crown and bridge

i've finally finished my first year as a dental technology student. it was with a huge sigh of relief when i finished my last exam and handed in my last assignment. i learned how to make a lot of things this year - mouthguards, retainers, dentures, partial dentures, space maintainers, crowns and copings. and while my crown and bridge class was definitely the most stressful, i think that i like making crowns the most.

out of all the things i learned to do this past year, making crowns is definitely the most artistic and similar to jewellery. which is probably why i like it the most. when you're done waxing up a crown there is a sense of accomplishment and pride that doesn't come as much as setting up the teeth in dentures, or just carving down pre-made teeth. in crown and bridge you are making the forms and you're so proud when you're done. 

when making crowns, every line angle, every elevation, every area that hits another tooth is important. while we consider symmetry, we also have to consider how the jaws move, how much pressure is exerted and the teeth that remain in the mouth.

boo...blurry photo. oh well. like in jewellery, we make the forms in wax first and then cast them in metal. porosity is a huge deal in crown and bridge, too much of it and the form is unuseable. if the margins on the bottom of the tooth form don't cast properly it won't fit in the space it's supposed to on the mouth.

i've never had to be so precise in my life, but i'm liking it. 

extending a chain part two

this post is a continuation from a few posts back. after i got the mold and wax injections for Wayne's bracelets made, i sent the wax pieces to the casting house. this is what they looked like once i got them back. 

and then after i cleaned them up. 

cutting through the sterling silver was waaay easier than cutting through the stainless steel of the originals. they were also much easier to open - i didn't have to hurt myself trying to hammer the links apart just to slide them into each other.

i did manage to hurt myself though - it was stupid really. we're taught in school to never ever, ever, try to polish chain on a polishing machine, because it will always get caught. we polish our jewellery with rotating buffs in a machine similar to a grinding machine. i don't know how fast it moves, but it's faster than your eyes can follow. 

since Wayne's bracelet was made of such large links i didn't even consider it to be a chain really. so i was almost done polishing the first bracelet, and i decided to be silly and close the catch, and then polish that too. but the little button on the catch got caught in the machine and pulled the bracelet forward, whipping it around with the wheel and back into my fingers at lightning speed :( it makes me cringe just thinking about it.

 

the impact with the machine made an awful noise that alarmed my studio mate. i then turned off the machine to find that some of my fingers were  numb-ish, swollen, and slightly bloody. i also later developed some nasty looking blood bruises. while this was great in itself, i also had the pleasure of having every jeweller friend i told lecture me on polishing safety :p

anyways...

my fingers are looking much better now and Wayne was uber happy with his bracelets. can you tell which links are sterling silver?

a silver fertility charm

do you guys remember this piece? i carved out the wax in the summer so i could have a smaller, sterling silver version of my bronze/brass fertility charms. i eventually cast it, cleaned it, and patinated (stained the silver with a chemical) the back. i like the ball burred texture compared to the smooth back of my original, and it makes it more resistant to fingerprints which is always a plus.

i hate taking photos of high polished work. you can always see the camera. argh...

cuff links

we have these cement rings that are really popular for men at the gallery (here shown in its pink wax form). after being cast, the grooves are filled with cement and then polished as usual. Robin uses this same ring to create matching cuff links.

i've never made cuff links before. i don't normally design for men (though i have made quite a few chunky rings for commissions), and it's hard enough as it is to come up with a line for women. so this was a new experience. these are the cuff links on the brick right before being soldered.

these ones are still not fully cleaned up. but after i saw them i thought they didn't really need the cement. i guess Robin thought so too, because the next time i was in the store i saw them in the case in this form.

from the casting house

here's the ring fresh out of the casting house. the white film is the fine silver that rose to the surface during the casting process. and that blob on the side was once a pathway that allowed the molten metal to flow and create this piece from the wax model i created.

casting can be unpredictable at times. casting into sterling silver from wax can cause the piece to shrink from around 5-13%. when you're casting a ring, that can be a change from it fitting perfectly, to it being too tight to get over your knuckle. so i designed the ring to fit him perfectly, so that it would shrink and be slightly small. with clean up and polishing you remove material, which should've made the ring fit, but for some reason it seems that the ring expanded rather than contracted. it came out about a quarter size too large.

annoying...so i've resized it and cleaned it up. more pictures soon.

refining

here's the signet ring in process.

do you like my clamping device? i found that a stylus and duct tape worked quite nicely :p

there's just a bit more refining of the arrow tip, then it's off to the casting house.

wax sketches

here are some of my "sketches" on wax. a commission i'm working on is a signet ring for an archery enthusiast.

it involves tiny detailed work that i have to scratch in with an exacto knife, a scalpel and a dental tool under a magnifying glass.

after it's cast in sterling silver the plan is to fill the etchings with gold solder.

he's very excited :)

some wax carving

since i had so many fans of my fertility charm at the Outdoor Show i decided to carve out a new smaller, lighter, and easier to clean version in wax so i can have it cast in sterling silver in time for the Cabbagetown Arts and Crafts show in September.

when i'm making wax pieces to be cast, i normally work in a very malleable brown wax (this one is covered in purple wax shavings) first so i can get the size and shape right before i move on to carving and refining the final form in the hard wax (the purple wax in this example) with files. the aqua coloured wax is from OCAD's wax injector which creates the form in wax if you've already had a mold made of your original piece.

