Slide Show: The Right Stuff

The American artist Christopher Marley grew up with Australian parrots in his freezer. His father, a longtime aviarist who developed attachments to the unusually colored birds that he bred, stored them there when they died. Later in life, as Marley was struggling to balance his interest in taxidermy with his distaste for killing organisms, it occurred to him that there must be others like his father. “These people spent their lives devoted to animals, and they couldn’t bear to part with them,” he told me. “I started clearing out freezers all over the country.” Reclaimed mustached parakeets, great blue turacos, and military macaws became works of art.

Marley works with more than birds. His book “Biophilia,” which is out from Abrams on April 14th, features the myriad of other subjects that interest him: geometric mosaics of iridescent beetles, corn snakes frozen in mid-slither, a leathery pink octopus tentacle that unfurls from its frame. He preserved most of these specimens by traditional taxidermic means. But, for soft-bodied organisms, he had to develop his own method. The cephalopods, which Marley often buys at Asian fish markets (“the ones that would otherwise be on a sushi platter”), quickly lose their color as they dry, but he has found a solution. He declined to go into the details but said that he has begun applying the technique to larger sea creatures, including sharks. Like all of Marley’s arrangements, they promise to be a little monstrous, a little macabre.