Issue 38 Carlee Fernandez The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is a color photograph titled Bear Head, Arm, and Leg Study I, by Carlee Fernandez. The piece was included in Bear Studies, a 2004 solo show at Acuna-Hansen Gallery in Los Angeles. A native of Los Angeles, Fernandez attended California State University and Claremont University, where her 1999 graduate project garnered much attention. Carnage II 7000 and the subsequent Carnage on Sunset Boulevard at fashion designer Henry Duarte's West Hollywood shop introduced Fernandez and her controversial medium — dead animals — to the art world. The Carnage II 7000 collection's ram backpack and mini-antelope fanny pack launched her adventures in taxidermy. Friends, Fernandez's 2001 solo debut at Acuna-Hansen, continued the animals-as-devices theme — a rhino became a stepladder and a deer became an ice-cube tray. The 2002 Still Lifes included a more delicate presentation of sweet chicks sitting on wispy branches and a leaping rabbit frozen in foliage. Fernandez's herds and flocks traveled to Scope Miami, and the piece Blue Parakeets with Branches later appeared in the Birdspace exhibit at the Norton Museum. For the 2004 Bear Studies, the artist became a player in her creative petting zoo. For two-and-a-half months, Fernandez practiced moving with a bearskin on her back and a bear head over her own. Although the experience neared performance art, the artist maintains that Fredrik Nilsen's photographs of her during the experiment are the culmination of the project. The images are startling and modern, while also recalling traditional mythologies and folktales. The subject alone of Fernandez's medium is provocative, and her work gains even more symbolic heft when she adds her own naked body. (LM) Carlee Fernandez Bear Head, Arm, and Leg Study I, 2004 C-Print 30 x 42 in./76.2 x 106.7 cm Courtesy Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Los Angeles All Rights Reserved