Immortality Medicine

Hannah Stouffer is a California-based illustrator with some really unique work which includes iPhone skins, sneaker prints, and wall decals.  This Mermaid Skeleton decal print above for $60 is perfect for new lovers, mermaid lovers.

[via CoolHunting]

Katerina Orlikova takes the Baskerville typeface and expertly crafts into animal skeletons.  I love that you don’t really get a sense that the bones are really typographical elements until you start looking closely at the details.  And the slight blur effect placed on these images gives it that authentic ghostly x-ray feel.  It’s genius.

See more of her typography inspired work here!

Discuss Thursday’s episode, “Push,” and all things Grey’s Anatomy at our new home. Bookmark and visit us daily for the best news, discussion, spoilers and much more:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

Specifically, we’ve posted the following in the last 12 hours alone:

• Our episode recap and official review of “Push”
• Our staff’s Round Table discussion of events
• A list of the episode’s best quotes and music
• News about Katherine Heigl’s departure
• A Private Practice recap and review
• A brand new Caption Contest

Click and join the show’s #1 fan community!

Discuss Thursday’s episode, “Push,” and all things Grey’s Anatomy at our new home. Bookmark and visit us daily for the best news, discussion, spoilers and much more:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

These tees come from Sixpack France, a company with eclectic apparel. The shirts above are called Bone Tie, and AppleBrain and range from $35-$48.  AppleBrain is pretty clever!

This just in from Morbid Anatomy reader Eoin:

I work at an artists studio and we are currently having a clear out. We have four old morgue slabs and their bases that we are trying to dispose of. They are free to a good home but the new owner must take them all and arrange their own pick-up and delivery, they weigh well over a ton! Each slab is a four person lift. They are currently in the East End of London. I hope that we can find a new home as soon as possible (within a week to ten days) or we will have to unfortunately dump them.

Interested parties can email Eoin at studio@makesomespace.co.uk.

Cross stitching has never been so fun!  Kevin Hsiu claims this work of art made his grandma quite proud!  Yay Kevin.

[via Behance]

Tonight at Observatory! Very much hope to see you there!

“Imaging the Diorama:” An Illustrated Lecture with Diane Fox
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
Date: Thursday, March 11
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5.00

In 1889 Carl Akeley, working for the Milwaukee Public Museum, created the first total habitat diorama by arranging stuffed muskrats into a facsimile of their natural environment. While the originators of the diorama strove to heighten its sense of reality, many contemporary artists have used the medium’s format to comment on its artificiality or hyper reality.

This lecture will examine the work of several photographers who use the form of the natural history museum diorama to comment on the connection (or lack of connection) between the human and natural world.

Diane Fox is a Lecturer in the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where she teaches graphic design and photography. Fox received her MFA from The University of Tennessee and her BFA from Middle Tennessee State University. Her current body of photographic work, “UnNatural History,” is composed of images shot in various natural history museums in the US and Europe. Her solo exhibits have been exhibited in the Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA; Tower Fine Arts Gallery, SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY; Gallery Stokes in Atlanta, GA; Santa Reparata Gallery, Florence Italy; Apex Gallery, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD; Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN; and Dom Muz Gallery, Torun, Poland among others. You can see some of her work at dianefoxphotography.com.

You can get directions by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: “Tiger and Crows, Natural History Museum, London, England.” Diane Fox

If you’re free and in the Philadelphia area tomorrow night, why not spend the evening at the 2010 Annual Mütter Museum Ball? A staff member of the Mütter has assured me that the event will “very ‘Mutterian’– all Victorian and 19th-century inspired.” All that, plus absinthe sponsorship and the encouragement of “festive, 19th-century inspired garb” for participants!” I so wish I could go! Full details follow:

“Push” is this week’s all-new episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Check out a bunch of promotional photos and the SIX SNEAK PREVIEWS for the episode here:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

I am a volunteer at the Women’s Resource Center at the University of Calgary and every year the center celebrates the diversity of women by torso casting 15 different women and allowing them to paint their own set on International Women’s Day (March 8th). The reviews of the torso casting are mixed, but I think it’s amazing to see the diversity of the female form, and to share that diversity.

Jake Gross brings life to inanimate objects in his new photo collection ‘Self-portrait’. I would actually love that lamp…

“Push” is this week’s all-new episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Check out a bunch of promotional photos and the first promo for the episode here:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

Ostensibly a review of two current exhibitions in Britain–one a celebration of P.T. Barnum on his 200th birthday, the other an collection of work by Ronald Searle–the article “Cartoon Grotesques Let us Face the Real Horrors” on yesterday’s Times Online also provides a nice discussion of the insuppressible human interest in grotesquery, curiosities, and the monstrous.

