The Weile Woods

thegreenwolf:

trampledmoth:

childlamb:

drakescyberhoe:

thegreenwolf:

(You’ll want to click on the pics to embiggen them—the thumbnails don’t do this justice!)

I actually finished this headdress a couple of weeks ago, and delivered it to the customer at the Dark Fairy Ball weekend before last. She had given me this BIG gray wolf hide to turn into a headdress, and I’m rather pleased with how he turned out. 

I’m down to the last few commissioned wolf headdresses/masks in the huge pile of them I got in the last couple of months, so if you want to commission one of your own—whether you have a hide ready or not—now’s a good time!

this is disgusting you’re disgusting

so foul so awful I do not care to hear of nonsense of u respecting animals of any kind by wearing them no no this is pure evil and cruelty animals r not some show to wear and parade around like heathens they’re fucking creatures of Mother Earth learn some goddamn respect u scum of rotten filth

Wtf?? I mean I don’t think it’s cruel if you find an already dead animal and use their remains but this looks like a fucking wolf which are ENDANGERED?? Jesus.

Allow me to clarify a few things:

One, there’s “endangered” and “endangered” (I went into more detail about that a while back here). There’s “endangered” as with the African elephant, in which the entire population is at risk of extinction, and then there’s endangered as with the gray wolf, in which some populations (like those in Michigan) are in danger of extinction and some (like those in Canada and Alaska) where the populations are healthy enough to allow a limited amount of legal hunting. I am very careful about my sources, both for legality and sustainability, and I even maintain a database of animal parts laws. Take a look, and you’ll find that only some U.S. populations of gray wolf are covered by the Endangered Species Act (which is a US-only law, not international.)

And as a matter of fact, I am a heathen–or, to be more accurate, I’ve been pagan for almost twenty years. (“Heathen” specifically refers to followers of Germanic pre-Christian traditions, which does not describe my own pagan path.) A large part of my spiritual practice has been with hides, bones, and other animal remains. I create the works I do in part as funerary art; I want these remains to be honored rather than just seen as fashion statements or trophies. Obviously I can’t control what someone else believes about art they just bought from me, but I do create everything with intent and care. I even wrote a book about what I do to help others treat hides and bones with more care, and I support the works of others working toward the same goal.

I have also always donated a portion of the proceeds to nonprofit organizations that benefit wildlife and their habitats. And as I am self-employed as an artist and author, I have the flexibility of schedule to volunteer my time to environmental cleanup and habitat restoration efforts; I’ve even adopted a stretch of the Columbia River that I keep clean and do water quality monitoring for. I also maintain a plot down at the community garden, growing food organically and cutting down on the demand for food grown with pesticides and other chemicals that kill thousands of animals a year.

Everything we consume has a price. Most vegetables and other crops are grown in monocropped fields that destroy wildlife habitat–and habitat loss is the number one cause of extinction. Most of those crops are sprayed with pesticides and fertilizers that cause massive pollution in the air, water and soil; fertilizers in particular cause dead zones in the ocean that kill countless amounts of marine wildlife. Fake fur is made from petroleum, and I think we all know the negative impact of the oil industry–and fake fur doesn’t biodegrade, instead breaking down into smaller and smaller bits of plastic that are ingested by animals that then die. 

And I would have been more than happy to inform you of all of this had you taken the time to ask rather than assume. Reactionary responses very rarely have any real effect, and mostly serve to promote ignorance and misinformation. I have a long list of things that I do to mitigate the effects of my choices. I’ve thought long and hard about my decisions, to include the decision to work with animal–and plant, and fungus–remains in my artwork.