Part scientist, part artist. Allis Markham is one of the world’s premier Taxidermists. She specializes in bringing exotic animals back to life for museums and science centers. We talk Taxidermy, interesting animals and the growing science of Nassology. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Things You Should Always Keep.
Allis Markham: 01:23ish
Pointless: 29:45ish
Top 5: 42:00ish
https://www.preytaxidermy.com/pages/about-prey (Allis Markham Website - Prey Taxidermy)
https://www.instagram.com/allis (Allis Markham Instagram)
Interview with Taxidermist Allis Markham
Nick VinZant 0:11
Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant coming up in this episode, award winning taxidermy, and stuff you should always keep,
Allis Markham 0:23
we're taking their skin off, like you would peel an orange. And then we're creating a structural representation of what's inside of them. Occasionally, I'll take what's called a death mask. And what that is, I'll make a very careful mold of the face. When I see the similarities when I scan animals, and I noticed the similarities to humans, it's much more jarring than the differences.
Nick VinZant 0:49
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it really helps us out. So our first guest is part scientist, part artist. And she specializes in bringing exotic and everyday animals back to life from museums and science Center's she's one of the best taxidermists in the world. And she's won all kinds of awards. This is taxidermist Alice Markham. So is this more of an art or more of a science,
Allis Markham 1:26
that's what I love about taxidermy is that it sits in a place between art and science. So I have to initially when I'm working on something, you know, you're very much a scientist in taking it all apart, right? And then you really have to utilize artistic skills to reassemble the specimen. But then scientific ones to know how to make it biologically accurate. So you get to be both. And that's the fun of it.
Nick VinZant 1:54
So I know nothing about this. And I'll be honest, like when I used to go to museums and places like that, I didn't realize those were real animals. I thought that this was something that they made, like in graphics, art department or something like that. You're you're using real animals, right?
Allis Markham 2:11
Yes, absolutely. So what will happen is basically is an animal will die these days, we're not so much going out to collect things like they did in the 17 and 1800s. Mostly today, an animal will die at a zoo or be founded, unfortunately, animals get hit by a car, and then an institution will acquire them, right, they'll put them in a freezer is a fancy way to say. And then they will come to me, I'll pick these up whole frozen, and then I will taxidermy them, right. So we take the first part, as I said, was taking them apart, right? So we're skinning them, we're taking their skin off, like you would peel an orange. And then we're creating a structural representation of what's inside of them. So there's no bones, there's no organs, the eyes are made out of glass, all of that. So really, the only thing that's real on them is the skin. I mean, there are exceptions, right? In birds, you're going to leave in some of the bones. But for the most part, taxi domain, right, the arrangement of skin taxidermy, it's just that we're just arranging the skin, the rest of sculpture,
Nick VinZant 3:26
I grew up so in small town, Kansas, and when I think of a taxidermist, like I think of Bob's taxidermy down the road, and I always heard it as referred to as like, hey, go get the animal stuffed. But is, is that what you're doing? But on a much higher level? Or is this a completely different kind of thing than like, Gus, who could do the bobcat you shot for 20 bucks down the road, so to speak?
Allis Markham 3:53
Well, Bob's taxidermy and Gus, they're doing essentially what I'm doing. They're not stuffing anything. In fact, fun fact. If you're like, if you use the word stuffed or to stuff around taxidermist, like, Bill, them's fighting words. I don't come in. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, I'm trying to
Nick VinZant 4:18
disrespectful. It's like, it's an oversimplification, right. Oh, yeah,
Allis Markham 4:21
exactly. Because we're not stuffing anything. What we're doing is again, like we're creating this inner sculpture. Now look, some people are going to go to more trouble to create that inner sculpture and bring a lot more art to it than others. Right. So you know, if it's like someone who does hunting trophies and all of that, even within that there's different levels. Yeah, there's someone you can take some things to and very cheaply get something done, and you'll get a cheap product back. But that's like any industry, right? You're going to get what you pay for texted or misses the same thing. But the difference I guess, between somebody who does trophy work or commercial taxes, as it's called, and then museum people is that we're always kind of doing custom work. Everything is, you know, we need it to outlive us. So it's different in that regard. But it everybody is. It's still everybody's still artists, right?
Nick VinZant 5:18
How did you get into this? Like, Was this something that you found yourself in? Or was this something that as a young girl you thought, taxidermy?