From the article:

We think we live in an age of individualism and “diversity”, but if you look around at advertising, entertainment and much of public life a strait-jacket of approved normalities closes around you. It is partly visual: for both sexes there is an approved shape and style: slim, toned, smart-casual, shiny hair, good teeth, minimal wrinkles. In outlook, too, there is an approved norm: middling-liberal, metrosexual, environmentally aware, vaguely concerned about “issues” but carrying religious or political opinions with studied lightness and a self-deprecating Blairy grin…

Yet we secretly crave grotesques, extremes, impossibilities. We know that there are wild dreamers, crazy prophets, monstrous oddities and inconvenient passions far beyond our tidy sexuality. We yearn for weirdness that explodes the mould and doesn’t care. Deep down, we know that if we don’t confront it the strangeness will haunt our dreams or jump us down a dark alley.

So we go looking for it. Some find it in art, from Hieronymus Bosch to Salvador Dalí, some seek horror films, some the most twisted pornography or sadism. Millions eat popcorn while watching Orc armies, the Smurfy fantasy of Avatar or the bizarrerie of Tim Burton’s Alice. Many, guiltily, find it in news reports of real suffering and mutilation, or in voyeuristic TV programmes about illness or obesity. But real or invented, we have to confront abnormality lest it take us by surprise…

You can read the whole article by clicking here. For more on the Barnum exhibition (entitled “Humbug!”), click here; click here for more on the Searle exhibit. Thanks, Mike, for sending this my way.

Image: “Barnum’s New American Museum, circa 1866″ From About.com.

“Push” is this week’s all-new episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Check out the first promo here:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

David McDonald of the Canadian Medical Association Journal just published an article based on a long chat we had about the seductive nature of medical collections, my photo project Anatomical Theatre (from which the above is drawn), the perilous nature of medical collections, and the larger Greater Morbid Anatomy endeavor. You can read the resulting insightful and incisive article–which will also run in the next issue of Canadian Medical Association Journal under the title “Joanna Ebenstein’s Morbid Obsession”–in its entirety by clicking here.

Image: From the Anatomical Theatre exhibition “Anatomical Venuses” Life-sized Wax models with human hair in rosewood and Venetian glass cases; Workshop of Clemente Susini of Florence, 1781-1786. The Josephinum : Vienna, Austria. See full collection of images and text here.

I believe that I have finally found the perfect marriage of two things I love in life, biking and anatomy.

This is the brand new cyclocross bike, handcrafted in Italy by ALAN and imported and painted by Stellina Sport.  The wonderfully talented Noah Scalin of the Skull-a-Day blog was asked to design the graphics applied to the bike, along with an anatomically correct femur on the top bar to, according to Noah, “further represent the idea of this exposed structure and the powerful legs that are used to move the bike forward.”

They also ended up putting the femur on the ALAN North America Cyclocross team uniforms in the anatomically correct position “so that it has an x-ray effect.”

Noah let me know that there’s also a new bike in the works actually called “the Noah” that will feature a skull graphic specially designed by him.  Can’t wait to see that one!

In the meantime, I’ll dream about owning that orange Roland-5 ALAN bike pictured above…

Well check this out! Skeletal Oscar mysteriously appears in LA’s Runyon Canyon with a caption reading “‘Beauty is one snip away’ -D*Face.” It only lasted a day, sadly, but this wasn’t the only skeletal Oscar to appear around LA, you can read all about it HERE!

p.s. Who’s watching the Oscars tonight? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[via Huffingtonpost, photos by Jonathan Lloyd]

About a hundred years ago, public health took a visual turn. In an era of devastating epidemic and endemic infectious disease, health professionals began to organize coordinated campaigns that sought to mobilize public action through eye-catching wall posters, illustrated pamphlets, motion pictures, and glass slide projections…

Check out the National Library of Medicine’s wonderful new web exhibition “An Iconography of Contagion”–which explores the relationship between posters and public health, and from which all of the above text and images were drawn–by clicking here. Curated by Friend-of-Morbid-Anatomy Michael Sappol, this is a characteristically smart, thoughtful, and visually rich exhibition.

You can see the entire exhibition, and read the full text and full image captions, by clicking here. You can see many more wonderful images in the gallery section by clicking here. Click on images above to see much larger, richer versions.

