helps make accessing those memories easier.”
Such concerns seem to be at the core of Kinser’s art.
An atheist, she seeks to take the sting out of death by
restoring it to its place in the cosmic ebb and flow of
energy that she considers the foundation of existence.
“I believe in energy,” she says. “I think energy is just
trapped in our bodies until our bodies fail, and then the
energy moves forward. That energy is transferred.”
In a way, she says, “my spirituality is death. Some of
the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had are finding
something dead and making it beautiful. A lot of the taboo
around death is because people view it as tragic.”
Her art, then, flies directly in the face of the denial of
death that seems to be at the heart of American culture.
“It doesn’t need to be tragic,” she says. “It’s inevitable.
It’s natural part of the cycle. Maybe the circumstances
are tragic, and that’s where I come in. If it makes people
uncomfortable, I want to comfort the uncomfortable.” ■
You can find Jessica Kinser’s art online at Impressions of Decay
on Facebook, Instagram and Etsy. She recently participated in the
Dark Arts Market at Old Nick’s Pub, and she will be at the Whiteaker
Community Market, which runs 11 am to 4 pm every Sunday through
September.
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