Home Sick, 2011
Sterling silver, bronze, porcelain, cast iron, sheet lead
48 dental castings each approx. 1 ¼ ” x 2 ½” x 2″
Iron chair 32.5″x16.5″x17.5″; iron bags @ approx. 11″x5″x3″; lead plaques 3″x5″
Home Sick, a retrospective installation, presented a complete collection of forty-eight pair of metal dental casts, each resting on an individual porcelain niche-shelf. The casts chronicle the falling out and growing in of a pair of siblings’ teeth over a seven-year period. The sister’s collection of teeth, cast in silver, is called Tooth for a Tooth; the brother’s, cast in bronze, is called Cheek by Jowl. The teeth are souvenir relics serving as a memoir and memorial of childhood from a mother’s perspective. The maternal self-portrait, I Would Look Back, a cast iron chair standing askew with one leg lifted on two cast iron lunch bags, accompanied the collection of teeth. The installation closed with eighty-eight sheet lead plaques in two piles, one for each sibling, preserving an opaque record of their days spent home sick in the course of a year when they were very young.