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!

Production Mode

Last week was my first full week of production mode–woohoo!  Production mode is always my favorite part of any project–you get to just do it, machine style, without thinking anymore, whatever “it” may be.  The thought process part is over (or at least stalled for a while–I’ll probably have to think again when it comes time to actually install) and I get to just make stuff!  Freely!  I have to say it feels pretty awesome to just blast through casting, although I’m also going through the slip really fast!  I ordered a new 5 gallon bucket the previous week and it’s already 3/4 empty!  Thankfully that was the last bucket I’ll need to purchase–from now on I’ll either make slip out of the studio porcelain clay body by adding defloculant or make my own casting slip from scratch.  It’s great to have 2 buckets though, because I can cast that much faster.  I’ve managed to figure out a really nice rhythm of casting 4 molds at a time (I only have 4 mold straps and 8 molds) and then switching to cleaning up the last set of 4 while the new set dries in the mold.  It’s going great so far!  See for yourself!

beautiful porcelain casting slip

molds all lined up, waiting for slip

Yay production mode! This sort of represents 1 8hr. day of work

fresh casts in the newest molds, including the six parter!

these guys were fresh out of a bisque kiln, ready for the reduction kiln

the previous days' casts, mostly dry and ready for the bisque kiln

the hotbox is one of the best tools ever! helps dry out the molds during and after casts, as well as the casts themselves--totally speeds up the process, especially given the summer humidity

opening the bisque kiln and finding teeth mixed in with the pots

No More Mold-Making!

As usual, it has been quite a while since I’ve managed to write anything.  Not sure there’s an excuse–I guess there just hasn’t been anything particularly exciting or note-worthy in the work of late.  But not today!  Today I am celebrating the completion of all the molds!  I guess you could call this the end of Phase II?  All I know is I’ve spent way too mch time (maybe the last 2 months?) making mold after mold after mold and I am happy as hell to be done with it!  I’ll celebrate by cooking some delicious spice rubbed chicken with a parsley-mint sauce and drinking mojitos until I’ve forgotten the pain of mold-making.

Opening up a freshly made mold--the last one!!!

The 2nd to last mold--SIX parts!!

I’m probably making this out to sound worse than it really is.  The truth is I’ve spent 2 months making 8 molds of giant teeth; one for each type of tooth in your mouth (the average person has 32 total including wisdom teeth).  This may not sound particularly daunting, but some of these molds were 5 or 6 parts each!  Plus there’s all the time spent making the original tooth that the mold is made off of… so yeah… its been a long process.  But it’s over now!  I poured my last set of plaster last night and spent today cleaning up and trimming everything before doing a massive clean of the plaster room that I had completely taken over all summer.  I also acquired a cart, which will act as my mini mobile studio for the rest of the summer as I dive into a total casting frenzy.

My new mini mobile studio--3-tiered electronics cart--Thanks Jill!

So if this is the end of Phase II, what are/were the rest of the phases?  I guess Phase I would be the experimentation stage where I make mini teeth and try to figure out how everything is going to work before dedicating too much time to large scale work…  Phase II is the creation of all the molds and their preceding models, Phase III the casting phase (my favorite phase), where Iget to just go into production mode and make cast after cast as if apocalypse is now, and Phase IV would be where everything finally comes together and hopefully works!  I’m not planning on enrolling at the studio in the fall (I can’t afford it anymore!), so I’m hoping to complete as much, if not all of the casting phase throughout the month of August.  Assuming that works and I can get enough casts made and fired by the beginning of September, I’ll use the first week or two of September to pull everything together, install (still not really sure where yet!) and hopefully be ready to show the complete work to people by mid to late September!  That’s the tentative schedule for now, so we’ll see how that goes…  If all goes as planned, keep your eyes peeled for an invite to the show opening in early September and if you’re not on my mailing list, get on it!  E-mail me or send me a note with your address if you’d like to be added.

But right now, it’s time to concentrate on those mojitos…