"Delicate Tooth" by Berlin Perez

Berlin Perez
"Delicate Tooth"

Location: Texas
Technique: relief print
Social Media: @octolin
Print Number: 348

The first layer of this print was created by gluing a piece of fabric onto a scrap piece of matte board, which resulted in a sort of collagraph/relief process. I treated the inking stage as a typical relief print and the brayer inked up the raised areas. The second stage of the print was the tooth itself. Why a tooth? I’m not quite sure other than: 1.)they’re fun to carve, 2.) I’ve had a fascination with teeth ever since elementary, 3.)I actually have a small tooth collection 4.)it’s kinda daunting having to brush teeth daily, so I guess using them in my work acts as a reminder to care for them when I get into depressive ruts. I wound up choosing to make it into a reductive print because I hadn’t done one before and I thought it would be fun to try. I carved out the overall tooth shape and printed the tinted yellow color first and then carved out the black outline layer for the last part of printing. Overall, I chose fabric to show delicacy and the yellow tooth color to show how something as hard as a tooth can show signs of struggle by stains.

Seen in the following exhibitions:
Kölner Graphikwerkstatt, Cologne, Germany in August 2022
Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany in October 2022
Kölner Graphikwerkstatt, Cologne, Germany in November 2022
The inPrint Collective, Toronto, Canada in April 2023March