Caitlin McCormack’s Delicate Crocheted Animal Skeletons

We are in the season where skeletons appear everywhere, in every iteration from the cute to the eerie and downright disturbing. Philadelphia based artist Caitlin McCormack delicately crochets replicas of animal remains that make us look at skeletons in a new way. Her vintage-looking works embody both the beauty and eerie qualities of skeletons, while evoking the spirit of the life they once had. On October 23rd, she will exhibit a new series of crocheted skeletons in her upcoming exhibition at Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia. Titled “Mnemosyne”, named after the Greek goddess of memory, McCormack’s works explore the idea of reconstructing memories. Memory is a concept that confounds scientists; like a game of telephone with our brains, our memories can change every time we think about them until they eventually become fabrications. Fabricating a memory of a life is at the heart of McCormack’s taxidermy-like artwork. Each piece is made of found thread that is connected to an existing piece, a play of loops until the skeleton that is formed appears almost unnatural. In its place, a new life is stitched together. “I am drawn towards a vacuous well of recollection, in which the fibers connecting a network of truths and fabrications fade in and out of darkness,” McCormack says, “…at the bottom of which resides a glimpse of memory’s mass extinction.”