Bucks art Professor Kimberly Witham was profiled in National Geographic Feb. 16, in a story about her seven year old art project. The headline? “Making ethical art from dead animals.”
For almost seven years Witham worked with the visual beauty of roadkill animals. She collects the dead animals and arranges them, with other decorations, for photographs. “It is a response to what I see around me every day,” Witham says.
The idea came when she moved from New York, “I had not been driving in a car recently. But I started seeing things on the side of the road, I could not believe how many dead creatures I saw – that did not strike me as normal.”
Witham’s works are informed by her knowledge of painting and art history, and by the things she collect from wherever, “In my studio I have so many dishes and pieces of cloth. When I collect something I do not necessarily have a plan for it, but I know I like how it looks and that it is going to come in handy someday.”
The animals in most of Witham’s photographs are not examples of taxidermy, but are simply shown the way she found them, “The animals are in rigor, so they can only pose in whatever position they died in,” she says.
Witham works with the animals respectfully, “When I found them, I photograph them as soon as possible and then I immediately bury it.”
Some people use the word barbaric when describing Witham’s art. She says she does not read the online comments, but is aware of the judgment passed on her distinct artwork. “I respect people’s opinions. Certainly, all art is not for everyone, but to me barbaric is letting a beautiful creature get hit by a car and leaving it on the side of the road to rot,” Witham says.
One day her niece showed her a comment that said, “That is so terrible! How can she put a dead animal on a plate?” Witham thought, “I think that is what most people who are not vegetarians do every single night at supper time! It would be an interesting study to go to the butcher’s shop and buy a chicken and put that in a still light photo – would anyone care?”
Even though Witham does not care too much about online opinions, she does find what people think about her work interesting.
“I guess I just would like them to have some reaction,” she says. “The beauty of the photography should strike you first and when you realize the creature is dead, you have to contemplate how it came to be that way.”
Witham’s favorite part is the “tension of the idea that something can be so beautiful, but then there is kind of a darker side to it as well,” she sayd.
“The roadkill aspect is probably starting to dissipate somewhat,” Witham adds. “There is a new project that I have started working on that involves portraits of things that have elements from the natural world.”
However, the point of Witham’s art will stay the same, “The point of my work is that we are so completely separated from the natural world. This sort of thematically notion about people’s disconnect with nature is one of my real artistic concerns.”