The Death Issue: Bone Collectors

She wanted bones — to leave an animal in a tub of water to rot until the muscle and fat and skin sloughed off like a coat. He wanted skin, scales, fur, feathers — to separate coat from carcass with a sharp, short blade. 

“I’ve got this mole in the back of my car,” he said. “I’d like to show you.” 

“Well that’s awesome,” she said. 

Husband and wife Matthew Fite and Alyssa Strickland each became fascinated by animals at an early age. Strickland’s father was a hunter, and she learned about the process of maceration — separating the bones from everything else — through trial and error with the animals her father brought home. Fite read about taxidermy in a Boy Scout handbook, and soon he was experimenting with roadkill and putting taxidermy on his Christmas wish lists. 

Fite encouraged Strickland, who had been secretive about her hobby, to “come out as a taxidermist,” she says, and together they found a whole community of artists.

Eight years later, a broad-snouted caiman crocodile sits frozen on their living room floor. He was once the mascot of a local fish and reptile store — he spent nearly a decade in the shop’s freezer, from which it was recently removed. Death and life occupy the same space in a Goodlettsville condo. 

“I often call myself a necromancer,” says Fite. “I give life back to the dead.”

“I don’t give life back to the dead,” says Strickland. “I raise the dead.” 

On a table in the corner of the couple’s living room, a resplendent Geoffroy’s marmoset perches on a branch. Like many small primates — this one with a body about 8 inches long — it looks both regal and mischievous, its curious face pondering something below. Beside it on a bookshelf, the marmoset’s delicate bones are articulated in the same pose. 

Strickland and Fite are warm and friendly hosts. She wears a crow’s-beak pendant around her neck and hoop earrings fashioned from snake vertebrae. It’s against the law to kill snakes in Tennessee, and even if it weren’t, she wouldn’t do it. She finds them dead on the side of the road. 

“A lot of people think we don’t like animals,” says Fite. “But it’s the exact opposite.” 

“We love them,” Strickland adds, snuggling her very much alive pet rat, Rattika. 

The couple run a pair of businesses: Articulation Creations is Strickland’s territory, featuring skeletons, mummified critters and preserved animals. Roguewolf Taxidermy is Fite’s, and focuses on classic taxidermy and what’s called “rogue taxidermy” — that is, taxidermy characterized by strange and often eerie juxtapositions. One piece features a baby goat with a mouth full of cat’s teeth, while another — the stuff of nightmares — features a large gray rat with a gaping (but fake) human mouth on its back. 

Other creations have a different vibe altogether. Strickland has just completed a commission. A chameleon perches on a small branch among bright-green moss and dried flowers inside a brass-colored lantern. This one was commissioned as a wedding gift. 

Contrary to popular belief, taxidermy doesn’t involve a lot of stuffing. After skinning an animal, taxidermists sew the skin around a form that’s either ordered from a catalog or sculpted themselves. The broad-snouted caiman crocodile in Fite and Strickland’s living room is freezer-burnt, and Fite expects skinning him will be a challenge. Ideally, the couple get an animal much sooner after its death, sourcing from pet owners, pet shops, zoos, farms and exotic pet traders — the last of which poses something of an ethical dilemma for the couple. But animals die, no matter their circumstances; we can dispose of their bodies or do something more creative.

Their menagerie also includes ravens posed in flight, dozens of skulls from everything from badgers to cats to a prized toucan, an alpaca vertebrae, white rats donning top hats, fox pelts, lizards, the preserved forked penis of an opossum and a mummified cat that a friend found in an old barn — its body is twisted as if it died in agony. On the rogue side of things, Fite added rat pelts to a gas mask that’s mounted on a panel, the tails splayed around the mask like rays. The marmoset appears again — this time its likeness is molded from a cask. But this one has none of the monkey’s charm. It’s connected to the body of a ball python. 

You can find work by Articulation Creations and Roguewolf at Hail, Dark Aesthetic (2410 Gallatin Ave.). They also sell their goods at craft shows like the Oddities Market held at The Fairgrounds Nashville in early October. Find them online at facebook.com/roguewolftaxidermy and facebook.com/Articulationcreations.