Dr. William Olin

I have done a lot of crazy things in a lifetime lived as a “working artist”. Pair that status with a lifetime spent with Craig (easily the most outrageously creative person I have ever known), who seems to have an inexhaustible supply of great ideas, often, (but certainly not always!) executed by all the talented, hard working people with whom he surrounds himself, and you come up with how I spent my winter. And, how I spent my winter accounts for the deafening silence from my blog.

Hard at work, with Giant - my constant companion - on my lap

I’ll try to make this quick! Since January, my activity has been singularly focused on completing a commission for the orthodontic office of Dr. William Olin, the man responsible for the beautifully straight teeth of two of Craig’s and my three children. (Praise be to God that Maggie came WITH straight teeth!)

The clamped up frame, drying; the frame, assembled; polishing the frame up with steel wool

As it happens, Craig had conceived the idea that, in addition to the art that Dr. Olin had installed in his remodeled office, he needed a mirror in which his patients might check their teeth while coming and going from their regular orthodontic appointments- and not just any mirror. Craig made an elegantly crafted walnut frame for a large, beveled-glass mirror. Surrounding the mirror he created twenty small, framed openings. In these openings are now twenty paintings that whimsically portray how tension exerted in a variety of ingenious ways on a variety of subjects’ teeth, in a Rube Goldbergian fashion, will straighten said teeth.

Hard at work on one of the 20 panels

I never thought I would ever do anything like this, and now, well, I’ve done it! This weekend we’ll be installing the paintings in the frame, and then, away it goes! So, if you’re at all curious about the enforced silence from my blog, perhaps you’d like to stop by and see a mirror worthy (I hope!) of the unexcelled talents of Dr. William Olin.