SheWalksSoftly

Strange Remains Week: Memorial Glass

March 20th, 2015

A number of websites now offer hand blown glass sculptures that incorporate cremains.

Memory Glass creates orbs that resemble fancy paperweights (not to diminish the concept), using ashes in one of a kind designs. I love how this one looks like DNA.

Depending on the keepsake you wish to order, a number of options must be selected for each piece.

*For Memory Glass Orbs & Hearts, our handmade wooden stands with LED light clusters are available to light up the pieces from the bottom.
*Memory Glass Pendants include a Black Leather Cord at no additional cost, but you are welcome to choose a Sterling Silver, or 14k Yellow or White Gold chain to hang your pendant.
*Memory Glass Touchstones include a black 3d Suspension Box to display your touchstone proudly.

The Edge Art Gallery goes a step further and not only makes orbs, like this psychedelic swirl…

…but functional objects!

What do you think of memorial glass?
Strange Remains Week: Helium Balloons and Deep Freeze

March 19th, 2015

The Eternal Ascent Society offers the release of your beloved’s cremains in a giant helium balloon. While this may appeal to the perpetually young at heart, I keep thinking of the moment the balloon inevitably bursts and casts a blizzard of death over the land. I have mild OCD, so I personally find being showered with dead people unpleasant.

As stated on the bottom of the picture, they’re opening franchises. So if you were thinking of of buying into a Subway or Yogurtland but feel these options don’t involve enough corpses, you might not want to miss the investment opportunity.

Remember the urban legend of Walt Disney getting crynogenically frozen (bonus myth: that his body was stored under Pirates of the Caribbean)? Well, he was cremated in 1966, but YOU can be frozen by Cryonics.

Cryonics is an experimental procedure that preserves a human being using the best available technology for the purpose of saving his/her life. We believe medical technology will advance further in coming decades than it has in the past several centuries, enabling it to heal damage at the cellular and molecular levels and to restore full physical and mental health.

This process poses some profound existential questions, so it’s actually worth looking through the site and forming your own opinion on the matter (you know, for when the topic inevitably comes up at parties…or is that only my circle of friends?).

My favorite part:

Cryonics isn’t a dude in a fancy a beer cooler.
Strange Remains Week: Records and Reefs

March 18th, 2015

Music lovers, did you know you can have your ashes pressed into a vinyl record? And Vinyly gives customers the opportunity to live on through the power of song.

Is there a song you’d like on the soundtrack to your death?

If you enjoy marine life, you can become part of a living coral system via The Eternal Reef. Ashes are memorialized as part of “reef balls” that serve to assist dying reefs in restoring new life.

What’s a reef ball? Glad you asked.

Reef Balls are the only designed reef materials that from the beginning were designed to replicate the natural substrata that Mother Nature uses for her reef development. The material needed to be friendly to the marine environment. It would have to be made of natural materials that would attract and encourage micro-organisms to settle and propagate on the reefs.

Read more about the process here.
Strange Remains Week: Mummies, Gems and the Moon

March 17th, 2015

Tallying $67,000, modern mummification isn’t for everyone…but it’s Available at SUMMUM.

These guys have resurrected (no pun intended) the ancient Egyptian art. You can see a description of the process here.

If you prefer something smaller in size and significantly more sparkly, there is LifeGem.

Love. Life’s single greatest risk. Life’s single greatest reward. Love captures your heart in a second and holds it for eternity. You have experienced a love without equal.

You have had someone truly special in your life and mere words simply will not do.

Your very own LifeGem diamond(s) can be created from the carbon in cremation ashes, a lock of hair, or both. Of course, not only do we turn ashes into diamonds and hair into diamonds, we also have a full line of cremation jewelry, rings, and pendants to accent your beautiful LifeGem cremation diamond.

Or if you’d like your death to involve a space odyssey, you can be shot into the cosmos.

Celestis Memorial Spaceflights place a symbolic portion of cremated remains into Earth orbit, onto the lunar surface, and into deep space. Missions into space that return the cremated remains to Earth are also available. Your loved one will venture into space as part of a real space mission, riding alongside a commercial or scientific satellite.

Celestis offers a number of options (click to enlarge):
Strange Remains Week: Burial Pods

March 16th, 2015

I got in a little over my head committing to Strange Remains Week, because I have over 20 links to modern fringe postmortem preferences. Perhaps I will have to combine a few of them in each post. But let’s start with my favorite: the Burial Pod.

The Capsula Mundi concept, from designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel, uses an egg-shaped burial pod made from biodegradable starch plastic as the coffin, in which the body is placed in a fetal position and buried under the ground. A tree (or tree seed) is then planted over the top of the pod, which will use the nutrients from the decomposing body as fertilizer for its growth.

I personally feel that a “sacred forest” of trees honoring the deceased, each one unique, growing, giving life, is far superior to boxes and stones that just SIT there in traditional cemeteries. I’m in favor of personal markers by each tree to commemorate the (former) person helping it thrive. Apparently there are legal regulation issues with implementing this sort of green burial.

How do you feel about this idea? Would you like to return to nature?

Burial Pod
Rubenimichi: Sol Negro

March 15th, 2015

Phantasmaphile tipped me off to a great Rubenimichi show entitled Sol Negro.

I love the geometric shapes mingling with wildlife and EYES. Many eyes.

Have radishes ever stared at you before?

This would work as a three dimensional installation.

Some of the black and white works are fantastic, too.

Rubenimichi
Sol Negro
Brian Smith

March 14th, 2015

Brian Smith is a gifted painter of tortured souls.

Vaguely humanoid creatures are stretched, torn…twisted and tormented. He has a remarkable talent for painting agony.

For me, his work evokes a kind of richly textured empathy; a visceral connection to the raw realms of physical and emotional anguish.

Many of his subjects seem like lost souls at the mercy of forces greater than themselves.

And he makes a hell of a Joker.

Brian Smith
Next Theme Week: Strange Remains!

March 13th, 2015

I’ve had a folder of bizarre, shall we say, “death options” for years now, so it’s time we have a theme week! If you know of any interesting modern methods of preserving, honoring, disposing of, or creatively using human/animal remains, please share (think “ashes shot into space” etc).

*Note: I’m restricting the contents of this theme week to modern death customs since I could write a whole other blog about the wealth of historical examples.
Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontyev

March 12th, 2015

Graphic artist and painter team Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontyev make tiny porcelain creatures with a wild array of finely detailed whimsical designs.

Some have strange scenery painted on them…

Others have what look like the natural scales and markings of creatures from a colorful parallel world.

And some contain the cosmos!

Anya Stasenko and Slava Leontyev
Source
Nightmare in Wonderland: Part I

March 10th, 2015

The next Nightmare in Wonderland is showing at Vancouver’s Ayden Gallery!

Here are just a few selections…

See the whole installment HERE.