Allis Markham 5:27
You know, it's funny, it's something I kind of came back to. I grew up in Indiana and Florida, and I loved nature and outdoors. And I would find bones and just be fascinated, right? I mean, I was just all of that, like coming home with like lizards in my pocket and stuff. And you did a lot of art growing up, did a lot of sculpture. And then somehow, as an adult, I ended up in marketing, right, I worked for Disney in social media marketing. And I was there for a while. And I ended up making good enough money to quit. Good enough money to be like, this is not what I want to do. I mean, I really looked around, I was director level at Disney in my mid 20s. And I was miserable. And so it looked around, I was like, What do I want to do? And I'd been collecting taxidermy for some time, and like, kind of playing with maybe wanting to learn how to do that, and loved the Natural History Museum. And I answered that question for myself and being like, you know, what, I want to work in museums. And I want to be a taxidermist. So I really set out to do this. I didn't like find myself in it. Um, but so then I quit my job at Disney and I went to a brief taxidermy program up in Montana, got back stopped the museum, taxidermists here in LA it natural history museum, and like, talked my way into an apprenticeship. I don't even know how, and yes, over a decade ago,
Nick VinZant 7:02
in terms of like a scientific, so to speak education, like how long do you have to go to school, go to training, apprenticeship, that kind of stuff?
Allis Markham 7:10
So the answer to that is, depends on how quickly you learn. Some people come to taxidermy from an art background, right? went to art school, or just are really good artists. Some people like my mentor, he's a zoologist, who has some amazing artistic skills, right. So it just really depends. I mean, I didn't. I didn't go to school for this. I teach at Occidental College. I don't even have an a college degree. I don't know if they know that. No, they know that. Now, yeah, Oh, I forgot to tell them. But you know, people come from different things. But what I do have is, you know, I apprenticed at the museum under my mentor. For several years, I got to work alongside Kimball Garrett, who's one of the world's leading ornithologist, right? So I have a trade job. And people don't really this is a trade job, even if you're working at the highest level. So but does having a degree help? Oh, absolutely. That'll help you get hired and work at a museum or you know, whatever it is, so, but it's certainly not required. You could just be really good at it and really motivated and get a really good apprenticeship. That's kind of how things are done. I will say, you do want to get an apprenticeship is the way to do it. And I've been lucky enough to have a great one. But I've also traveled and worked under other taxidermist all over the world. And I've had people come here to learn from me,
Nick VinZant 8:43
we kind of touched on it a little bit. But I know that obviously every single animal is going to be different. But let's say you get in a cat, dog, whatever. Like what, how do you do it.
Allis Markham 8:55
So with anything, let's say I get in, get, let's just go with a cat. So I'm like, let's say it's a bobcat. So I get in a bobcat, right, and it's frozen, and it's dead. Initially, I need to take reference. So if you have all these measurements, sheets, and if you go to my Instagram, and you scroll down, you'll see like a measurement sheet. And I'm measuring all these details on the face, the body, all of that. And I will also take a bunch of photos. Occasionally I'll take what's called a death mask. And what that is, is I'll make a very careful mold of the face. And then take that mold off, fill it with plaster and I have a replica of the face. So I'll do things like that. And all of that references giving me a lot of information because now I'm going to take it apart, meaning now I'm going to remove the skin from the rest of the body of this Bobcat. So you know I'll make an incision there's a few different ways to skin a cat therefore And, and then I'll kind of again, I'll peel the skin off like you're peeling an orange, right. And then I end up with a carcass and the skin that are separate many times I'll take the carcass and I'll take a tracing of it on like butcher paper, I'll take it apart all of that. And then I will take the skin and the skin of that cat gets turned into leather. This is a chemical process that's known as tanning. So it just turns it into leather, just like your shoes or anything else except it's got a face. Yeah, so that's turning into leather. And while that's being turned into leather, then I will take all of that reference I have. And I will start to make what we call a form or a mannequin. So I need to replace everything that was inside right in the pose that I want. So the skins off in buckets being tanned right, now I've got a few different options, I can carve something I can utilize all the the reference that I have, and I can hand carve something out of foam. It's a rigid foam, it's called polyurethane. It's like a styrofoam only harder, and I can sculpt it that way, I can order what we call a commercial form, if either taxidermy supply websites, and you can get pretty close to the size and the pose that you want, and then someone like me would alter them, right, like kind of cut it up, carve it a bit chisel away. Once I feel like I've got a pretty good form, right, I'll take the skin. And that'll go over the sculpture, I'll have hide paste in between the skin and the form, I'll have glass eyes, I'll put clay on in the face, like in different ways to make different muscle, great create expression, and the whole thing gets sewn up. And then I let it dry, right. And then it has a spa day, right? Just like you would groom a dog or something, I will take it and shampoo it, condition it blow dry it off everything like that. And like brush everything with a dog brush. And then there's finishing work, I'm going to paint certain things, you know, cats can have a cute little pinky, red nose, I'll paint that, you know all those different things. So that was a really short description of how that would be done.
