Make and Bake

Wrote this entry about ceramics and baking for my job at Harvard last night. Check it out!  Harvard Arts Beat:

Harvard Arts blog entry about baking and ceramics... Read it!

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Open Studios Success!

I had over 300 visitors over the course of the weekend!  The building received over 700, but I imagine most people got lost and didn’t hit every studio or were scared by the room full of teeth and didn’t bother trying to come in.  Here’s what they missed:

My studio door: Old Arsenal work outside, New teeth work inside

Wall of real and fake teeth specimens

Book of printed Teeth Stories

Wall of Teeth Stories

Overall view of the whole setup

And just for fun…

Larry, Curly and Moe enjoying the view

I also took a ton of photos of the big piece by itself in super dramatic lighting.  I will post those next…

Teeth Recognition

Can you recognize teeth?  Do you recognize your own?

This is the first series of photos taken for the Teeth Stories portion of the show.  More on this later…

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

Teeth Stories

I was going to write about casting next (as that’s the most logical step after a mold-making entry), but then it occured to me that I never documented my glaze tests, which are pretty significant, or that maybe I should do a step-by-step entry on mold-making to really show what’s involved/how to do it, and now I’ve launched TeethStories so I feel the need to write about that… sigh… so much to do, so little time.  Teeth Stories it is…

X-rays of my teeth, snagged from my last visit with the dentist. They told me I need a porcelain crown...

Working on this project in a communal studio means I get a lot of people asking questions.  Are you the one making all those teeth?  Is that a tooth!?  Why teeth?  What’s the association?  I always explain in as minimal a way as I can manage–mumbling something about dreams and teeth–and I almost always get a response that involves the telling of a teeth story.  Sometimes lengthy, sometimes brief, but for whatever reason, people can’t help but start relating their own teeth experiences.  Well, I guess that’s not entirely true.  There are those who hear the teeth/dreamcatcher thing and sort of cringe and want nothing to do with it.  But at this point, I take that as a sign of being reminded of a tooth story they’d rather not think about.  In any event, I’ve been sort of astounded by the number of teeth stories that are being relayed to me.  Sometimes it’s a very personal story, sometimes it’s their friends’ story, or a “I know someone who…” kind of story.  Either way, they’ve been incredibly fascinating.  I’m finding that teeth have a very humanizing quality about them.  Everyone has them and everyone has had to grapple with them in some way.  The trauma of losing your teeth as a child seems to stick with people in a subconscious psychological way, and if that doesn’t do it, the trauma of going to the dentist does.  But not all the stories are of the traumatic type.  Some are actually quite beautiful; stories of joy, trust and pleasure are also very common.  Teeth seem to have a hold on everyone’s psyche in one way or another, and in speaking with some of the other “studio youngsters” (the younger members of the studio who are out of school, but not at the “practicing professional” level yet), it became apparent that these stories needed to be documented in some way.

Thus, Teeth Stories is born.  Teeth Stories is about people relating to one another through this commonality we all share, teeth.  By submitting a tooth story, people have the opportunity to participate in a bit of modern day storytelling and sharing.  Because teeth seem to hold a very visceral place in everyones’ minds, I think teeth stories could be incredibly cathartic.  Both the act of creating a submission and reading those of others might be a small step in understanding some of the anxieties we seem to share about teeth.  I hope the response to the online version of Teeth Stories is as strong as the response I’ve received in the studio in person.  I’ve been harboring some dreams of publishing Teeth Stories as a physical book, but I might be getting a bit ahead of myself.  For now, I’m just hoping a lot of responses will pour in.  So if you have a tooth story, share it!  E-mail your story to teethstories@gmail.com and encourage friends, family or co-workers to send their stories in as well.  Maybe through teeth stories we can all understand each other a little better…!