How I Gave My Teeth to Art

A little backstory about myself is necessary for this post: teeth freak me out. In coming days you'll see me post about horror films, shows, and books, but but the one thing that I really can't abide, and that will get me to avoid watching something, is stuff happening to people's teeth. I have never seen Marathon Man, and I never will. I shudder at the thought.

So recently, as I've been trying to get over my fears, I decided that there was no better way to work through this issue than by embracing my teeth and giving them up to be used in a work of art.

Okay, so they're my baby teeth--I didn't go insane and have my adult molars ripped out of my head for a performance piece. I'm not Orlan. But it was still a big change from feeling the heebie-jeebies when I thought about the baggie full of baby teeth that my mother still had, to deciding to put them out the for the world to see.

It all started with my dear friend Christine Rebich. Christine and I have been friends for more than fifteen years, ever since we sat next to each other on the school bus in elementary school. We grew up amassing collections of paper dolls and stuffed animals together, and also exercising our creative talents side by side as we designed clothing for the aforementioned stuffed animals. Christine's outfits always held together a lot better than mine did. It was a sign of things to come.

Christine Rebich hard at work on one of her pieces. All images courtesy of the artist.

Christine eventually started working with her old ballet teacher making dance costumes, started studying textile design, and then switched to studying art with a concentration in fibers. This goes way beyond textiles; at any given time I might see her talking about quilting or knitting, or something that seems more at home in an industrial factory.

Nipple Nudie, Shift Binge Collection, 2012

Ball Chain Flapper Dress, Shift Binge Collection, 2012

Grommet Dress, Shift Binge Collection, 2012

Mirror Plexiglass dress, Shift Binge Collection, 2012

In fall of 2012, Christine began a new concentration of work focusing on the body. She had been telling me about a series of performance pieces she was doing on this subject... and then I started to see some interesting facebook posts asking for friends to give her their finger- and toenail clippings, and eventually, their teeth.

Nail clippings as used in Rebich's work

Sadly, I don't live in the same city as Christine currently, so I couldn't easily bag up my spare toenails to give to her. But she still lives close to my mom, and when she asked about teeth I knew that I could probably get her a bag full.

At first I was torn. I didn't really want my teeth--they squick me out, there's really no finer way to put it. My mom has kept them in a ziploc in her jewelry box for years (ironically the first one probably fell out around the same time that Christine and I became friends--I was a late bloomer and didn't get rid of any until the third grade). I still felt kind of weird parting with them; I have vivid memories of them falling out until I was in high school, and six of them were pulled and thus have big weird roots still attached. How could I give them away after all of that history?

But again, I didn't want them around, so perhaps that history would be better served by putting them out there. I called my mom and she made the drop.

My teeth, as used in Spare Parts, 2012

 In the end, Christine had teeth, nails, and even a glass eye in her work last fall, and my only regret in the whole process is that I didn't get to go see the show in person. I no longer have to worry about what's going to happen when my mom finally cleans out her jewelry box, and my teeth have a special home. Turned into art, they don't look so icky; really they remind me of popcorn. Appropriate considering Christine also used real food in one of her other pieces for her show:

Some of Rebich's work as shown at the Phosphenes show in 2012. The flag is filled with slices of bread and hot dogs.