Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

by Justin Nobel

Shannon and Jeff Conlon's new show is about female morticians. Other projects focus on Wall Street women and pole dancers. “We take shows about strong women with preconceived notions that we're trying to shatter,” says Shannon. (Photo Courtesy of One-Run Entertainment)

People do one of three things when they meet a female mortician: take a step back, begin asking questions or flee.

“In what other line of work do you tell someone what you do and get such violent reactions?” said Shannon Conlon.

Shannon and her brother, Jeff, run One-Run Entertainment, a documentary television and film company based in Los Angeles. Their latest show is about females in the funeral industry and will discuss what motivates women to join the profession and how they maintain zesty social lives.

“For the last ten years the industry has primarily been dominated by women,” said Shannon, “but the perception has not caught on. Everyone still thinks it's some crazy old man.”

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by Justin Nobel

A necklace with a cross made out of human metacarpal bones adorned with a garnet that symbolizes the Blood of Christ goes for $115 on "The Churchyard", an online jewelry shop run by Columbine Phoenix that sells necklaces and earrings made from human bones and teeth. (Photo courtesy of Columbine Phoenix)

A necklace of phalanges costs $165 and a cross of metacarpal goes for $80 on Columbine Phoenix's website. The retail jeweler sells agate chalices, crystal wands and ceremonial blades but her favorite merchandises are the necklaces and earrings made of human bone that she crafts herself. Chain necklaces, strung with a single human molar, are also available.

“This is something solid that you can hold in your hand or wear in your ear,” said Phoenix. “It makes death a little less scary.”

The bones come from an education supply store, the same place she gets her rat and bat skulls. The supply store obtains the human bones from retired science classroom skeletons.

“You can tell that they were from a good family,” said Phoenix, referring to the skeletons. “They got their milk and they're strong.”

Bones don't come cheaply, though. A hand goes for about $250, she said, and a whole skeleton costs more like $5,000. Skulls alone cost about $1,000 and are purchased in large numbers by art schools. “Supposedly, you can't draw a human face until you can draw a skull,” said Phoenix. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

Egypt's 70 million mummies powered early trains and composed a popular nineteenth century paint known as mummy brown, a pigment between burnt and raw umber. The last batch was concocted in 1964 by a British supplier who lamented,

"Families wanting a lasting celebration of their loved ones' memories can now consult with an international artist who will lovingly mix a portion of their family member's ashes into the colors of a custom painted modern art piece picture."

The "modern art piece pictures" are known as Art in Ashes and can be ordered from memorial.com, along with slightly offbeat funerary items such as pet urns and memorial garden rocks.

The ash painter is a German-born woman named Mona who presently resides in Texas, by the sea. Mona has "years of formal training in abstract techniques at art schools across Europe (Munich, Karlsruhe, and even Rome) and has traveled the globe (Asia, Canada, the U.S. and most regions of Europe)."

Mona's style may seem grisly but painting with human remains has precedent. England's Pre-Raphaelites used a color called mummy brown, a pigment between burnt and raw umber, derived from the ground-up remains of Egyptian mummies. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

T-shirts, hats, pins and belts were the norm but some vendors in Harlem, in New York City, sold Michael Jackson umbrellas. Fans couldnt get enough. (Photo by Justin Nobel)

Jumillah Galvez sold 72 Michael T-shirts in 30 minutes earlier this week but now all anyone seems to care about is when the next batch of her Michael Jackson umbrellas will arrive.

"People been out here since 1 p.m. saying, ‘Did they come yet? Did they come yet?" said Galvez, last Friday evening.

Her stand is one of dozens in an impromptu bazaar of Michael Jackson goods that stretches several blocks along 125th Street, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.

"When a celebrity dies there is a massive outpouring of feeling and memorialization and along with that comes this sort of spontaneous outpouring of folks who feel something but also think they can make a buck," said Robert Neuwirth, a journalist working on a book about informal marketplaces. Read the rest of this entry »

by Justin Nobel

"Everything is a corpse," in a new Oscar winning Japanese film by director Yojiro Takita.

Outside, wind-whipped snow piles high but inside the trim room there are pineapples and candles on an altar, a family seated patiently on pillows on the floor and a stunning figure resting on immaculate bedding beside an ornate box. Two strangers in dark suits enter and the Japanese funerary rite known as encoffination begins. And this begins “Departures”, the Japanese film by director Yojiro Takita that won this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

The film follows a young man through a difficult time in his life. Daigo Kobayashi loses his job as a cellist with a Tokyo orchestra and returns to the bleak provincial town of his youth. Mika, his cheery wife, follows. The only work available is as an encoffineer, or nokanshi, the individual who prepares a dead body for viewing. Daigo vomits into his palm when he sees his first corpse and hides the details of the job from Mika. The boss, a staid man getting on in years, won't let him quit, and through him Daigo learns that despite the public's general lack of respect for the job—one man he meets on the street shields his child from Daigo and girls on a bus sneer at him—there is great honor in the profession. Read the rest of this entry »