I have never been much for hunting. It seemed a bit too callous to go to the woods just to trap a living, breathing animal, especially for art. And then I met Divya. Divya is an artist, designer and taxidermist living in Brooklyn who cut her teeth on biology thanks to her mom, a biologist, and high school anatomy classes. Her apartment is an incredible voyage into the absurd where chicks have two heads and baby deers never wake up.To practice her art, she needs animals, of course, but apart from tiny rodents, the only animals she can find in Brooklyn are long dead. Divya told us that her friend had mentioned that there were pests on the grounds of his family’s house in upstate New York and that she was welcome to come gather “materials” there. Divya saw an opportunity. Divya put on her game face and ended up walking away with two animals to stuff and mount. The actual “taxidermy” part of the process had me wanting to never look at another dead animal again. But the woodchuck that emerged from this gory process was certainly something to behold: in the vein of those widely Tumbled cats with money, Chuck emerged holding a 300 hundred fake dollars, as a bizarre chic totem of nature, death and money. Or, more specifically, fashion and taxidermy.See more of Divya’s work at http://d-i-v-y-a.com/