Wendy Mitchell: The Artist Behind the Stuffed Animal Rescue Foundation

He’s a salesman — he was a salesman, now he sits unemployed surrounded by bottles of liquor next to his 1997 Salesman of the Year award. He’s also a stuffed penguin.

In her art galleries and petting zoos, Wendy Mitchell gives stuffed animals not a bio, but a backstory similar to ones people have. The stuffed animals’ “vignettes of humanity” highlight real-world issues in hopes that people might listen if it’s coming from a seemingly “silly” toy.

She said today, people are angry and polarized to a point where they aren’t given the opportunity to use their capacity for compassion.

“I think that a lot of people’s anger isn’t directed at actual humans that they know. I think people’s anger is directed at this sort of general thing that they think exists,” Mitchell said.

This polarization is part of why she decided to write the stuffed animals bios the way she
did — like real people with different personalities and backgrounds. She spoke about watching this hatred and polarization on social media sites like Facebook and how with her business, the Stuffed Animal Rescue Foundation, she hopes to reunite people through the stuffed animals.

The stuffed animals are many things that reflect real life, like a stuffed scientist who studies climate change and is working on “combating the effects of rising levels on coastal dwelling stuffed animals” — or a stuffed bear that identifies as a dog or a stuffed flamingo with attachment issues.

“I wish there were more things like stuffed animals,” Mitchell said. “I wish there were more things that were not polarizing that people of diverse backgrounds could identify with and thus identify with each other.”

Mitchell found that people pay attention to these stuffed animals’ bios more than they listen to humans.

“A stuffed animal can say things that if a human says them, other humans might not listen or read or care,” Mitchell said, “but if a stuffed animal says it, a greater number of diverse humans seem to pay attention.”

She attached these personalities to these stuffed animals in hopes they would reach people in more than just a way to make them laugh, but to get them to listen beyond their preconceived notions of others.

“It’s like there’s a way for people to not be angry, but still get some sort of information,” Mitchell said. “It’s been this journey of me being this artist and this writer and thinking all these things and then accidentally stumbling upon this kind of ridiculous project that seems a lot more important than making pretty things.”

Mitchell said getting people to take in this information and listen is important to help them interact with other perspectives. This is why she includes a wide range of real-world experiences in the bios.

“There was a petting zoo a few years ago, and there were the stuffed animals in the petting zoo, and then there were stuffed animals around that were protesting there,” Mitchell said. “And they’re protesting the workers’ conditions here because they didn’t get lunch breaks, and it was like, ‘just because we don’t eat doesn’t mean we don’t deserve lunch breaks.’”

At first it was a fun art project and then it turned into activism in the form of a stuffed toy.

“Tiny exposures to workers’ rights, even though it’s a stuffed pelican,” Mitchell said. “I just don’t know how else to try to save the world.”

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Mitchell is a stuffed animal rescuer, sculptor, guitarist, singer, web designer, seamstress and a jack-of-all-artistic-trades, but most of all, she is a writer. Aside from her full-time job as a web designer, she also owns the Stuffed Animal Rescue Foundation. On the surface of her business, the SARF, stuffed animal repairs and adoptions are prevalent, however, storytelling is the heart of the foundation.

“She can spend endless hours on a creative idea,” said bandmate from her second band “The Glen Gold,” Ken Hanslee. “Her work ethic is driven by her creativity.”

Her childhood best friend Alicia Fraser took the time to fill out an adoption application for a stuffed frog named Joshua who enjoys romantic dinners and going to the movies.

“When you get a stuffed animal from her, it feels like…they’re just special,” Fraser said. “She’s taking care of them. You can see the stitching where she might have repaired something.”

About two weeks after Fraser sent in her application, she got an email from Mitchell granting her legal custody of Joshua for free and had him shipped to her home.

“Based on your answers, we decided that you are best equipped to handle Joshua’s particular personality and special needs. Should you choose to accept this responsibility, we will award you legal custody of Joshua,” Mitchell wrote.

Fraser said Mitchell brings joy through her work with its satirical and clever nature.

“It’s one of those unique things that brings a community together in a funny way,” Fraser said. “You see someone doing something so positive and heartfelt and quirky and unique that everyone connects to a little bit, and then everyone can kind of relate because they can enjoy it in different ways.”

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Mitchell moved to Austin from Athens, Georgia in 2001. One day, she decided that she wanted to do something for the Christmas lights on 37th Street, so she came up with the idea of creating a stuffed animal petting zoo and grabbed a few stuffies from a thrift store. After that, the SARF was born in 2009.