Image Credits:

1. She may be…a bag of TROUBLE. Syphilis – Gonorrhea., U.S. Public Health Service, United States, 1940s. Photomechanical print: color; 41 x 51 cm. Artist: “Christian.”
2. Ali si zdrav? (Are you healthy?), Golnik, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, 1950s. Photomechanical print: color; 42 x 60 cm.
3. Tuberkulose undersøgelse – en borgerpligt (Tuberculosis examination – a citizen’s duty.), Copenhagen, Denmark, 1947. Color lithograph; 62 x 85 cm. Designer/artist: : Henry Thelander (fl. 1902-1986). Lithographers: Andreasen & Lachmann.
4. Tuberculosis bacilli. Chinese Anti-Tuberculosis Association, Shanghai, 1953.
5. La course a la mort. (The race with death.) Ligue Nationale Française contre le Peril Vénérién, France, ca. 1926. Color lithograph; reproduction of a pastel drawing; 69 x 88 cm. Artist: Charles Emmanuel Jodelet (1883-1969).

London-based jewelry designer, Gisele Ganne, creates mourning jewelry combining elements of old Victorian era customs with a contemporary Haute Couture twist.  But, according to Gisele, mourning isn’t just about death,

“…it is also about dead relationships and decaying marriages.  Today, 42% of marriages finish by divorce in UK and 38% in France.  My divorce jewelry refers to old and contemporary wedding customs to illustrate this sort of mourning…I use union and marriage symbols and subvert them to show the inevitability of the breakup, but also show that from these ashes may raise a new life.”

It’s a great concept with a huge market these days.

Take a look through the full range of death and divorce mourning jewelry on Gisele’s site.

[spotted by Noah Scalin of the Skull-a-Day blog]

I enjoy the looseness of this drawing of a circulatory system growing out of a base of roots.  It’s a testament to the connections we all share with nature.  Very Avatar-esque.

This t-shirt is available for $25 at A Mystery in Common!

[spotted by JF]

Happy Friday! Here’s our complete coverage of this week’s Grey’s Anatomy:

• Last night’s music
• Last night’s quotes
• Our official Grey’s review
• Our Private Practice review
• Our Grey’s Round Table discussion
• A brand new edition of our Caption Contest

Bookmark us at our new home for all of the above and all the latest Grey’s news, spoilers and commentary: http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

Visit G.A. Insider at our new home for all the latest Grey’s Anatomy news, spoilers, discussion and more! Tell us what you thought of tonight’s episode and all things Grey’s:

http://www.tvfanatic.com/shows/greys-anatomy/

We at Morbid Anatomy are pleased to present three great upcoming lectures at Observatory this month–one to take place tonight! One more event–a panel discussion on Modern Ruins and the Post-Industrial Sublime, to take place on March 25th–will be announced very soon. Hope to see you at one or all of these great presentations!

“Death Becomes Them” Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious; a reading and lecture
Tonight! Thursday, March 4
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5.00

In Death Become Them, Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious, journalist/author Alix Strauss will discuss in an illustrated lecture based on her research for her book “Death Becomes Them,” the phenomenon and history of suicide and the seductive appeal of celebrity suicide in Western culture. Over the course of her lecture, she will present fascinating details leading up to the last days of icons of celebrity suicide such as Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Spalding Gray, Kurt Cobain, Diane Arbus, and Vincent van Gogh. After reading from selected passages, she will discuss the methodology, pathology, and psychology of these luminaries, with an eye towards understanding why such brilliant people all chose this particular end. She will also touch on society’s needs to “mass mourn,” the cultural phenomenon of funerals, and the role that mental illness and addiction play in suicide.

Along with the reading and lecture, Alix will also do a quiz, complete with prizes. Specially packaged copies of “Death Become Them,” which come with a Quija Board Key chain or a Happy Childhood Memories Spay, will be available for purchasing and signing. Those who buy copies will also get a special gift — a small bottle of Funeral Home perfume, a coffin filled with skeleton mints or a waterproof mascara.

Alix Strauss is author of Death Become Them: Unearthing the Suicides of the Brilliant, the Famous, and the Notorious. She also a media savvy social satirist, and featured lifestyle and trend writer. She is the author of the award winning short story collection, The Joy of Funerals (St. Martin’s Press), and the forthcoming novel, Based Upon Availability, June of 2010 (Harper Collins). You can find out more about her book by clicking here. You can find out more at alixstrauss.com.

