Raymond Elia Peters Ocular Prosthetic Maker Voices
Friday July 02, 2010
"I once created an international scandal. An undersecretary from the Turkish embassy came to me and asked for an eye with the Turkish Flag painted in the iris. Three months later I get a call from the State Department saying that the Turkish President had seen the eye at a state dinner and was so insulted that he declared the man persona non grata!
It makes you feel wonderful when a patient walks out with a smile on his face. Maybe you'll work with a 16-year-old girl who's been in an auto accident who thinks that, because she lost an eye, her life is over. It's my job to make a prosthesis, put it in her head, sit her in front of a mirror and say, "Look, you're normal."
Usually we make an eye in three sittings. First, we make a mold of the patient's eye socket, and then I hand paint the eye with the patient sitting in front of me. I use ordinary artist's oil paint that's been impregnated with liquid plastic; the veins you see are actually individual strands of silk thread. After we apply the paint to the prosthesis, it's cured with heat and becomes a thermal plastic.
This is my 50th year in this business. I've worked on thousands of people. There's no school in the world where you can learn to do this. It's experience and exposure.
When someone loses an eye, surgeons place an implant into the socket and attach eye muscles to it. The prosthesis I make is actually a partial sphere that rests on top of the surgical implant. As the implant moves, so does the prosthesis.
The secret of this business is to do your work so well that nobody notices it. Most artists want their work on display. But when I do this work, I don't want people even to look twice.
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It makes you feel wonderful when a patient walks out with a smile on his face. Maybe you'll work with a 16-year-old girl who's been in an auto accident who thinks that, because she lost an eye, her life is over. It's my job to make a prosthesis, put it in her head, sit her in front of a mirror and say, "Look, you're normal."
Usually we make an eye in three sittings. First, we make a mold of the patient's eye socket, and then I hand paint the eye with the patient sitting in front of me. I use ordinary artist's oil paint that's been impregnated with liquid plastic; the veins you see are actually individual strands of silk thread. After we apply the paint to the prosthesis, it's cured with heat and becomes a thermal plastic.
This is my 50th year in this business. I've worked on thousands of people. There's no school in the world where you can learn to do this. It's experience and exposure.
When someone loses an eye, surgeons place an implant into the socket and attach eye muscles to it. The prosthesis I make is actually a partial sphere that rests on top of the surgical implant. As the implant moves, so does the prosthesis.
The secret of this business is to do your work so well that nobody notices it. Most artists want their work on display. But when I do this work, I don't want people even to look twice.