(October 2008)

The past few months I've been refurbishing my very spacious black-and-white darkroom...... During the winter months, I hope to be printing the hundreds of vintage negatives I exposed back in the 70's and 80's...... Limited-edition portfolios of these images will hopefully be produced in 2009...... More information about these folios will be available in the months to come...... Thanks to everyone for your interesting comments and emails regarding my artwork...... Please feel free to email me directly at steve@spaternite.com or post a comment on our message board or guest book.....

Thanks again. Stephen

(June 2007)

My 2 newest sculptures "Sweet Dreams" and "Little Piggies Above the Valley of Domed Vegetation" are on display in the 9th Annual Spring Members Show at the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve, 1834 East 123rd Street, Cleveland, Ohio, from June 1 - July 13, 2007 (call the gallery @ 216-721-9020 for hours)..... For those of you in the Northeast Ohio area, please stop by the gallery and check them out ...... Well worth the trip ....... Guaranteed to spark some controversy in the days to come.

(APRIL 2007)

Please checkout the newest member of my sculpture family ...... "Little Piggies Above the Valley of Domed Vegetation" in the New Additions and Sculpture sections ...... This mixed-media sculpture features 2 freeze-dried pig fetuses and delicate flowers encased in clear acrylic domes, creating a bizarrely colorful landscape.

On another note........ I have had a number of inquiries regarding the pricing of my b&w infrared photographs...... Although I have not set foot in my darkroom in many years, I still maintain a fairly large collection of vintage b&w infrared photographs from the late 1970's to the mid 1980's, when I was very active in photography..... The pricing for vintage (signed & dated) b&w infrared photographs range from $350.00 - $450.00 depending on the image, size, and availability...... I occasionally list a signed (unmounted) b&w infrared photograph on ebay, as well as, signed copies of the (out-of-print) book "American Infrared Survey" for a fraction of their normal costs, so, if you're interested, please checkout my ebay listings for an eclectic blend of rare, and out of print, art & photography books and images.

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(FEBRUARY 2007)

Added film "The Printmaker" to my Video Page. More info about this project to come.

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(APRIL 2006)

After an artistic-drought this past winter, the creative-juices are flowing again....
I'm embarking on a new series of mixed-media sculptures which should keep me busy on off the streets (except to pick-up roadkill) throughout the summer months.

Watch for new sculpture photos later this year..... I recently completed a series of mixed-media self-portraits utilizing photogravure and die-cut color photo stamps. Check them out in the "new additions" section of my site.

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I ran across this article which is extremely informative, as well as, disturbing...... Thought you might be interested in reading..... Thanks so much.

Rendering: From Roadkill to Cat Food

by Rachel Naba

A pile of dead animals covers the floor of the rendering plant, covered with maggots. The humming of the flies swarming around the bodies is mere background noise as mini-bulldozers gather the carcasses for processing. As the bodies are dropped into a large pot for grinding, their bones, viscera, eyes, brains, and fur or feathers become a giant mixture of "meat product". After the raw product is cut and shredded, it is loaded into a large cooking pot and cooked for anywhere between twenty to ninety minutes. The grease, often called yellow fat or tallow, is skimmed from the top of the cooked mixture, and the cooked meat and bones are processed further, dehydrated, and made into meat meal or bone meal. Farmers rely on this industry to dispose of their livestock waste (down or dead cows, sheep, etc), and slaughterhouses rid themselves of parts considered inedible for humans (feathers, cow heads, hoofs, viscera, etc), diseased meat, scraps, and contaminated products. Dead zoo animals and roadkill can also be found in the mixture, as well as euthanized cats and dogs from vet clinics and animal shelters. It is the rendering business, and it is one of the most behind-the-scenes businesses in the food industry. It has progressed almost silently for many years, and many people have been unaware of its existence or influence - until recently. News about Mad Cow Disease and other health problems has hit the streets, and eyes are beginning to turn to the rendering business and the uses of its products.

Meat is the main part of a meal for many Americans, and this practice is promoted by the meat and poultry industries. But, unlike more traditional and Earthly cultures, Americans have an extreme attitude of consumerism and waste. Unlike other cultures that use every part of an animal that is killed for food (the hide, hooves, ears, meat - everything is either eaten or made into other tools or products), consumers in "first world" countries use only a limited portion of each animal (roughly half of each cow and one third of each pig is considered waste material). The rendering industry, however, takes care of this waste problem. They take animal waste, diseased or rotten meat, dead pets and zoo animals, restaurant scraps and grease and convert it into "usable" products. The finished products: tallow/grease and meat/bone meal. Their uses: candles, soaps, pharmaceuticals, gummy candies, lubricants, pet food, livestock food, and much more........ The rendering industry boasts that it is the "original recycler". This recycling industry is almost completely self-regulated (unregulated) and has helped reduce "waste" and the cost of pet food and livestock feed - but at what price?