Nick VinZant 12:25
First of all, that's fascinating. But why not use the bones? Like why couldn't you use the bones in it? How come? They don't?
Allis Markham 12:32
That's a great question. So they used to use the bones up and into until like the 1960s or so. That was before we really were using any type of polymer right in this. The bones are made of calcium, and over time they break down. So if you look at older taxidermy, you'll see sometimes it's like kind of collapsing in on itself, what they would do is take the bones and go over them with burlap and plaster. So over time, this will become brittle. And it's also extremely heavy. So it's just we don't need to use the bones. You have an understanding of anatomy enough that the bones don't really need to be there.
Nick VinZant 13:19
Did this taxidermy last that long?
Allis Markham 13:22
text? Are we Yeah, I mean, I've repaired things, you know, or gone in the museum and done maintenance on some things that have been around since? Yeah, like the 1800s. That should last a very long time.
Nick VinZant 13:35
I really thought you were gonna say like 20 years.
Allis Markham 13:41
If something's done, right, like there is taxidermy that only last 20 years, because someone was like, we don't need to take off all the fat. And then bugs come and eat it. Like that certainly happens. But yeah, if you go, I mean, there's taxidermy from the 1800s, early 1900s. And some of it still looks amazing. today. If you go to the Field Museum, there's a gentleman who's considered the father of modern taxidermy, anti ramas, named Carl akeley. And his I mean, his tax form is there. It's from the late 1800s. And what's incredible, gosh, yeah.
Nick VinZant 14:15
So like, okay, when you're doing something, how accurate Do you have to be save the nose on this animal is two inches to 2.15 inches? Like, do you have to get it to 2.15 inches? And if it's 2.14, that's not good enough? Or do you just have to get it pretty, like where somebody can eyeball test?
Allis Markham 14:35
I mean, you know, it depends, right? So what is your viewing distance, so you want to get it as close as possible, but when you're working in a museum to and let's say you're doing 4050 pieces for them and you're on a budget and whatever, you know, you can always spend the amount of time on one piece that you would like to or whatever. I work in millimeters. I get as close as I possibly can, when things dry, they shrink down a little bit. So you can't always control for certain things. But I mean, you should get I mean, you're working with an organic specimen that would sit at a certain size, so you should be able to get pretty close. I mean, if you're far off the mark, then like, that's a problem. But if you're within a few millimeters, depending on what it is, I think that's it's very acceptable.
Nick VinZant 15:28
Do you I mean, this may be some of my personal feelings coming in there. Does it ever feel weird? Like this was a living animal?
Allis Markham 15:36
Sometimes, um, you know, I certainly haven't lost my respect for every animal that comes in the door. Some things Hit me harder than others, though. You know, mountain lions, because they get hit by cars. When I get one of those, it kind of bums me out. But because it's just such a, I mean, they're bigger than me. I'm a tiny lady. So a lot of times are bigger than me. And it's just like, wow, and you kind of see how they died. And all that and knowing that it's because of, of people is upsetting. Same with just like, I got it some albatross. And they're just stunning dream birds of mine. But, you know, I think the real differences is I don't often take on pets. Just because it does feel different. There's an emotional weight to working on somebody's pet versus a wild animal. And there's a lot of time, you know, extra time you put into it with a domestic animal. And those, like, those, like they hit me hard. Because I you know, I love animals, I have dogs, the whole thing, and it just feels different. And yeah, I'm kind of losing my words here. But it really does feel different when it's someone's pet.
Nick VinZant 16:56
Putting all humbleness aside, why are you good at it, basically.
Allis Markham 17:00
Oh, why am I going to taxidermy? Um, you know, I think it's because I don't put a lot of ego into it. I'm really excited to learn. I'm always learning, right? I work in a lot of different animals. So every time I sit down is usually a different animal. I'm not cranking out like, you know, 50 pelicans a year like No, do this. It's all It's all right. So if I'm not willing to learn, or keep learning, then all my birds are going to look like this one bird, all my mammals really like that one mammal. So I have to keep evolving and keep learning. And I think another part of that is not just on this specimen. But there's a lot of people with way more experience than me. There's a lot of people with way more knowledge than me and more skill, and am I willing to put aside what I think that I know, and actually learn from them. So I, you know, I'm grateful every day to allow myself to feel stupid and just listen to other people. You know, I think I'll do a lot of work on researching things. I'll do a lot of reaching out to other taxidermist and be like, hey, how did you get the blood out of this seagull? Like it's, you know, things like that. So yeah, just just learning.
