In front of a shuttered Chinatown store, artist Nate Hill rummaged through a pile of trash, fishing for the tools of his craft in someone else's garbage.

"Oh, look, a flounder!" he said, as he dug in one bin wearing blue surgical gloves and drew out a quivering white slip of fish. "Does anyone want some? I think there's more."

There were no immediate takers among the half dozen or so people who had followed Hill on a drizzly night for a tour of his favorite spots for digging through Chinatown garbage.

The goal: Find interesting dead animals to make into art.

The 30-year-old artist has been using animal carcasses to craft his "animal kingdom," as he refers to it, since 1999. The results are grotesque or sculptural, depending on your point of view. In Hill's hands, a puppy's head just as easily goes with a turkey neck and fish bladder as armadillo fingernails and birds' legs make abstract art-in-a-jar.

The monthly Chinatown tour, which sometimes draws dozens of people for a sojourn rife with the stink of rotting fish, is billed as educational, but it's mostly performance: The artist often shows up in costume, most recently as an army parachutist.

"I'm totally self-taught," he said. "To put it simply, what I do is cut up the animals, I sew them together in a different way, and then I submerge them in rubbing alcohol to preserve them."

He considers himself a member of a loosely defined group of "rogue taxidermists" who sidestep the traditional craft of taxidermy that aims to make lifelike replicas by preserving and stuffing animal skins. Along with the garbage cans of Chinatown, he said gets most of his animals from hunters, roadkill and taxidermists.

At the same time Hill's artwork attracts a following of hipsters, it raises questions from traditional taxidermists and even his fellow artists, including one of his collaborators.

"I'm a vegetarian," said comedian and musician Jessica Delfino, who has been a narrator on two episodes of "Chop Chop," a video series Hill produces that is posted on YouTube. "I do have mixed feelings. I do think art is important. And I think animals are sacred."

She said she was not so sure she could narrate another episode of Hill's videos.

One episode has Hill sewing together parts of a rabbit, a duck and a chicken. That video was taken down from YouTube following complaints.

Asked about the ethics of his art, Hill responds: "I eat meat. I feel like we can use animals to enrich us ... physically as well as mentally."

John Janelli, a board member of the National Taxidermy Association and a working taxidermist in New Jersey, said there's no comparison between what he does and Hill's methods.

"That's not taxidermy," Janelli said. "That's a concoction."......Read The Full Story

Related posts:

1. Taxidermist Robbed !
2. Art Is Often The Stuff Of Taxidermy
3. 2008 Colorado State Taxidermy Championships
4. Taxidermist Ups Reward For Stolen Skins
5. Taxidermist to Mount Record Bear