Juxtapoz May/June 00
By John Gunnin

Creature Commodities, The Sculpture of Carlee Fernandez

Is Carlee Fernandez an animal lover or a sick fuck? That’s up to you. But one thing’s for sure: she’s handy with a saw and she’s not afraid to get down and dirty with dead wild animals. John Gunnin watches the fur fly.

“I NEVER DO MY OWN PETS,” says sculptor Carlee Fernandez as she smiles and sips a glass of wine. Between us, a ram’s head stares up from the floor. It doubles as her briefcase and represents her latest series, Carnage II 7000, comprised of pieces of luggage created from taxidermied animals. Boars, rams, antelopes, and goats are splayed out, cut with a jigsaw, fit with latches and zippers, and fashioned into containers.

Do they offend people? “Don’t think what you have is any different from what I have,” Fernandez points out, eyeing my leather shoes. “My stuff just keeps the paws and snouts intact. Everybody thinks I’m anti-animal, but I love animals. When I was a kid, our family had 15 to 20 pets at a time. Animals are beautiful, both alive and dead. But when you’re dead, you’re dead, and taxidermy is just a way of giving something a second life.”

Looking puckish at age 26, Fernandez is both playful and unpredictable. Born in Santa Ana, California, she speaks Dutch rather then Spanish, having grown up in Texas, the United Kingdom, and Holland. As a kid, she imbibed a steady diet of schlock horror films, which continue to influence her work today. Her father would set up her high chair in front of the television each day so she could share his favorite genre with him. Not to be outdone, her mother set out to teach Fernandez, the joy of shock in a morbid series of practical jokes that culminated in wrapping a scarf around a pig’s head and wheeling it into a neighbor’s house in a baby stroller. Later that year, her mother decorated their bathroom with an array of mannequin heads, arms, legs, and hands that protruded from the walls.

Fernandez didn’t start out as an artist. “It was the typical thing: trying to deny art, starting with business,” she explains. She toyed with several careers before giving in to the allure of the hammers, chisels, and screwdrivers that had held a magnetic attraction for her since childhood. Her first art hero was sculptor Joseph Cornell, with whom she shares a concern for the interior space of objects.

Fernandez graduated from California State University at Fullerton in 1997 and went on to earn an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Even during those formative years, her work focused on animals. Her passion for horror guided the narrative for Peter (1997), a taxidermied rabbit mounted on the wall with a viewing lens fastened onto his forehead. Peering inside, we witness life, via video, from Peter’s favorite bush. Alas, a demented woman stalks down the poor bunny with a chainsaw. As in the classic horror film, we watch as the victim stumbles away unsuccessfully from a crazed killer made more menacing by skewed angles.

After attending bullfights in Tijuana, Fernandez did a photo documentary on the life of a fighting bull all the way from his pampered pasture days to his final transfiguration into dog food. Experimenting with installations using a live cow led her to abandon narratives eventually to concentrate on objects of utility and commodity. For a time, she worked with bones and even dug up a friend’s backyard in search of the remains of their family cat. The bones, digested by the earth, crumbled in her hands. She decided to return to the warmer, fuzzier pursuit of her childhood taxidermy.

Bob’s Taxidermy in Fullerton became a mecca for Fernandez. She hung out there, learned about the craft, and began to collect the preserved creatures that she fashioned eventually into bags, pouches, and luggage. “People got really freaked out by the animals,” she says, “so I would only cut them up late at night. I felt like part surgeon and part beautician.” Each animal in her series can be zipped open to reveal a fully functional and plush interior. The body of work viewed as a whole is both arresting and disquieting: it underscores our ubiquitous desire to collect trophies, a salient theme in today’s orgy of affluence.

How does all this compare with Damien Hirst? “I dig his work,” Fernandez says, “but he’s all about decay. I’m about preserving.” Another artist Fernandez admires is the Dutch sculptor Atelier van Lieshout, an artist known for transforming interior spaces.

Does Fernandez travel with these bags on airplanes and trains? She shakes her head no, and I put to rest my fear of her being chased down and stomped by a rabid group of animal rights activists. However, the catalog and merchandising aspect remains an important part of her work. The language of the Samsonite catalog was her gospel as she invented these pieces.

Fernandez scrutinizes viewers as they examine her work. Even the ones who act repelled are quick to choose which one they like best. “Art is a commodity, and the advertising is an important part of this piece,” she says. “There’s no question that animals are commodities too. We use them and eat them every day. Let’s just be honest about all this. The meat in the market here in the U.S. is so packaged and coded it’s almost not real. You’ll never get it with the head on.” Where is she going next? “I’d love to do a human someday. What a way to extend your use! I would like to know that my body parts could be used for something else when I die.”