The Darkness 💀

Hello.

I'm Art Simone, a ridiculously talented and gorgeous drag queen. Over the years, I've met all walks of life, but even I can still be surprised. It turns out some of the most ordinary looking people can be concealing surprising professions, remarkable hobbies, or downright freaky secrets. Each episode, I'll speak with someone who seems ordinary and appears to have an average life, but they're concealing something that makes them very unusual.

We get to find out together. Here's how it works.

I'll meet the guests, find out a little bit about them, and then ask three questions. From that, I'm confident I can guess what they're concealing from us. Welcome to Concealed with Art Simone.

Time for the guest roll the tame Hi.

I'm Nat. I'm thirty nine from Melbourne. I'm an artist and a teacher. Before that, I was in the corporate world for thirteen years. When I'm not at work, I love theater, board games and hikings, and I don't think, well, guess what I'm hiding because I'm one of the only people in the country doing this.

Hello, Hello, now, how are you Hi?

I'm good at I'm doing it.

Oh, you didn't ask me how I'm doing, but I'm doing very well. Thank you as well. I'm jumping the gun today. But hello and welcome. It's lovely to meet you.

Now.

You've walked in today with the most exciting pants I've ever seen in my life. We have got yellow and black hounds shoes. It is and sequin, you look gorgeous. You also look like you could be like a seductive school teacher, is what you're giving me today, because you've got the spectacles on. Your hair is nice, prim and proper, en up. That means you can get to business.

You know.

I've always wanted to be a sextary.

Oh my god, a sexytary. I've never heard of that before. I need to meet one. I've met one. Here you are, and you've got some beatiful, cool jewelry on as well. I was staring at it before. You've got the necklace, it says IBOCD. Does it have the whole alphabet on or does it stop? Now that's a reveal. As you turned it says ab cd E f u c k Oh. That's a good Why don't they teach that in school? I wonder, I wonder I would have liked that as a nice sing along during kindergarten. A lot of peacings.

Oh my god.

No, wonder I said you look like a sexy teacher because I've just listened to you say I'm a teacher. The My goodness, sorry, I am blonde today. What were you doing in the corporate world?

I was in insurance and finance.

Ah, yeah, I'm so sorry.

That's what it was.

Yeah, no, that's all right. I understand why you left that. I could never work in an office.

Yeah, it was not my favorite.

Yeah.

I hate routine, Yeah I can. I barely like waking up every day. I just sleep every second day, just to mix it up. It's exciting. Okay, Okay, Now, so now I know a bit more about you. I've got three questions to ask you, and from the answers to those three questions and what we've been chatting about, I have to try and guess what you are concealing from me today. Now, first question I have for you is, oh, do you have favorite theatrical production.

Yes, I'm more like that vein of like grue lesque, like grungy burls. Okay, I know something to say a little bit political. I think that that's more interesting.

Okay, Yeah, of course I love to walk in and just go into fantasy land and be like, yay, happy clapping along.

Look at this happily costumes.

But I also like to sit an audience said like, get a bit uncomfortable. I'm okay being like what did I just say?

Wow?

Yeah?

Wow?

It just opened up me? Third eye? Is that exciting? Wow? I can see him thirty twenty?

Okay, And another question for you, what is a relationship deal breaker?

Ah, owning a cat or no? Yeah?

Oh no, nat, yeah, oh no, we're not going to get along past this point. We just bonded over theater. And now what's an issue with the cat.

We don't have to have a like.

A yeah, come over, you know you can't come over to my house.

I like cats in other countries, but they shouldn't be in this country. They kill all the native worldlide.

I like cats in other Countries' fine, you know.

We're about to have a domestic We're about to fight. We're about to have a domestic cat right now. Okay, god stop it, domestic cat fight that. And before I take a guess and reveal what you're hiding, I have one third and final question to ask.

Do you have any nicknames? Yeah?

So, all through my twenties I was referred to as the darkness.

Okay, but I'm.