this new fertility charm is a third of the weight of the original one, about half the size, and has a different texture on the back side.

i've gotten much faster at carving wax now. i'm quite pleased with myself.

p.s. this is my 100th post! crazy.

a busy week

this week has been very tiring, but also very productive. 

i tried indoor rock climbing for the first time on sunday with some old friends. it was really fun and made my upper back really sore for a couple days afterward. my friends complained of having sore fingers, but mine were fine. at least being a jeweller gives you strong hands! here's one of them climbing to the top of the 60ft wall. i was surprised when i grabbed that top rock myself.

then on monday i was off to teach art with my friend Connie. this week the kids worked with pastels. Clinton Public School has a really good art program for kids - a program i wish i had when i was their age. the parents are extremely supportive of the arts and consistently organize fundraisers to keep the program active as well as art nights to keep the work appreciated. i was astonished to find that some of the kids are learning silk screening, paper making and ceramics - things that i learned at OCAD for $500 a class.

on monday's and wednesday's this summer i'm the class assistant to Gillian Batcher's casting class. it's really good to have her as part of our faculty. George Brown tends to teach jewellery a bit differently and more intensively than OCAD, so whenever we get an instructor who was educated there we tend to happily learn more tricks of the trade. i've already learned a couple of things i didn't know about casting just from assisting her for two classes.

on wednesday and thursday i went to yoga (i really needed that). and then i spent part of monday, wednesday and friday, as well as all of tuesday and thursday sawing, filing, and forming some of the jewellery i plan to have for the toronto outdoor art exhibition (exciting and tedious).

i also ran some errands, went chain shopping, and had a mini meeting with a friend i'm entering a european design competition with in august.

i am pooped.

but i still have to go to a family gathering and spend the rest of the weekend enameling.

someone get me a coffee :)

my ring is finally finished :)

to see the process look here and here.

small object design

my rhino class is over now, but that doesn't mean the work is done.

end of term is really crazy at OCAD, especially in the rapid prototyping centre. one of the MJM printers chose last week to implode (or something like that) and successfully messed up the lead times for everyone's assignments.

since my piece is so small and delicate it should have taken about two hours to 3D print in wax. i had to wait a week.

so i finally got my rapid prototyped ring back, and i was very pleased. the detail that can come out of those printers is amazing. andree wejsmann was one of our guest critics and she asked me if i would rather do this piece again in metal or through rhino and i wholeheartedly said in metal. (by that point, i felt like my eyes were going to fall out of my head from working on the computer so much) but when i got the piece back i realized that i could never do that in metal, the detail was so fine, that not even jewellers saws could cut lines that thin.

tomorrow my piece is being sent to the casting house, and i'm excited to see it in sterling silver :)

 

these are crappy photos, but it was so hard to photograph because the detail is too tiny, and the material is transparent-ish.

jesse jackson was our instructor (no, not the singer). he's an architect and liked to see our work documented in a similar manner to his critiques from grad school. so, i also had to do line drawings and renderings using illustrator and flamingo - programs i had very little or no experience in. (it is very hard to learn flamingo in a day by the way). so i basically learned 3 programs in 12 weeks, crazy.

here are my efforts.

(my computer skills are getting better...though i'm sure i'll never be a pro).

display

finally, a photo from the Cedar Ridge Gallery show. Here is my model Raylyn in front of my work and pictures of herself :p

you can't really tell from this photo, but we were really lucky to get such a great space. we got three gallery rooms for the 8 of us which is amazing when group shows in Toronto are normally half the size, with 3 times the amount of people exhibiting.

holiday sale

OCAD's Material Art and Design program is having their annual holiday sale on December 1st, 2nd and 3rd from 11-6 in the foyer of 100 McCaul. Ceramics, fibre and jewellery pieces from emerging artists, and a percentage of proceeds go towards the studios. So, it's all a good cause. I shall be selling my sterling silver branch necklaces and rings, as well as my new branch earrings.

this is how i work

...always with my hands.

Back to Basics

there's one more show that i hope to get into...for now.
it's Back to Basics at the SFA Art Galleries in Nacogdoches, Texas. They did an awesome catalogue the year before for their show Abundance with a preview seen here, so i know that they take their exhibits extremely seriously. i'm really excited about the possibility of having a group show there. The call is pretty open so I've applied with just because you feel it doesn't mean it's there, you try to take the best of me, as well as these:


there's nothing here but what's here is mine, cast and fabricated bronze, oxidized, 2009
photographers: Tarek Badr and Brendan George Ko


dilapidated dreams, fused copper, sterling silver, thread, 2007
photographer: Tarek Badr

eXtremities

on another note...I'm applying for the juried show eXtremities with these pieces. The show is about exploring the body's physical extremities as inspiration, as subject, and as site. It's taking place in Houston, Texas at the Jung Center in March 2010, just a stone's throw away.


well, you've had your choice, cast and fabricated bronze, oxidized, 2009
photographers: Brendan George Ko for the first one, and myself for the second.


a corsage for the conscience, brass, bronze, nylon tea bags, thread, 2008
photographer: Tarek Badr