Possum bone toys ready to hit shelves

Alternative seems to be one of those words that the hipster kids are throwing around willy nilly.

I guess it’s supposed to mean “weird but in a totally cool hip way”.

I want to call Hamilton artist Morticia Jacobi “alternative”, but I don’t think it does her justice. Weird: yes. Totally hip: yes. I want to add creepy here, but I don’t want to offend her.

Her latest project is perhaps the best way to describe her.

You heard it here first. Your kids could soon be playing with possum bones.

Before you recoil in disgust, they will be disguised as soft toys.

Still not convinced?

Neither was I.

But Hamilton artist Morticia Jacobi has been boiling, boning and bleaching possum bones for her latest art piece: a collection of plush toys, designed for adults, made from the usual: fabrics, clay… and possum bones.

So why bones you ask?

Jacobi says the project was inspired by artist Amanda Louise Spayd, who makes plush toys featuring “grotesque” human teeth.

“Originally I was going to make all kinds of toys from the characters that I produced from my paintings, using thing like latex and vinyl, linen, anything. And then I decided doing plush toys would be a lot more suited to my style.”

The style she speaks of is pop surrealism, which Jacobi explains is an art form which essentially destroys cute.

“Basically it’s taking something which has connotations of being cute and cuddly and putting a really creepy, weird vibe to it.”

She decided to use possums to create her creepy cute creatures and leapt head-first into the blood and guts.

“I obtained five possums from a family friend, and he skinned them and took their heads and their feet off for me.

“I had to gut them and cook them. That was probably a life changing moment.

“Doing that kind of thing is a lot different to how you’d expect.”

Jacobi says the process made her flat’s kitchen look and smell like a back country road scattered with roadkill.

“The whole time I dry retched and the smell was unbearable.

“My flatmate that was home locked herself in her room.”

Jacobi is also a devout vegetarian; with a plethora of animal rights morals – which she says made the project even more challenging.

“The whole time I was doing it I kept thinking ‘a possum is a pest, you are doing New Zealand a favour, a possum’s a pest, a possum’s a pest.”

The project is expected to be finished by mid-June, so all you possum fanatics will just have to wait a little longer.

If you simply cannot wait to check out Jacobi’s work head to her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/#!/morticia.jacobi  to check out some of her other projects.