Footprints in the Fang Dust

Crafting custom fangs creates a lot of soft, white, powdery dust from grinding down the amorphous acrylic resin form into its inevitable pointy shape. Some days the work load is light, so the amount of dust created from making fangs isn't too much. But then there are days like the one depicted in the image above where you craft for hours upon hours, and the dust piles up. On those days, there is no getting out of it. It lays like a blanket of snow across the room.

It covers everything, and you get tired of constantly sweeping it up as the hours rage on. So after awhile it just sort of accumalates and you can not help but walk through it. When I cut fangs I am mostly barefoot, dressed in light, loose-fitting clothes, and doing my best to keep the dust from falling into my iced tea.

On this day, unlike so many others, my barefeet made a lasting impression in the fang dust and I found it just as beautiful and poetic as the fangs I was cutting that day. I was drawn by the vacant impressions my feet had made, and the fact that unlike the fangs I was cutting for our clients the process of how they were made would be lost, forgotten; that the movements of life that brought about the creation of these tiny, little artifacts of dental-goodness were impermanent - just like life itself.