Latest news with #Grillz
Perth Now
6 days ago
- Business
- Perth Now
Perth dentist reveals side hustle making custom grillz
An Inglewood-based dentist has built a unique side hustle in creating custom dental grillz, blending his professional background in clinical dentistry with his strong passion for hip-hop culture. Dr Maheer Shah, also known as Dr Grillz, said his early obsession with Grand Theft Auto set the stage for his unexpected career twist. A backstage encounter with some DJs wearing grillz inspired him to begin experimenting with making them himself. Your local paper, whenever you want it. 'They said you have to go to America to get them,' he said. 'I was like 'I'm a dentist' and then my friends were like 'you should get into grillz' and that was 10 years ago.' Dr Grillz said people had said they had no idea his service was in their 'backyard', with some travelling as far as South Korea to get the service. 'There was no one doing it here. I couldn't even find anyone to make them for me,' he said. Dr Grillz. Credit: Tom 'I started taking moulds of myself and just sending them to techs locally and overseas to see what they could do.' Dr Grillz said he had faced scepticism from some dental surgeries which did not see grillz as a part of dentistry. 'Some of the surgeries I worked at didn't really gel with it. They'd say 'this isn't dentistry',' he said. 'But to me, dentistry is about expression, feeling your best and a grill is a part of that. 'I still do 90 per cent general dentistry but smile makeovers are my thing.' Dr Grillz says grillz can make girls look more edgy. Credit: Ross Swanborough / The West Australian He emphasised the importance of health in his grillz, ensuring that they don't damage the teeth or gums. 'I'm still a dentist first and one of our big values with Dr Grillz is health,' he said. 'I really want to do this in a way that's good for your health, and not ruin your teeth or gum because that's like I'm failing at my main job.' Dr Grillz said a lot of people dreaded going to the dentist. 'You don't really get much positive reactions but with this kind of work you build really tight bonds, you become homies,' he said. 'When you get it done they feel like a million dollars. So that just that's so fulfilling compared to pulling out wisdom teeth; no one gets excited for that.' Dr Grillz said grillz were often misinterpreted but they had been around for longer than people think. Diamond implants are available. Credit: Ross Swanborough / The West Australian 'It's not just gangsters; grillz have existed for thousands of years. Mayans, royalty, Egyptians .. .people always wanted gold in their teeth,' he said. Dr Grillz said for the first eight years, almost all his work came through Instagram. 'People would DM me and I'd literally drive to their house and do a mold there because I didn't have a proper office,' Dr Grillz said. Dr Grillz plans to open up his own office which will merge clinical dentistry with the creative. Grillz have surged in popularity recently, especially among women, and he's now creating permanent diamond tooth implants — one of which he believes may be the first of its kind globally. His services range from $200 for a single temporary silver tooth all the way to $10,000 for diamond implants. 'Grillz are the ultimate accessory. The next evolution of self-expression after tattoos.' Dr Grillz said.
Black America Web
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Black America Web
Murjoni Merriweather's Clay Sculptures Shape Black Style Into Renaissance Era Art
JD Barnes MURJONI MERRIWEATHER Artist Murjoni Merriweather is gifted with a rare ability: the potter's touch. With just dirt and water in her hands, she is able to form life-like images of the Black men, women, and children we see in our homes and on our street corners every day. Based in Maryland, the sculptor works delicately with clay to transform the formless faces of her imagination into inspiring, material creations. As she basks in her studio filled with shelved-rows of ceramic Black heads, it's clear Merriweather isn't just creating art: she's fashioning a spiritual army. 'I really see my sculptures as guardians. I see them as protectors,' Merriweather told HelloBeautiful . 'I am making my safe space, literally, and I'm hoping that my sculptures also give a safe space to other people.' Merriweather said she picked up clay work in the eighth grade after dabbling in different art forms (like graphic design and photography) throughout her childhood. She said after taking her first clay class, she fell in love with the feeling of cool, mushy, wet, mud between her fingers. 'I love to get dirty in my work,' she said. 'I'm a tangible person. I like to touch textures. And I've always been that way since I was a kid.' By the time she got to high school, Merriweather said she began to peruse the exhibition halls of museums in search of inspiration, but all she saw staring back at her were white, alabaster stone faces. 'A lot of sculptures in museums didn't look like me. And I didn't really like that,' she said. 'So, I decided to make work that looked like my family.' Murjoni Merriweather: Shapeshifter At first, her commitment to turning Black life into sculptured art wasn't well received by her peers. Merriweather said as a student at a PWI, there weren't many people who looked like her in the first place; so she decided to create the tribe she wanted around her. That mission inspired her iconic Grillz series, which features Black contorted faces decked out in gold-toothed smiles and skinny cuban-link chains. At first, the art was negatively critiqued by her classmates (to this day, some spectators call her work scary ) so she decided to make even more of them. A self-described 'hard-headed' person (about as hard as her dried-clay pieces), Merriweather said the art of proving others wrong is just as thrilling as making the art itself. 'I kept making them, and I kept making them, and I started making them in different ways, and then people started to enjoy it,' she told HelloBeautiful. Merriweather's dedication paid off. Her work went on to be exhibited in Sweden (where she sold all three of her sculptures) and Grillz became the featured work on display at the Walters Museum in Baltimore. The choice to exhibit her work in the renaissance section of the museum was a bold and disruptive decision made by a white curator, she said. At the time, there was only one Black sculpture on display, and it was one of a Black slave. The curator asked if she could fill the room with Merriweather's grill sculptures instead as a visible challenge to visitors' narrow perceptions of renaissance art. 'I was like, love that. Let's do it,' Merriweather said, 'And I got so many photos from teachers [and] parents with their children next to this big grill sculpture. They're like, 'That looks like my uncle. That looks like my dad.' The familiarity is such a beautiful thing to witness,' she said. The community's passionate response to Merriweather's work underscores her mission: to advocate for Black visibility at all costs, especially in an era where educational systems and governments are literally trying to wipe Black lives from history. Even how the pieces are shown is by design: they are required to be displayed at eye-level or higher, so exhibit visitors are never afforded the opportunity to look down on the image of a Black person. Merriweather said she often gets told her work is 'unsettling,' which she says tells her more about the viewer than it does about the art. 'I make work about Blackness and Black culture. So then my next question leads me to, what is your perception of Black culture?' she said. Every piece of pottery Merriweather produces is an attempt to publicly normalize Blackness. She said recently, she's been intentional about directing her outward creative process inward for her own nourishment, too. One of her exhibits, Seed , which was on display fall of 2024 at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, was created as an ode to her own personal evolution. The piece features unnaturally elongated, stone heads that appear to grow like blooms from various soil mounds on the floor. ' Seed was about my own healing, my own growth, how to ground myself,' she said. Creating Seed allowed Merriweather to work through her own impatience, as she reflected on the slow, tiny seed to green sprout germination system of nature. In a time where urgency and microwave-paced progress rules as culture's king, Merriweather urges artists to resist the impulse to get rich or famous fast. