Beautifully Horrific Teeth

Best day ever! Except for maybe yesterday, which was the most productive day ever. Every now and then the stars align and I love my life… First:

Found these amazing canning jars, rubber gaskets intact and all!

There were boxes and boxes full of these; I just took what I could comfortably carry and the shapes that I was most interested in, but there were tons more! They all came from Harvard’s Recycling Center, which sort of makes me worry about what was in them before they abandoned all of them… lots of them reeked of alcohol so I’m leaning towards some sort of organic, probably dead, material. Either way, these definitely weren’t filled with jam so I intend to thoroughly sterilize them. Next…

A dentist hook up has been providing me with AMAZING live teeth samples

9 Freshly Pulled Perfectly in tact teeth, aside from a few giant cavities

He sterilizes them and then drops them into these alcohol filled jars so they don't dry out and become brittle

So let’s see, tons of gorgeous canning jars, recently emptied of organic materials, previously filled with alcohol AND 9 beautiful live teeth samples in the same day… coincidence? I think not. Clearly these things are meant to go together…

Oh!  And I just got 3 pounds of paraffin wax from Seaport Candle downstairs for cheap. They have a beautiful studio on the first floor of the building so I just ran down, chatted for a minute, and ran back up with brand new wax in hand! No expensive shipping, no overpriced art supply shops, no dragging heavy wax on public transportation.  Yesterday I visited the lumber yard, Robert N. Karpp, that’s not even a block away and dragged a 4′x8′ sheet of 1/2“ plywood to the apartment by myself—awesome! I could go on and on about all the other fabulous things that have been accomplished in the last two days, and how thrilled I am by my new apartment and its location, but I won’t bore you. I will just leave you with this, the view out our 4th floor window overlooking the industrial section of Southie at night…

I know you can't really tell, but there's a fabulous crane parking lot right behind the big white building

And sometimes an especially brightly lit cruise ship pulls up and lights up the whole area in blue light… cool…

Vestigial Organs: Teeth Stories and Sculptures

Postcard Design

Finally came up with a name for my show!  I submitted the design for my postcards and had to invent a title to put on the cards so there you have it.  I hate making up titles.  Half the time I end up just throwing something random together; sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.  This might be one of those not working times, but the title is slowly growing on me so we’ll see what I think by the time the show rolls around.

Making the postcards meant I had to finally set up my studio corner in the new apartment.  In addition to finishing a few teeth, I had to assemble some sort of photography booth.  I took a few pics of my corner and the crazy contraption I put together for the sake of taking a few nice photos…

My corner studio in the new apartment

And lastly, here was the second favorite postcard photo.  It’s a tiny version what’s to come in the next few weeks and at the show on November 1st.

Postcard Design Reject

Apartment Show

Part of my difficulty with consistently blogging lately has been due to several factors.  One, I moved across the city into a new neighborhood, building and apartment and even though we technically moved in August, we JUST NOW busted all the boxes and finally made the place look decent.  Two, I took on a new role at the Harvard Ceramics Program, which has required a lot more of my attention and energy than I was expecting and I find myself continuously playing catch up with the workload there.  Three, a hefty number of keys on my keyboard are broken and I have to copy and paste way too many letters, numbers and punctuation—as a result, I don’t really like typing much these days.  And four, most of the summer was spent in production mode, pumping out as many teeth as I could manage.  I figured writing about repeating the same process ever day would be about as interesting as watching water boil… so I didn’t…

Now I’m gradually working on pulling all the disparate pieces of my life together and hope it will culminate in a mini one woman show in my new apartment.  The new place is a large one room studio with plenty of space for a bedroom corner, living room corner and work corner in addition to the brand new IKEA built in kitchen and bathroom (with utility sink!).  I’ll be sure to post some photos soon, now that it finally looks like an apartment and not just a box jungle…  Anyways, I will be installing the teeth project in this new home, The Distillery, an all artist building of work studios and live/work spaces.  There are about 60 units in the 170 year old Rum Distillery, half of which are now work spaces for artists, writers and musicians, the other half are live/work apartments.  There are 3 galleries in the building, an urban garden in the parking lot, 2 enormous freight elevators, and a ton of arts resources if you befriend all the right people.  Every year the building hosts 2 open studio events, one of which will fall on Halloween weekend this fall.  This is when I plan on premiering the teeth piece and also hosting my own mini reception in conjunction with open studios.  So mark it on your calendar!  South Boston Open Studios, October 31 and November 1 from noon to 6pm PLUS a reception to celebrate the completion of the piece on Sunday, November 1st, immediately after open studios in my apartment from 6:00 to 8:00pm.  Be there or be square!  Also, if you are not already on my mailing list, or have moved, send me your new info!  I will be mailing postcards to announce the event within the next week and I don’t want to miss anyone!

Sooo Many Teeth!

This is apparently the result of going into production mode.  Shelves and carts and boxes and kilns full of teeth…

Kiln full of teeth...

Cart full of teeth...

Extra shelf in the studio, full of teeth...

Boxes full of teeth that have been dragged home on the T

And just for fun, a nice close up of some of my favorite broken teeth.  I haven’t transported these home yet since they are so fragile.  A surprisingly good photo, considering it was taken on my camera phone…

Broken Teeth

Cut Paper Wedding Cake

I haven’t written anything in over a month, which is terrible, but things have been crazy!  I know there’s no excuse so I’m going to distract you with something totally different and fun and pretty!  A wedding cake!  I did this cake for one of my bestest and oldest friends’ weddings back in May.  We’ve known each other since kindergarten and spent a large portion of our lives as next door neighbors… we’ve pretty much seen each other through everything you could possibly see someone through growing up in rural Virginia.  Tina actually came up to Providence from Virginia with her boyfriend, soon to be fiance, now husband, Dave, to see and photograph the Paper Jungle back in 2007, so she was already really familiar with my cut paper work.  When she asked me to do their cake, I couldn’t have been more thrilled and honored, so here goes!

They had already designed several graphic themes for the wedding

The main theme was these gorgeous love-birds

That made it super easy to apply their flower and bird images to paper cut-outs

Everything was cut in one day, right before the wedding, after consulting with the baker, MaryLou

From Left to Right: MaryLou-baker, Dave-groom, Tina-bride, Dave's Grandfather-cake topper maker, Me!

There you have it!  My new career as cake decorator extraordinaire has begun.  Contact me if you’re interested in your own custom cut paper cake for your next big event-it was a total blast and I couldn’t have done it without such a great crew to work with.  Although next time, it will be much easier if I’m not occupied as Bridesmaid AND cake decorator!  Love ya Tina and Dave—happy marriage!  And thank you for the beautiful photos, they were  all taken by Jeff Greenough.

(Next time, news about The Distillery, my new home!  And preparation for the upcoming South Boston Open Studios)