NYC taxidermy artist gives series the right stuff

NYC taxidermy artist gives series the right stuff

Artist Takeshi Yamada with a creation in 'Immortalized’

A Coney Island man who uses bits of his own body to create art stars on a new reality show that pits taxidermists against each other â€" and that’s not even the strangest part of his story.

While Takeshi Yamada was crafting his competitive pieces for “Immortalized,” debuting Thursday at 10 p.m. on AMC, superstorm Sandy swept through, flooding his home studio.

“The first floor is my main sculpture room, a production room, and I had to move a lot of things from the first floor to the second,” says Yamada.

“But there was a problem. One of the sculptures was so big â€" the size of an elephant â€" so there’s no way I can bring it to the second floor. I had to finish my artwork one week early for the first piece.”

Yamada managed to ship the larger of his two pieces for the show to safety before Sandy hit. He stored the smaller one upstairs, but wasn’t able to work on it.

“It was frightening,” Yamada recalls. “Sandy came, the electricity shut down 7:45 p.m. â€" there’s nothing I can do without electricity at night. I usually work at night, so that’s a serious problem. No more hair dryer, hot-glue gun, electric grinder.”

More than 5 feet of water filled Yamada’s first floor by 10:30 p.m. “The first floor was completely destroyed,” he says. “The living room, bedroom, everything. And that is sewage water as well as salt water ruining everything.”

Though Yamada, 52, saved his pieces for the show, his home and hundreds of artworks were wrecked.

The artist is one of “four highly regarded ‘Immortalizers’ ” on the program. Each week, one of them faces off against a lesser-known challenger. The pieces are judged on originality, workmanship and interpretation of an assigned theme.

Yamada is considered a rogue taxidermist, as opposed to traditional, meaning his creations are not just animals stuffed from a live counterpart, but may be mythical creatures or figures made from more than one animal as well as artificial materials.

He saves crab shells from buffets, digs in Chinatown trash cans for fish parts and picks up mounted animals at antique stores. He’s even used his own blood, peeled skin and hair in his art.

“I’m a sculptor, so I use everything,” he says. “I’m not limiting taxidermy’s boundaries.”

gsalamone@nydailynews.com