My friends at LA-based Mad Chops Media have been working diligently to bring to life their dark, supernatural comedy series about a used car salesman and an auto mechanic who unexpectedly become the only thing standing between humanity and the demon-driven apocalypse.
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be a small part of this project in the form of website and graphic design in preparation for the launch of the Kickstarter campaign and MadChopsMedia.com, our first creative collaboration since they fled Wisconsin so long ago when I was still just a lowly internet pervert with a website, Photoshop and a zombie fetish that shames me to this day.
Anyway. they have put a lot of blood, sweat and vomit into what is sure to be one of the most epic Kickstarter videos ever, working diligently to sell stock in their souls to individuals who believe in their endeavor rather than the cold, soulless Hollywood machine. So even if for no other reason than to laugh at their misery, be sure to check out the campaign and watch the video on their Kickstarter page right here or at the brand new Mad Chops Media headquarters.
Check out Mad Chops Media on: Facebook – Google+ – Twitter – Youtube – Kickstarter
The very first Mental Shed skull box is finished and hanging at the Wisconsin Sickness Brutal Bazaar Art & Metal show.
Where the Roots Grow is the first of what is sure to be a progressively stranger, darker and more putrid series of shadowbox diorama assemblages. Antique barn board picture frame, raccoon skull, dirt, roots, leaves. Every piece of it has its own story.
“There’s an honesty about mortality in that box. I think we are far too removed from death in our culture. It is poignant and it speaks to what connects us as human beings, and as creatures on the planet.” – Horror actor Bill Oberst Jr.
For sale soon.
Interested?
Email me at info@thementalshed.com or use the contact page.
I have a skull floating in hydrogen peroxide in a plastic container that held leftovers from dinner the week before. I have a bag of small animal parts – jaws, teeth, jagged chunks of broken bone. Built a black box onto the back of an antique picture frame made from old weathered barn boards. I have roots and twigs, plaster and moss.
Now I just hope I can bring it all together the way it is in my head.
I’ve been foaming at the mouth to begin work on these dark, creepy shadow box dioramas for many years now, but it has been a few recent trips to the workshop of mad taxidermist Rob Reysen that have finally made it possible.
Last summer I wanted a taxidermy piranha. I was watching way too many hours of River Monsters. My wife said she would divorce me if I got one. Naturally, I had to put that to the test. Better to find out now if a dead piranha could do us in before embarking on the next decade together.
Turns out the piranha was the gateway drug.
Two weeks ago I asked my wife to call around to the local taxidermy shops to find a skull for the first skull box diorama art piece.
She did it.
Willingly.
That afternoon, purely by coincidence, we ended up in Rob’s shop on Halloween, staring into the empty orbs of 250-year-old human skulls tucked away in a cabinet amidst bears, buffalo, deer skulls and foam taxidermy mannikins wearing nothing but antlers.
In the middle of nowhere on Halloween, surrounded by dead things, with a man who’s sick sense of humor rivals my own. For a brief moment I wondered if we were going to make it out alive.
I was always fascinated by the art form – mostly because I imagined every taxidermist as Norman Bates, but also because the eerie realism of motionless museum dioramas and the odd forced perspectives and model environments always gave me the creeps and stirred the imagination.
It wasn’t until I read Still Life by author Melissa Milgrom that I really began to appreciate the craftsmanship and artistry involved.
I stopped in at Rob’s shop Saturday afternoon to learn the art of fastening a skull to a piece of wood. There was a bear in a bag dethawing on the counter. A couple of fresh deer skulls, one with eyes still swimming in their sockets. There was Rob’s award-winning, fully-articulated wolf skeleton. And there was Rob’s work-in-progress for the upcoming Wisconsin Sickness Brutal Bazaar art and metal show.
Partly sculpted in clay, partly molded from real bits lying around the shop, the detail and quality of Rob’s work is nothing less than you would expect from a Hollywood FX company. The latex piece for this particular project wasn’t ready to be pulled from the mold yet, but the sculpture it was molded from was definitely disturbing, to say the least.