Most people have heard at least something about Mad Cow Disease that has caused major controversy in Europe. The current theory of its cause is that the feed that was given to cattle is what made them sick - feed containing rendered parts of sheep with an enigmatic neurological disease called scrapie. The disease was theoretically passed on to the cows and then to human beings who ate the cow meat. While cows are vegeterian animals which should not be consuming meat products of any kind, farmers and ranchers have introduced it into their diets. Human beings are attempting to change the nature of a cow by feeding them meat and, at the same time, are poisoning them with dangerous "meat byproducts" that contain many questionable substances......... An estimated 100 million pounds of waste material are picked up every day by the rendering industry. Diseased, poisoned, and otherwise inedible livestock are freely put into the grinder without treatment - tags, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, intestinal waste, fur - nothing is left out. Dicarded meat and seafood from supermarket freezers are added, along with the plastic wrapping and styrofoam trays. Dogs and cats are shoveled into mix with their tags and flea collars intact. The resulting soup is a concoction of meat, pesticides, horomones, drugs (the chemicals used to euthanize dogs and cats do not break down in the rendering process), disease, plastic, metal, insecticides... This is what our pets are eating, and this is what is fed to chicken, hogs, and other livestock. Pigs are eating pigs, chickens are eating chickens, dogs are eating dogs, cats are eating cats....and humans are consuming the livestock that eat this filth.

Because the rendering industry is hugely self-regulated and secretive, there are many issues that are kept from public eye. Have you ever wondered what the hospital does with a mother's placenta after it carts it away shortly after delivery? Research shows that human placentas have been found within the mixture of rendering pots!..... When an animal dies in nature, for whatever reason, its remains are either eaten by predator animals or are left to decompose. The decomposition of the animal fertilizes the Earth and replenishes necessary ingredients naturally. Today, the rendering industry capitalizes on the American craze for meat and poultry and perpetuates the system of excess and waste. It is time that we reconsider our dietary philosophy and the treatment of our livestock. The safety of our food supply and, in turn, our own health, is at risk.

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(APRIL 2005)

We are in the process of adding Quicktime Streaming Video to this site and will be featuring "Too Gross for Discovery" and "Creature-Nites of Ohio" in HIGH-QUALITY streaming Video. Get your Quicktime or Quicktime plug-in ready!!!

Posted on Sun, Apr. 10, 2005

`Man and Beast' proves a wild time
Three-headed squirrel among the weird creations to see at
University of Akron's Emily Davis Gallery
By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art and architecture critic

A red squirrel lies belly up on the table, its tail straight as an arrow and its forearms folded across its chest, as though it's quietly taking a nap.

It's a Stephen Paternite taxidermy, and he probably found it as roadkill, but it's not the strangest thing in this show.

Not that Paternite hasn't submitted some strange stuff. He has. His Kunst und Vunder Kabinet alone contains some 300 items, including a mouse angel. And who could forget Rackeydeer?

But that's nothing compared to Richard Harned's Darwin with Tarantula Toupee (2005), a bust of the evolution guy with tarantulas growing out of his head; and Chris Gose's Jump Frog (2005), two desiccated frogs attached to two arms of a gobot. It'll wear out before they will, says its creator.

Then there are the W.D. "Crazy Mac'' MacAffrey wire sculptures, most imposingly Bear, who sits in front of Rackeydeer, of course.

All these wild creations. Makes you think that maybe some of the weirdly wonderful things were put together just so Mark Soppeland could put them in his show, Man and Beast, Part II of Regional Collections, on view at the Emily Davis Gallery, University of Akron Mary Schiller Myers School of Art, through April 27.

Some of them may have been done just for this show, but others were borrowed from prominent private collectors in the area, and still others were acquired via the Internet, like the two-headed chick from Custom Creatures creator Sarina Brewer, who also made the three-headed squirrel crawling up the wall.

"This is where everything goes horribly wrong,'' said Soppeland, who had guided us through the Garden of Eden section of the show, then the Expulsion from the Garden, and now we were in the area where not only has man conquered nature, but he's beginning to do some things to his fellow creatures that, in a nutshell, just aren't natural.

"This is the lab table that we call 'The Table of Unfortunate Experiments,' '' said Soppeland.

As you enter the show, it starts with the idea of man and animal in harmony, with a wonderful painting by Youngstown visionary artist Anthony Joseph Salvatore, Garden of Eden, several superb Japanese woodblock prints and a lovely Betty Culley painting along the same theme.

