Using old scraps of upholstery fabric, the artist carefully crafts life-sized deer, caribou, or moose mounts. She says that her artwork, which began with a love of repurposing old upholstery found in thrift stores, represents something traditional and commonplace converted into something new.
Related: Kiyoshi Mino’s startlingly realistic felt sculptures blow taxidermy away
According to Jelinek, her inspiration for faux taxidermy comes from her rural upbringing, “As a someone who grew up in rural Wisconsin, I became thoroughly accustomed to seeing taxidermy deer and game mounts – I thought of them as standard items of household decor. Even when I was a small child they never scared or disgusted me – if anything, they fascinated me. That fascination stayed with me into adulthood, and has inspired the artwork that I make today. When I was a teenager, I fell in love with old upholstery and would often come home from flea markets and thrift stores with old chairs for me to experiment on. Later on, when I was in college, the two interests happened to mesh and that’s how the first of my upholstered animals were born.”
If you’d like to add a bit of animalistic design to your home, you can custom order Jelinek’s creations at her Etsy shop.
+ Little Stag Studio
Via Treehugger
Images via Little Stag Studio
