2B
SPORTS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2006
HUNTING & FISHING
Taxidermist overcomes sexism, stigma
(Clockwise from top) Cindy Cunningham, wildlife artist, demonstrates the splitting of the eyes, ears, lips and nose on a deer hood to her taxidermy student Mike Bonton. The process involves removing the heavy meat from the hide in order for the tanner to better penetrate.
Cunningham mounts about 100 deer heads each season, but has since decided to cut back on her professional work and begin teaching her craft more often.
Jared Gabb/KANSAN
Cindy Cunningham sits silently at her workbench, manipulating a thread and needle, a soft-rock radio station barely audible in her shop. After 20 years in the business, she no longer notices the odor of soggy leather and raw meat left out too long.
Some days a student mimics her every movement, hoping that in time his hands will work with the same dexterity. Today, however, Cunningham's furry audience sits motionless, their glasses earing vacantly.
Cunningham owns a taxidermy shop and school near Nearon Springs. With no commercial taxidermy shops in Lawrence and Cunningham's a mere half hour jaunt down 1-70, she says about 15 to 20 percent of her business comes from Lawrence.
For Cunningham, becoming a taxidermist in a male-dominated profession wasn't easy. But after 20 years in the business, she's learned to mount deer, birds and fish. Novelty animals she's mounted include a tiger, a cougar, an iguanae and snakes. She even expanded her business to freeze-drying cats and dogs for pet owners. Two of her mounts have appeared in movies, but her most bizarre job was freeze-dressing a girl's pinky finger, severed in a bowling accident.
Although it's nearly impossible to pinpoint how many women are tax-dermists, Cunningham knows she's in the minority.
"I would say I could count on my hands the amount of women who are in it" Cunningham said. "I only know of only four or five and myself."
What is taxidermy?
“There’s a lot of taxidermy out there that looks like crap.” Cunningham said. “They look like they’ve been hit by a cat.”
Taxidermy is the art of preparing and preserving the skins of animals and of stuffing and mounting them in lifelike form. A good taxidermy job takes hours of preparation and detail. When it's completed, there's no guarantee the final product will look realistic.
For mammals, such as deer and elk, Canningham must remove all of the meat from the inside and tan the skin into leather to prevent it from rotting.
After she tans the skin, more flesh must be shaved off to prevent the skin from shrinking. To do this, Cunningham uses a bench saw like device to shave off thin layers of flesh. Once the skin is thin enough, it is glued to a mankin mold of the animal and the toughest part of the process begins.
The key to a lifelike mount is in the small details, like adding angles, eyes and noses, sewing up openings in the skin and brushing the animal's hair.
With fish, the process is much different because the scaly skin is very difficult to preserve. Birds are also difficult because their skins are so thin and artificial heads may not look realistic.
While most taxaidermists focus on mammals, fish or birds, Cunningham has no limit to what she'll mount.
"Once people find out you do this, they come out of the woodwork," Cunningham said.
Unlikely start to unexpected success
Cunningham first discovered her interest in taxidermy after having some birds mounted that her husband had shot. Soon, she was taking lessons from the taxidermist.
"I went to my dad for some advice and said, "Dad, I think I can make a living doing this," Cunningham said. "He said, 'Cindy, ain't no woman going to make a living doing taxi-dermy.'"
That was all the motivation she needed.
"Once I make up my mind to learn something, I'm not going to let it go," Cunningham said. "The guys were saying, 'That girl can't do that,' so that drive was in me to prove them wrong."
Aside from her father's initial skepticism, Cunningham said that her family was supportive and that her father even choose the name Second Creation for her business.
"Actually dad was being kind of smart-alek when he named it," Cunningham said. "We are Christians and dad named it 'Second Creation' because, of course, God is first creation."
To promote her shop, she brought displays to sports shows accompanied by her husband, Chuck, and her assistant, Shawn Howard.
When a customer approached her booth, instead of talking to her, they often addressed her husband or Howard. The men would point to Cunningham and tell the customer to talk to the boss.
Kansas City resident Dale Burns is one customer who wasn't bothered by a female taxidermist. About 10 years ago, he had Cunningham mount a fish for him. The fish is still in good condition and Burns liked Cunninghams work so much that he brought a deer head in this fall for Cunningham to mount.
"Sometimes they would go on and ask me, but more times than you can count, they would just walk away," Cunningham said.
"It's real good, real nice and life-like," Burns said. "I can't put a bad word on it. She definitely puts a lot of
effort into it."
Burns spoke so highly of Cunningham that he said he convinced some of his friends — who were originally skeptical because Cunningham was a woman — to take their kills to her.
Finding business is no longer a problem for Cunningham. Now she mounts about 100 deer heads, 75 birds and 50 miscellaneous mammals and fish each season. Her weirdest requests in recent years have come from pet owners wishing to hold on to their deceased pets. To meet this demand, Cunningham began freeze-drying in her shop.
She said the hardest part of freeze-drying cats and dogs was freezing them in a realistic pose. Cunningham said if it were her pet, she would just bury it.
"That's a little freak for me, but if they pay, I'll do it," she said.
Cunningham received one request that was more bizarre than preserving any animal. One mother hounded Cunningham to freeze dry her daughter's pinky finger that had been pinched off in a bowling accident to make it into a paoerweight.
"I wouldn't do it because I just thought that was gross." Cunningham said. "They had kept it frozen all this time and finally they just wore me down."
For the 2003 movie "The Missy Files," which was filmed in Emporia, instead of using a live cougar for a scene, the director used a cougar that Cunningham had mounted. Several weeks ago, Cunningham had to take a full-size deer mount to a horse ranch in Kansas City for the Peter Coyote movie, "Shadows of Atticus."
Cunningham eventually agreed to freeze-dry the finger, but only after charging the mother "an extremely outrageous price" Cunningham also refused to touch the finger. She had the mother bring the finger in a cup and place it in the freeze-dry her-
Lawrence resident Jared Ackerman learned taxidermy from Cunningham about two years ago and now does it in his spare time.
He stumbled across Canningham's school on the Internet and did some research to see if it would be worth attending. When he found out a woman would be teaching him, he had second thoughts. However, in the end, he realized that her work was the best around and decided to go to her.
After graduating from Cunningham's school, Ackerman discovered that competing with her would be difficult, but that having learned from her had its advantages.
"I had a hard time getting my name out in Lawrence because people were going up to Bonner Springs to her," Ackerman said. "When I said that I learned from her, that's when I started getting some of my own work."
Students like Ackerman are the reason Cunningham wants to become a full-time taxidermy teacher.
er. She moved into a new taxidermy shop last month, located in her backyard. In her new shop, she hopes to do less commercial work and more teaching.
"It's time to slow down." Cunningham, 48; said.
Her passion for taxidermy hasn't diminished, but she no longer wants to put up with the deadline pressures
Being a taxidermist has also gotten Cunningham – or at least her animals – into the movie business.
that come with commercial taxidermy. Now she gets more enjoyment out of the more relaxed schedule of teaching the craft.
Kansan sportswriter Shawn Shroyer can be contacted at shroyer@ kansan.com.
Cindy the teacher
Edited by Patrick Ross
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