Gallery furniture -- vitrines, walls and so on -- has been rearranged to look like garden walls and hedges, follies and, eventually, faux pas.

"We've tried to do some interesting things,'' said Soppeland, who organized this show as a follow-up to his Private Figures: The Logic and Passion of Collecting Figurative Art, shown in spring 2002 at the same venue.

Once again the show is hung floor to ceiling, and once again Soppeland has managed to ferret out extraordinary numbers of extraordinary works owned by local collectors.

"There are over 1,000 objects in the gallery spanning at least 5,000 years of civilization and work from around the world. I think almost every continent is represented and most cultures -- which probably sets a record,'' Soppeland gleefully estimated.

In addition to Paternite's chock-full case of odd creatures, there's another case with 400 loaned objects from Grandmother's Video, all magically keeping to the theme of the relationship between animals and those of us who have the 2 percent DNA difference.

There are wonderful surprises here. One has only to be vigilant and keep looking.

There are Persian manuscripts and Egyptian faiences mixed in with Chinese bronzes, pre-Columbian frog and jaguar vessels, a Benin head and Indian ivories.

There's an Aminah Robinson and an Alexander Calder, a wonderful Wayne Thiebaud, and works by Gary Spinosa, Chuck Ayers, Tom Batiuk, Red Grooms, Eva Kwong, John Sokol, Edvard Munch, Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Saul Steinberg, Mariko Takahashi, Andy Warhol and La Wilson.

Photographs, photographic collages and photographs of elaborate models were created by, among others, Andrew Borowiec, Linda Butler, Gregory Kreutson, Michael Loderstedt, Lori Nix, Komar and Melamid, Penny Rakoff, Arnold Tunstall, Rebecca Norris Webb and William Wegman.

And there are all kinds of posters (especially note those of the Black Keys), collages, montages, pop-ups, paintings, prints, sculptures and decorative tchochkes to behold, not to mention every kind of animal-related object known to Soppeland, like the world-record stuffed and mounted marlin head owned by Peggy Steckle (caught by her grandfather, Leon Faulk Jr.), and the box of beetles and butterflies.

"This is the 'Closet of Strange Desires,' subtitled `Loving them to Death,' '' Soppeland said pointing to an area where animals have become handbags, hats and shoes, including a real tigerskin purse and three-quarter-length mink gloves.

Some of the most surprising things in the show are the videos sent in from overseas.

"We have videos coming in from Japan, Prague and Sao Paolo, Brazil, and I think something came in from Peru, too.

"We put out a request via the Internet asking for things on DVDs, which is a new medium,'' he added, while we all laughed uproariously at a spoof on people who take up the newest exercise craze to lose weight, get beautiful, find love and be a success in life.

The DVD showed a workout girl in white tights in front of a regiment of white-tighted poodles, all of them with soccer-ball-sized bulges on their arms and legs. They turn, they twist, they daintily lift their bulbous biceps, and every once in a while we get a coy look from a canine.

"That notice for items about animals that we put out on the Web got lots of replies, including a huge box from PETA, which we weren't really expecting,'' Soppeland noted. ``But we've put their brochures by the gallery watcher's desk anyway. They fit right in with all the wackiness in here. Take one, you'll never eat meat again.''

Also, on your way out, look up. You'll get a big surprise.
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.

(MARCH 2005)

In February, I was invited by Akron University Professor Mark Soppeland to participate in the upcoming exhibition at the University "Man and Beast". Professor Soppeland , curator for the exhibition, visited my home/gallery and selected 12 of my art pieces for exhibition.... Some of the pieces that will be included are the infamous "Kiddie Kat" and "Robocat", as well as, "Jackalstag", "Rackeydeer", "Horny Bear" and "A Case of Curiosity" which will be an installation piece..... Hope to see you at the opening!

(JANUARY 2005)

The biggest news for this cold and snowy January '05 is the publication of my new limited edition, signed & numbered, art print. SCULPTURES•2002-04. I'm very proud of this art print which illustrates 7 of my most recent animal sculptures. The print was designed by my incredible guru-webmaster, Cappy Petri and printed by Hudson Printing, LLC., (who I think is the best lithographic print house on the north coast). My brother, David, did the incredible digital photography for the print.

I'd also like to welcome all the new visitors to my site from CUSTOM CREATURE TAXIDERMY. What an amazing website by this most incredibly talented artist. The sky is the limit for this rising star......Congratulations, Sarina.

My plan for this coming Spring will be to delve into more photography. Hopefully, as the weather warms, I'll be able to dust-off the old 4x5 Deardorff View Camera and pursue more b&w infrared landscapes, as well as, my never-ending polaroid series on roadkills.

Thanks again for visiting and don't forget to sign my guestbook.

All best,

Stephen