Looking through one of my old notebooks from 2007 I found an entry called “FROM WITCH TO KITSCH.” It was trying to explain the timeline of when a horrific instance of mass…
April 15, 2012 | Blog
Yearly Archives: 2012
Boxes of Death: Coffin Art
Boxes of Death is an exhibition put on by Electric Coffin. 50 different artists create 50 unique art coffins that travel as a show to Seattle, Portland, and LA. I went to…
April 13, 2012 | Blog
Decomposing Food Art of Klaus Pichler
Austrian photographer Klaus Pichler, whom I first saw when he released a photoseries on dust (and the problems of an overly sterile society), has photographed rotting food for his series “One Third.”…
April 8, 2012 | Blog
Growing Up In A Funeral Home
Celeste Donohue is a comedian and writer who contacted me because she also happens to have grown up in a funeral home in Philadelphia. As you can imagine, she has lots to…
April 1, 2012 | Blog
Mortuary Services for Nuclear Disaster, 1956
O manual of our impending doom, teach us your secrets. These snippets are from Mortuary Services in Civil Defense from 1956. In this helpful little pamphlet you learn how to round up…
March 30, 2012 | Blog
Of Corpses and Museums
My dear friend Andrew, who is currently living in Jamaica (not relevant, just awesome) sent me a book called Human Remains and Museum Practice. It’s basically like The Hunger Games — except…
March 28, 2012 | Blog
Bust Magazine
Caitlin Doughty’s “Ask a Mortician” Videos Bring the Darkest Corners of Death to Light L.A.-based mortician Caitlin Doughty has always been fascinated with death. Right out of college, she explored this…
March 23, 2012 | Press
The Compost Burial of Lil’ BunBun
Order member Shannon sent these photos from her father’s compost pile in Texas, where a bunny crawled in to die. I don’t like… KNOW this bunny or anything (and it’s dead now…
March 19, 2012 | Blog
Anatomy
Bethany Pope wrote this poem, in her own words, “after far too many back issues of ‘The Lancet’ and yellowed journal entries about clouds of killer sparrows.” Accompanied here by the work…
March 14, 2012 | Blog
Sunday Afternoon Tea Party & Death Fears
Oh hello there. Welcome to my home. I hope you’re hungry, my dears. First let me offer you some tea. Do you take sugar in your tea? How about a cookie? Now…
March 11, 2012 | Blog
Ask a Mortician Episode 6
Apologies for the Ask a Mortician absence in the month of February. In my defense, February is a strange little month with little to recommend it. This episode is about my favorite…
March 8, 2012 | Blog
To take a lunch with the dead
Lunching in cemeteries was not always the cringe-inducing activity it is today. The Victorians loved a good shady spot under a tree to enjoy the more park-like cemeteries that developed in America…
March 7, 2012 | Blog