Theatrical Photos

I don’t feel like writing for once, but here are the photos as promised:

View when you walk in

The most important view, not reproducible in photos

Makes great shadows... kind of like xrays...

One of my favorite teeth

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Soon I will do my usual budget info and “Things Learned“ entry…

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

Waxed Teeth

Now time for some waxed teeth!

I've been experimenting with watercoloring the teeth, then dipping them in a crockpot full of "clear" beeswax

I say "clear" because it's really not clear, it's a bit cloudy so the more times you dip the piece, the more subtle the color becomes

There's also a really interesting difference between watercoloring on bisqueware (fired to cone 06 and therefore VERY porous)

And watercoloring on high fire porcelain (fired to cone 10 and therefore not porous at all)

And also if you dip the piece in the wax when the watercolor is still wet, vs. dipping it after the color is completely dry

So these are the first of what will hopefully be many waxed teeth

There’s a couple more that aren’t represented here, mostly because they were without watercolor–just bare porcelain dipped in wax.  Most likely when it comes time to do the actual installation of the “dreamcatcher”, I will only use bare porcelain + wax and skip the watercolor step.  I do like the effect of the watercolor, but I think when there is 100+ of them, it will just be overwhelming and confusing if they are all watercolored.  I’d rather keep it clean and simple.  So for now, the watercolor will only happen on a select few and maybe on future sculptural teeth that are separate from the “dreamcatcher” installation.  Just for the purposes of experimenting, I recently fired a couple teeth to cone 6, something inbetween 06 and 10 to see how that temperature takes the watercolor.  I’ll probably post those in the next week or so for comparison…  Plus they will be out of an oxidation kiln instead of reduction so that will also cause some variation in the overall tone of the porcelain.  Stay tuned for more fun with porcelain, slip-casting, teeth and wax!