stuffed animals were most certainly harmed in the making of this object box

Okay, so I know it's not technically furry art, but there are stuffed animals! Those count, right?

Object boxes are a fun hobby of mine. You make a small wooden box that's open on one side, decide on a theme, collect objects, and arrange and alter the objects in the box in a way that fits your theme. Then you make any final modifications to the box itself, and wham! You've got an object box.

More pictures can be found here:
http://s679.photobucket.com/albums/vv152/sfaosttrack20/?action=view&current=100_4057.jpg
please look at them, there's stuff on all sides that I'd like you to get a better look at.

Most of my object boxes are quite a bit...happier...but this one is my deepest and most meaningful one, and I'm rather proud of it. I wanted to show some people over here my work, so here it is!

The theme "Death of Childhood" is essentially this: when we grow older, we lose our sense of imagination. We have to look at everything analytically and rationally, only using logic, and we lose touch with our creativity. Sometimes nostalgia hits us and we look back fondly upon those times, but grabbing at something and only pulling it up some of the way to let go only damages it even more. The phrase "Memento Mori" meaning "Remember Thou Art Mortal" surrounds the box, not to remind us of our impending death, but to put the point across that as we mature and begin to understand death, we fear it. We let it rule our lives, and we take fewer risks because of it, and because we know we only exist for long, we constantly search for some reason to be, feeling the need to justify our existence, and losing the ability to just live.

Anyway, I used an old baseball shelf, a mirror tile that was cut to fit it, three stuffed animals, desk pins, fishing hooks, three stuffed animals, six hypodermic needles, and paint. If you're wondering about the broken mirror, I epoxied it to the back of the box and then took a hammer to it.

And yes, that's me taking the picture in the mirror.

EDIT: In case anyone was wondering, pictures were, in fact, taken in a classroom. My high school art teacher was the one who got me into these, and she also has black paint, which I seem to be out of, so I finished it in her classroom so I could use her paint and so she could see it.