I don’t want to give it away, so you’ll have to come out to the show Nov. 25th at River Horse West in West Bend to see this monstrosity for yourself, along with other amazing work by Wisconsin’s best dark artists.
I am looking forward to a long and devious partnership with Rob. Already, my shadow box diorama art project owes everything to him.
The new Lake View Taxidermy website will be coming soon from Mental Shed Studios.
In the meantime, whether you need a deer stuffed, bones for an art project, or a horror prop for a Halloween haunt, you can contact Rob on his Facebook page – Lake View Taxidermy or on his current website www.lakeviewtaxidermy.com
If you head out to his workshop, just be careful you don’t end up part of his collection.
On a side note, I feel it necessary to mention that the current skull-whitening project in the leftovers dish…is my wife’s.
For years now I have had a particular vision in mind for a shadow box/cabinet of curiosity art project that combined my love of strange trinkets with the bizarre surreality of creepy old museum dioramas. Thanks to a chance meeting on Halloween with Rob, the mad taxidermist at Lake View Taxidermy, I am finally working on the first piece for the upcoming Wisconsin Sickness Brutal Bazaar art & metal show.
Picked up an old picture frame from an antique shop last week. Got the box built onto it today. Got one of the skulls from Rob ready to go in the box. There is a lot left to do, but if it comes out looking even remotely like I envision it, I will be making a lot more in the future.
The first ever Wisconsin Sickness art and metal show will also include dark and disturbing art by Matt Lombard, Matthew Wajek, Amber Michelle Russell and more, with some pure Wisconsin brutality by Meth Tooth, Rictus Grin, Obzen, Mass Murder Messiah and Calevodium.
I started working on an image to represent a short horror story I’ve been writing, but as I worked on it, it began to tell a story of its own. So, as we often do when we stumble across the rare combination of beauty and stoic independence, I decided to break it down and enslave it as a Mental Shed wallpaper download.
Download: 1280×1024 | 1600×1200 | 1920×1200 | iPhone 4 | iPad/iPad 2
If you don’t see the size you need, hit me up and I’ll send you a custom size as soon as I get a chance. Email: info@thementalshed.com
Skinny Puppy singer Nivek Ogre is officially involved in the upcoming 80s slasher throwback Scream Park from writer/director Cary Hill, which I am proud to be involved in with the horror design and internet marketing freaks at Rough Ride Creations!
Here is an early Scream Park one-sheet:
More here: Scream Park
There is a whole lot more badass and brutal stuff to come, so make sure you follow the massacre on Facebook and Twitter.
Scream Park is just the first film in the “Save the Slasher” campaign, so if you like gorey flicks about people getting hacked up, disemboweled or otherwise eviscerated, you can help make the massacre happen and be a part of horror history right here.
Tomorrow I head out for four days in the woods. Last time I went camping, I ended up drunk stalking a skunk with a baseball bat.
Which the park rangers didn’t find nearly as amusing as I did.
So wish me luck, because there’s no telling if I’ll come out of this one alive.
Graphic abominations will resume on Monday once I crawl back out of the woods. Whether I survive it or not. Got some great projects in the works, some more on the way, and a huge horror site launch with the mad genius that is Rough Ride Creations…if by some miracle I return to civilization. Without having eaten nearby campers out of shear desperation by the end of the first night.
In the meantime, check out some of the latest obscenities from the dark corners and lowest subterranean levels of the Mental Shed:
I have officially infiltrated Google+ right here. Follow me…plus me…circle me…whatever the hell you call it.
The newest member of the Mental Shed, my taxidermy piranha. My wife said if I got one, we would get a divorce, so I figured I better find out now if our relationship could withstand a piranha before I blow another decade on it! I think she’s actually starting to like it. As long as she doesn’t think about it watching her while she sleeps. And I don’t thrust it toward her while making chewing sounds. Apparently that is a bit of a sore spot.
Picked up my new recording mic today – just in time for a really creepy sound design project for probably the coolest and creepiest guy in Hollywood.