Not really clear on why on my darkness.

There's two ways when I hear that. There's two things I'm thinking of. All right, So either you were just like a sad sack that like you'd walk in and you'd suck the life out of a room. I'd call that the darkness, or you were like walking in with the caldron, being like, can I just eat my lunch out of my caldron and please please leave me alone?

Neither neither. This is why I can't put my finger on it.

You don't think there's anything at all as to why they called you the darkness.

I thought I was just a chill, little corporate rock climbing and you know.

Oh, you mean climbing the ladder climbing.

No, climbing, rock climbing.

What you do rock climbing as Oh okay, so I was like, what they call it now? You know, climbing up the corporate ladder is called rock climbing. No, you're actually climbing rocks. Yeah, and that's why you're called the darkness.

You don't picnic it hanging rock, Like what is going on?

What I'm trying to say is just at that point in my life, I feel like I was quite normal but apparently not.

Okay, So you've always stood out a little.

Bit apparently Okay, So base the information I have absorbed from you.

Okay, the recap.

You're an artist, you got cool jewelry, I'm getting you know, dark things, right, Uki spooky, which I love. I love Uky spooky all right, so put that together. Yes, don't like cats. See I was going to say you're a witch, but witch is like cats, so that's out of the question.

And they see are a weird witch that doesn't like cats. All right.

I would to say you are a secret voodoo doctor. I put together, all right, I reckon, you're a voodoo doctor. I think maybe you discovered while you're in the corporate world that you had a gift.

All right.

You know I can't be here anymore because it's time for me to be a person who doesn't like cats.

I'm a taxidermist and I teach the dying arts and animal preservation. In this job, I get to work with museums, galleries, movie sets, and pet owners and I've been doing this for ten years.

You're ast.

Oh, so nat isn't a voodoo witch doctor person. She's in fact a taxidermist. Maybe my dream of being a human dole person that lives around for the entirety of the world can actually come true.

Oh how do I do it? All right, So we have just met nad the taxidermist.

Now you are not, in fact a voodoo witch doctor, but you, in fact are in the world of what would you call it preserving animals? I mean it's a form of preservation in what they looked like.

Maybe.

Well, if you're not making crap taxidermy hopefully.

Okay, so naturally I am, you're probably here.

I'm very excited because I found this so fascinating and I can't wait to find out more. So, first of all, how did you get into taxi?

I came down from Brisbane with my corporate job, and I kind of was like, ah, you know, I'm in Melbourne and I want to creative outlet, something cool. And I'm like, well, you know, I can't sing or dance or draw or what have you, So what am I gonna do? And you know, I knew corporate world wasn't fulfilling.

Well? I was just to say that the biggest one is it Melbourne gone? Is it gone?

Yeah?

Gone?

Gone? Yeah? Dreadful because everything kind of got outsourced or no one was turning over collections. You couldn't learn here. And then I was super interested. I'm like, Okay, this is kind of something that's a bit different. You can't learn it? How do I get stuck into that? And so I think it came from almost me being stubborn

So then where do you go to learn it? Is it like the school of YouTube or I learned how to do makeup? Or is it like do you have to fly over seas and have someone mentor you.

There were some people in Australia that are quite prolific, so I chose to stalk one of them, sent them about two hundred emails of a period of six months, and he finally like agreed to like see me. And I went out there one day and kind of had these little wed shoes on and whatever, and you know, you're walking on like the bitumen to get up to the warehouse factory. Thing must have looked like a baby giraffe, you know, on my yah. You know I'm not and

Is that to assist in.

I'm going to use the term loosely that I was assisting. Mainly I was just skinning ducks for the dude, but I found.

Do dead. I was actually a duck factory.

Yeah. I was learning a lot, to be clear.

Yeah, were you still doing corporate at the same time, Yeah, totally, the corporate during the week on the weekends skin and ducks.

Yeah exactly. I'm excellent to that.

I love it.