“Imaging the Diorama:” An Illustrated Lecture with Diane Fox
Date: Thursday, March 11
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5.00

In 1889 Carl Akeley, working for the Milwaukee Public Museum, created the first total habitat diorama by arranging stuffed muskrats into a facsimile of their natural environment. While the originators of the diorama strove to heighten its sense of reality, many contemporary artists have used the medium’s format to comment on its artificiality or hyper reality.

This lecture will examine the work of several photographers who use the form of the natural history museum diorama to comment on the connection (or lack of connection) between the human and natural world.

Diane Fox is a Lecturer in the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where she teaches graphic design and photography. Fox received her MFA from The University of Tennessee and her BFA from Middle Tennessee State University. Her current body of photographic work, “UnNatural History,” is composed of images shot in various natural history museums in the US and Europe. Her solo exhibits have been exhibited in the Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA; Tower Fine Arts Gallery, SUNY Brockport, Brockport, NY; Gallery Stokes in Atlanta, GA; Santa Reparata Gallery, Florence Italy; Apex Gallery, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD; Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN; and Dom Muz Gallery, Torun, Poland among others. You can see some of her work at dianefoxphotography.com.

The True and Horrid Story of Burke and Hare
An illustrated lecture and book signing by Lisa Rosner,
Professor of History at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
Date: Thursday, March 18th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

Up the close and down the stair,
But and Ben with Burke and Hare.
Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief,
Knox the man who buys the beef.
—anonymous street song

On March 18, 2010, Lisa Rosner will be discussing the myths and realities of the Burke and Hare case, resurrected in her recent book The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh’s Notorious Burke and Hare and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes.

On Halloween night 1828, in the West Port district, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper’s. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare were accused of killing sixteen people over the course of twelve months in order to sell their corpses as “subjects” for dissection. The ensuing criminal investigation raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, the lives of the poor in Edinburgh’s back alleys, and the ability of the police to protect the public from cold-blooded murder.

Lisa Rosner is Professor of History at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She received her AB from Princeton University and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University. She has been awarded fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the New Jersey Historical Commission. The Anatomy Murders is the third book in her historical trilogy on Edinburgh medicine. “The Worlds of Burke and Hare,” the companion website to The Anatomy Murders, is available at Burke and Hare. You can find out more about her book by clicking here. You can find out more about her work by clicking here.

You can get directions to Observatory by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: “Tiger and Crows, Natural History Museum, London, England.” Diane Fox

This looks like it could be a really great show. Please help spread the word to any interested artsy/engineering/builder types! Call for works follows:

* EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT & CALL TO ARTISTS *

Please note: This is not a typical art show. Not all participants are artists. Inventors, mechanics, and people who ordinarily have nothing to do with the art world are involved in this exhibition. That said, I encourage artists to make use of their whimsy. This show is about wonder, as well as craft, science, mathematics, and experimentation.

“Kinetica” is an exhibition of kinetic, automatic, mechanic, robotic, &etc. sculpture.

It will be held at the Candle Factory in New Orleans. The two main events are the opening on Saturday, April 24, and the closing on Saturday, May 8. The events are scheduled to begin at 6pm.

Proposals-only deadline: March 20th. Send idea, space required, special requirements, etc. to Myrtle von Damitz lll at myrtlered@gmail.com

I will consider late proposals but must begin to map out the installation as early as possible.

INSTALLATION will begin on Saturday, April 17. Artists are responsible for installation. Work that has to be shipped must include detailed installation instructions, and arrive by April 17.

Also important: whether your piece can only be run by you, its creator, or whether I or anyone else running the exhibition can turn it on when needed.

Participants are responsible for display arrangements, ie: tables, pedestals, etc.

The Candle Factory is a warehouse situated on the west side of the Industrial Canal, and is a known events destination & a good crowd is expected. There is a great electrical set-up and room both inside and outside for a wide variety of work. The owner, Charles Handler, lives inside the warehouse and security is good. However, please take note that this IS a warehouse space and not a pristine gallery.

The show will not run on regular gallery hours, but will be on in full force for both opening and closing events, leaving room for multiple event-specific possibilities. I would like very much to find anyone or any group working on Rube Goldberg Machines!

I’m working towards arranging school field trips to view the work and for the artists to speak to the kids about their ideas and how they work. If you are part of the show, I’d like to know if I can schedule you to be present on any of these days (TBA!).

I will be able to work out showings by appointment, as well, for however many pieces can be operable during the run of the show.

Questions: myrtlered@gmail.com or 504 908 4741

Image: Vaucanson’s mechanical duck. More on that wonderful 18th Century creation, which “could flap its wings, eat, and digest grain,” here.