Working with Washington County Paranormal on graphics and web design to help gather strange sightings and tales of the bizarre for an upcoming book project.
Lomography-style taxidermy fox photo. From an old barn in the woods.
A public service message from the Mental Shed: Eat people.
New album cover art for sale: The Shaman
The amazing Wisconsin Cannibelle Nikki Farce…Grindhouse style
Get your daily dose of the bizarre and obscene (except when I’m in the woods) at the official Cult of Weird facebook page.
I’m actually starting to look forward to my commune with nature, a vision quest in the majestic Wisconsin woods, my epic and bloody struggle to prove to the lower lifeforms of the forest floor that I am at the top of the food chain. The rash of brutal, unprovoked homicides with tent stakes and marshmallow roasters. Yes, some good ol’ fashion internet deprivation will soothe the soul.
That’s all for now. Tranquilizers are starting to kick in.
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A few weeks ago I accidentally stumbled into a marathon of River Monsters on TV. Several hours later I had a new appreciation for the Amazon and a reinvigorated fear of the atrocities lying in wait in the murky depths.
Every fisherman has a story about the one that got away, and every lake has it’s tales of giant tire-sized turtles and fish the size of logs, but none of that compares to the Amazon, where frenzied piranhas devour children and busloads of people. Catfish bark and growl. Gigantic and deadly electric eels left behind in puddles when the waters recede for the dry season lurk in silence. Parasitic Candiru catfish burrow into penises and lodge themselves in the intestinal tract. Piraiba catfish swallow grown men whole. Others penetrate swimmers through the anal cavity and then eat their way out, leaving only hollow corpses to wash up on the riverbanks.
After so many hours of River Monsters, I vowed three things:
1. Get a taxidermy piranha for my desk
2. Design my own grindhouse horror movie poster in the vein of the beautifully menacing poster art featuring bikini-clad women in the water completely unaware of the flesh-eating monstrosities stalking them just beneath the surface from the original Piranha movies that traumatized me as a child.
3. Stay the hell out of the Amazon.
I don’t have the taxidermy piranha yet, but I have successfully stayed the hell out of the Amazon, and here is the official Mental Shed piranha poster:
I don’t have a lot of time to update the site right now as I am currently knee-deep in a bunch of exciting projects with incredible and interesting people, but you can keep up with the Mental Shed here:
Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Deviant Art | Linked In
The first batch of Wisconsin Sickness stickers have arrived, featuring the state skull logo.
I have no idea what I’m going to do with them all yet, but the goal is to get one into the hands of every man, woman, and child on the face of this earth. Unfortunately, this first order is only 250 stickers, so I might run short.
Anyone who orders a Wisconsin skull t-shirt will probably get a free sticker for a limited time.
I’m also hoping to get them on the counters of tattoo shops and music stores. Want a stack? Shoot me a message and I’ll see what I can do.
Email: info@thementalshed.com
Wisconsin has a long and sordid history of grave robbing and body snatching that began with our infamous deviant Ed Gein, who dug up corpses of recently deceased dead women in Plainfield and surrounding areas for some good old fashioned Wisconsin craft time. But it doesn’t end there with skin masks and mammary vests.
In 2006 three twenty-year-old males in Lancaster, WI were accused of attempted grave robbing and sexual assault of the corpse of a girl killed in a motorcycle crash the week before after they saw her obituary photo in the newspaper. They had actually managed to dig down to the vault when police arrived, responding to a report of suspicious activity in the cemetery. But it turned out Wisconsin has no laws against necrophilia, so the sexual assault charges were dropped.
Naturally, this is a great topic for the next t-shirt from Wisconsin Sickness, the Mental Shed project whose goal is to expose Wisconsin’s dark underbelly of music, art, film, legend and lore.
All Wisconsin Sickness t-shirts are expertly printed and processed by Bored in the Basement. Check out the official BitB-powered Wisconsin Sickness shop right here.
The first WI grave robber t-shirt can be seen on the BitB press here.
Related Links
Bored in the Basement: Website | Twitter | Facebook
Wisconsin Sickness: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Youtube | Tumblr
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