And so I took my long service leave. You know, I think most people gone a party I'm like, I'm going to go to Spain by myself and do taxonomy. So I found a mentor over there and he didn't speak a word of English and I didn't speak a word of Spanish. But he was building a museum on the history of hunting. And he let me live with

So do you teach yeah? Yeah?

Wow?

How do you bring animals into like taxidermi? Do you only do with like Australia natives or I feel like there be a lot of rules and things. You know, I can't even fly to Tasmania without a sniffer dog being like, get rid of that apple, all right, not apple for you.

It's actually quite easy to bring in skins from overseas, like you know, a squirrel or a wolf, doesn't really matter as long as it's not protected. They can't in as tanned skins they pass quarantine.

I guess that's technically all it is.

What leather, you know, it's like a coat.

I guess we look at the because when you do a good job, it looks like the entire animal is in front of you.

Yeah, but you're just dealing with this skin exactly.

So taxonomy means the arrangement of skin. So taxi is a range and dermy's skin. Yeah. Like And interestingly, we can mainly only work on introduced species because all native specimens are protected. Hence why I hate cats. So we can work on things like your fox. We can work on a feral cat. Yes, we can work on pigs whatever, not a problem. And so this is the thing. So

So does that mean you have like a taxidermy license.

Yeah, and you have to do a police check and all sorts of stuff in order to get your second.

Away, like the people in suits being So we'll just make them do a police check just in case. You know, we've all seen the movie. What do you think is the most common animal you have? It's just you say taxidermy. Yeah, it's a bit of a long word. We've got to work on that. Actually, let's send them stuffed. Stuffed even better than guy, what's the most common animal you've stuffed?

Look, now that we do the pet work, heaps of cats.

I'm sorry, did you say pet work? Yeah?

Okay, in my household, we're a cat house, and I heard yes, our oldest scales.

She's thirteen, she's she's doing she's nearly ready.

And we have said for years that we were like, is that even legal?

We're like, I don't know, but we'd love to get it because she's so fluffy, she's so.

Fluffy and she's such a good girl. We're like, would be great just to have her always sitting on the couch. Is that is that actually like legal? You can just hand you more people.

Need to know about this.

Yeah, but crazy cat ladies unite or my cat ladies out there, we found the solution.

Sorry, yes, but let me.

So just to quantify that, I don't actually do tax it to me on cats and dogs, and what I mean by that is I don't do full skin mounts. So I'm sorry you can't have your fluffy cat back to pat because I feel like you're either two types of people. You're either super pragmatic and you're like, wouldn't it.

Be cooled I have my fluffy cat back and that'd be great, or you're like, I'm so deeply traumatized that I cannot part with my pet that I am having trouble letting go and I want my pet back.

I feel like with pet taxonomy because the skin goes back on, it needs to look like your cat, not our cat, your cat. And there's something about taxonomy where you can't quite capture the personality of something. And so we'll happily do skull preservation or poor preservation cremation, but I will not do your dog or cat for fear of re traumatizing.

Well, I was going to say, if you don't get it exactly right, then you've butchered my life. Right, So I guess your work can be quite polarizing. You know, you were saying earlier that people would come around to your place and be like, I don't know about that. Have you faced much pushback from people that don't quite gel with what you're doing?

Yeah, totally. The first time I experiences was after I started teaching, and then I guess because I kind of thought it was like a kitchen cute to be teaching, you know, lipstick wearing, blonde kind of thing. So did the media. And the first kind of media I got was MX magazine. You know, the commuter, like the commuter, which is really bad for me because I'm in corporate world. So everyone in corporate world would get emes and read on the train.

And were you still in the corporate world. Yeah, it was a bit of a transitional.

Seven years of transit. Wow, okay, okay, And this is how everyone kind of found out that I did this. And so from that first article is when I started getting hates and death threats. And I remember the first one from that EMES article. A guy went on there and he said, I would never wish death upon anyone, but Natalie, when you die, I hope it's as painful

I think you're going out there and shooting there. No, not at all.