Nick VinZant 18:22
Okay. Are you ready for some Harder, harder slash listener submitted questions?
Allis Markham 18:27
Sure. Yeah, all taxidermists are pretty much batshit. Crazy. So really, yeah, myself included. Well, we all kind of work alone, like you got to be pretty. Okay, with being different if you're going to sit down and work with dead animals, and you've got to really not give a shit what people think about you for starters. That's true. You know what I mean? Because everyone has things that they say. I mean, I've been called like, Norman Bates, Cruella de Vil. Like all of that, you know, I get all that everyone thinks like, I'm a mortician. So I think you got to be not care what people think about you if you're going to be a taxidermist, and then you actually have to be able to sit down and do the work of taking something completely apart. Just to put it back together again. And so it looks exactly the same. Which is crazy when you think about it. Like what an odd thing to do.
Nick VinZant 19:22
Yeah, he's kind of when you think about it, right? Like,
Allis Markham 19:25
yeah, I do get a ton of work on this just so it looks like it did in the first place.
Nick VinZant 19:31
So many good slogans for taxidermy taxidermy. We don't give a fuck. Back, but back to the listener submitted questions. Easiest animal hardest animal?
Allis Markham 19:46
Whoo. That's actually really good question. Okay, so the easiest animal to do. Oh, you know what, armadillo. I'm gonna put a caveat on this hard animal to take apart right? You get an R armadillo. And if you're familiar with them, right, they have these like shields going down their back. annoyingly, they are connected to the spine. So you kind of have to hollow them out like you're like you're hollowing out a watermelon or something just not as juicy and way too stinky and they can have leprosy. So imagine a watermelon like that. You're welcome. And then, but, you know, so that's hard, but when you put them back together, they are, everything is shaped by that shield. So there's no feathers to groom, there's no hair to lay in the correct position, whatever. So, I mean, not that I would do this, but I have a theory, you could just fill them up with some spray insulation foam and call it a day. I you know when I say that, like it'd be a funny experiment, and I think they would have been perfectly fine. And I'm not one to say things like that. I'm a perfectionist, but that has to be the easiest thing.
Nick VinZant 21:01
What's the one we like all my gosh,
Allis Markham 21:03
I'm quite probably a really delicate bird. I would say like a dove. A dove has a very thin skin. So a dove. If you were to skin something like let's say a j just a blue j, they're, they're pretty feisty, and they have a really tough skin just the way that they are right. It's like wet paper towel. But a dove is like skinning wet one ply toilet paper. It's like if you look at it wrong, it's just gonna fall apart. In fact, holding the skin up. If you're just to hold the skin up lifted, its own weight would break it. It's just extremely delicate. And then the feathers just want to flat fall out. So you can end up with a pretty big mess on your table and not a lot of bird.
Nick VinZant 21:54
Is there one that like, Is there an animal that like can do it?
Allis Markham 21:58
I mean, I thought I wouldn't be able to do baby hummingbirds. But I did. I was surprised when those turned out and they're on my Instagram. They belong to Occidental College, I did a little baby hummingbirds in a nest. And the mom is like hovering and feeding them. And I'm really proud of that that was there the size of insects. They're really small. But yeah, I'm happy about those
Nick VinZant 22:24
animal that made you go, oh my gosh, that's what this thing looks like when you opened it up.
Allis Markham 22:30
I mean, I'm going to take that back to the armadillo. Those are pretty weird when I opened it up. But I will also say, sea lion. So sea lions are pinnipeds. And they have the weirdest, like when I skinned out the flipper, one of the front feet of a sea lion. It looks like a human hand with the longest fingers you've ever seen. But so human looking. Oh, it was just when I see the similarities when I scan animals, and I noticed the similarities to humans, it's much more jarring than the differences. Is Sony.
Nick VinZant 23:13
The same? Yeah, I mean, we are all descended from eventually at some point, the same thing, right? It is crazy.
Allis Markham 23:20
We're all the same machine. We're just configured in different ways. But if you look at the wing of a bird, it's the exact same bones as our hands and our arms. Right? It's just it's the same machine it's just configured a little differently for whatever that machine is doing.