The SARF is an art project, Mitchell said. It’s multifaceted in that she does art galleries, repairs and the classic petting zoos on 37th Street, that have become more frequent and have spread to other locations like parks and coffee shops.

The petting zoos were originally going to be just like the name suggests, a satirical petting zoo of stuffed animals with fences and hay. However, Mitchell didn’t have a place for these stuffed friends after the show was over, and wondered if anyone would fill out the application if she put them up for adoption, similar to the way live animals are put up for adoption at shelters. It was a leap of faith and, in a way, an experiment.

“There was this weird, magical thing that seemed to happen where I would write these stories, and then people would take the time and write little stories on their applications,” Mitchell said.

She gave each toy a thorough cleaning — she first wrapped them in a plastic bag, left them in her hot car for about two weeks, washed them and then lastly, put them in the freezer for 48 hours so “nothing can survive.” She repaired any that needed mending and presented them in sometimes faux cages with their printed bios, needed accessories like a bowl or a teacup, and paper adoption applications.

“People came and they filled out all these applications,” Mitchell said. “And I was like, ‘that’s crazy. I didn’t expect that.’”
—————–
The beginning of Mitchell’s creative life started with a poem. She was 7 years old and reading on her front porch when she decided to write a poem about birds. She said at that moment she felt power and relief.

“I was just like, ‘this is the thing that I’ve been missing. This is the thing,’” Mitchell said. “I felt this sort of… power.”

She didn’t start sewing on stuffed animals until her first petting zoo in December 2008.

Growing up in a lower middle-class household with her dad being a mechanic and her mom a fifth grade teacher, she had always been mindful of others and curious as to how she could make art to serve everyone — not just people who look at art.

“I grew up feeling like an outsider,” Mitchell said. “But also I did have these skills of being an artist or being a good writer. But what I realized is that having those skills doesn’t matter when you don’t have the structure around you to put you on a path to be in that world.”

She said she wanted to break away from the conventional art culture and do something that would speak to a wider audience and be impactful.

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Now, the SARF is in limbo. Mitchell said she might lose her physical SARF headquarters, but plans on continuing the SARF out of her home. On top of her rent for the space, her lease may be in jeopardy because the building is up for sale.

As detailed on her website through a stuffed crustacean named Sabbatical, she is taking a break from new repair orders because the work and the amount of repair orders she received became overwhelming.

“She got burned out,” said her boyfriend Ross Tomlin. “Being so committed to her craft and perfection and customer satisfaction, she would often spend a lot more time on these projects than she felt comfortable billing.”

She said she doesn’t want the SARF to become a stuffed animal repair business because that’s not where her passion lies — her passion is in the art and how it can foster community. She wants to continue doing the petting zoos where she can do her shows and let people adopt stuffed animals for free, but she’s also working on something bigger — a web series.

The web series is in production with a possible release date in early 2026, and is being spearheaded by Tomlin. He is doing the editing, filming and scriptwriting, while Mitchell acts in the show and creates all the props.

The series will star Mitchell and a stuffed honey badger named Junior, who works as the Greeter at the SARF and will be one of the main protagonists of the show wreaking havoc at the SARF. Besides Mitchell, the whole series will have various stuffed animals acting in roles ranging from a fluffy sloth named Marly Lieu as the HR director, to a stuffed bunny as nurse Susan. It’s a funny, fictional series that will be all about Mitchell and her struggles with running a business where she just wants to make art and doesn’t want to charge people for it.

“I would describe it as a cross between the office and the Muppet Show,” Tomlin said. “So it’s basically a semi reality-based, mostly fictionalized version of Wendy trying to keep the store front business operations afloat.”

This project will not wrap up her time with the SARF — she said she loves the art and the community, and plans to come back from her sabbatical with more petting zoos. She has not decided fully on when she will come back, but the SARF is to be continued.

“Ultimately, what I would love to do with this is to get back to what I really like, which was the storytelling and adoptions and all that stuff,” Mitchell said. “I just want to get back to being an artist.”

Editor’s note: Journalism senior Lillian Vest has been with BurntXOrange since its rebirth in 2023. She served as the audience engagement and Trending beat editor until she stepped into the managing editor position this year. This feature is Lillian’s last story in her college career and her last story with BurntXOrange. We will miss her so much.