I'm studying animals for a living, like I love animals.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that, but at least we can bond over that because the amount of shit that I've had sent to me. I once had to replace Santa Claus because they're like, that's just having fun. No, Santa Claus going up and down Chapel Street this year, a drag queen and a convertible doing all I want for Christmas?

Is you fun?

Right? How did that go?

Not very well?

I ruined Christmas many times? So the kids the sand is not real. But anyway, okay, Nat. So you're talented, you know, because you can stuff animals, you can preserve skulls and things. Oh who's that artist that I see that does the thing where they make them look translucent and transparent?

Oh?

I bought you one as a gift that I made.

A get stuff is a little fishy yeah, Oh my goodness, you have just handed me what.

Is this called.

It's called diaphonization.

Oh my god, I love it so much. So that has just handed me a little jar with a fish in it. And the fish is in liquid. But it's like see through and purple, and I can see its eyeball and I can see organs. Oh my goodness, it's looking at me with its hairy eyeball. It's quite nice at the moment. Hello, fish in a bottle that sounds like a good song. Fish in a bottle. Fish in a bottle.

So that's still called taxiderm diaphonization.

So taxidom is just anything with skin on it.

So what would you call yourself as like an umbrella term as a profession.

Then you'd have to say, I do animal preservation. Oh yeah, but then I haven't just been doing animals lately.

Well I'm sorry, what you haven't just been doing animals?

Tell me more so.

I have had a few interesting clients lately, some people that have just given birth, that have a placenta, so they've wanted their placenta preserved. I got a I got a message last night saying, oh, I hope it's not weird, but I had my finger amputated. Can you do something? I'm like, yeah, totally, I can do something for me.

Wait do they have their finger?

Well, it depends on the hospital because.

Because I feel like the hospital sometimes wouldn't allow you to.

Yeah. So some like dentists won't giving you wisdom to you know, but there it is actually legal. The hospital just has to do the work. So the best client I had, and I think my favorite work that I've done recently, was a client who came to me who is transgender and had just had a hysterectomy.

As part of their gender reformation.

Gender reformation surgery, and they wanted their uterus preserved to remind them of, I guess, you know, the life that they want lived. Yes, and so that was really amazing work. And it was really interesting as well because when the hospital released all the tissue of the uterus. To me, what happens when someone goes through that process is that you obviously take a lot of hormones, and hormones can

Yeah, that's crazy, Yeah, because you know, skins is one thing, but now you're working on internal organs. Yeah.

Yeah, and look, I knew you're a witch doctor on you.

Now.

I hate death, yeah, you know, I was scared of it for so long. Most scary thing in the world to me is death. I can't come to terms of the fact that just like one day done over. But because of that, I feel like everyone around me, you know, they'd be quite sad if I disappeared. So I reckon it'd be great to have a bit of me preserved.

Okay, yeah, what would you give me?

I mean have many exciting things, like my feet.

They're really messed up, and I think they'd be really good to study because high heels for this long or men or men not good. Only two toenails left. But that's all very exciting, very comamorates.

It's good for me either.

I can teach the people about what not to do one thing about me.

But then also, you.

Know, I'm thinking, well, you know, I've got giant manhands, and I've always thought look really funny with nails on them because they've been sweeping things. And I think maybe I'd give you a big giant man hand, but this with the middle finger up.

I think could you preserve it like that? Yeah?

I think that would be a great legacy to send on down to the world like a big FuG you to the world.

Okay, all right, challenge accepted.

Here on record, I gift to you my hand.

I'm gonna need quite a big job.

Actually that was Nat, not a voodoo witch, doctor cat hater, but in fact a taxidermist who loves to get stuffed.

I never knew and have so much in common.

You've been listening to an iHeart Radio and Kiss production Concealed with Art Simone. You can listen for free on the iHeartRadio app and want to check out my dead Fish, then search for Concealed with Art Simone on the Socials