Lee Harper

This all started with a naked skeleton.  I thought it would be a funny macabre version of Elf on the Shelf for the week leading up to Halloween. (Only the skeleton never tattled on you.)  For the first two Halloweens his adventures were texted to my son, niece, and nephews while my husband, unbeknownst to me, was putting them on Facebook.  Bones garnered his fair share of fans and the project just kept getting more elaborate each Halloween.  Being a huge history nerd, I eventually thought I'd incorporate Bones into historical scenes.  That change prompted what is now pretty much a year round obsession.

Veering toward more obscure people, situations, and customs married my history fan self with my creative self.  The stories you don't hear about in your history classes fascinate me the most.  Also, there's something beautiful about skeletons being the great equalizer.  They represent all of us, no matter the gender, race, or nationality.  Look at Memento Mori, Dia de los Muertos, the Danse Macabre, catacombs, ossuaries and the jeweled saints for examples of our endless fascination with death, bones and mortality.  

 All of the pieces are about real people, events or customs from some point in this crazy world.  The more obscure or bizarre the story, the better.  I'm only a FAN of history, so every detail in the images may not be correct, but the written descriptions are as close as I can come.  Artistic license has definitely been taken in the images.  The goal is to bring some of these subjects out of the dark and deliver them with a bit of my interpretation.  

 I live in Oxford, MS, with my husband, son, 2 dogs, a cat and several chickens.  When I'm not making new scenes, I'm a freelance artist and maker of things.