Nick VinZant 23:37
prehistoric animal you like a crack at
Allis Markham 23:41
Archaeopteryx. It's like an ancient kind of, I'm gonna get in trouble for this, but it's an ancient, it's like a paleo bird. But then the paleontologists dyno people are like, no, it's a dinosaur. I don't know I'm probably gonna yelled at by one or the other of them. But Archaeopteryx so for some
Nick VinZant 24:00
reason, for some reason, I really thought you'd say woolly mammoth. I feel like
Allis Markham 24:05
oh, they're just so elephant like, and I feel like they're so well understood that, you know, I like a challenge. And that'd be really fun to do, but it would be really similar to, I would say, an elephant of today, whereas an Archaeopteryx is like, way different. And I'm such a bird nerd. I feel like if I didn't name a bird, it would just be a bee cheating on on birds or something.
Nick VinZant 24:34
Um, I don't know what that one is supposed to mean. Oh, this one just says is this a growing or a shrinking industry?
Allis Markham 24:44
Are you asking if it's a dead art? To me a little pun. Um, it's growing at but I think the part of it. So what I think is shrinking is I think a lot of trophy hunting is shrinking. You're just not getting a lot of people out. There. Hunting is As much as you did, but what I think is growing, is people interested in learning about it for museums and art. I'm basing this anecdotally on the amount of students that I have. I was teaching through Atlas Obscura online, you know, during the pandemic, and I'll probably do that, again, I have over 300 students in one of my classes from around the world. So 300 students willing to pay money to spend three consecutive Saturdays learning taxidermy online. That's crazy. I've also had the pleasure of going to Australia to teach, you know, 50 different students there. I've had, you know, I've taught over 1000 individual students in my in person workshops. And if you just go on Instagram, you know, that's where I mostly AM. There's so many, I mean, especially women, I'm getting into taxidermy that you didn't see before. So that that's really starting to happen. And we're seeing a lot more diversity too.
Nick VinZant 26:10
Okay. Here's the question that you either always get asked, or no one has ever asked you but always wonders this. could you do this to a person?
Allis Markham 26:20
Yeah, I always get asked that. So I, you know, my answer is this taxidermy, of an animal looks best when that animal is covered in fur or feathers. Let's talk about why. If you have a leather handbag, it's been tanned just like a mammal skin would be tanned, right? It's gone through that same process I talked about before, it doesn't have fur on it. So it looks like leather. So if we take a person, and we do that same process where we turn the skin to leather, and it doesn't have fur on it, they're going to look like that handbag, with eyes and a nose and a mouth, but the skin's gonna look leathery, right?
Nick VinZant 27:03
Like a seven year old Florida retiree is what I'm imagining just burned in the sun.
Allis Markham 27:10
Yes, exactly what I was thinking of. So it'll look like that. Um, there are some things you could do. There's a process called wax infiltration. It's similar to like the body worlds thing where it's plasticization. You know, but it's a really difficult process. It's very slow chemical process, where essentially, you're inundating the skin with a paraffin wax. So it'll look more like a wax museum situation. So you could do it. Um, but it would take a long time, be very expensive. And then if it got too hot, they would melt a little. So I wouldn't want to do it.
Nick VinZant 27:49
Do you get asked that question. A lot. And how do you feel about getting asked that question like, Do you worry about people because they constantly asked her? Do you feel like that's a natural part of people's curiosity?
Allis Markham 28:01
I mean, I feel like that's a natural part of people's curiosity, because you're looking, you're like, can that happen to me? You look at animals, and then you imagine your own body and what the process would look like on yourself. And so I actually like i don't i think it's an interesting question. I it tells me the person's like actually kind of thinking about it. They're internalizing it and thinking about it.
Nick VinZant 28:25
That's pretty much all the questions I have, is there anything else you think we missed? Or what's coming up next for you?
Allis Markham 28:32
if we missed anything, I'll say like, what's coming up next in my world, and we working on a couple different nature centers in Orange County, I'm excited about that. I have a big backlog of work I need to catch up on before that, because I was not someone that thrived in COVID. I was wildly depressed. So you know, so I'm catching up on all of that. And I'm very open about that. Because I see people on Instagram being like thriving and COVID. I'm just like, did not. But um, yeah, so I'm just here catching up on work. And I have a new puppy. I mean, he's like nine months now. But he I think he's still puppy. He's giant. So yeah. Okay. And then they'll go champion. Oh, so this one last thing, too. And also, I have in May, the World Championships of taxidermy are coming up again. So I'm getting ready for that.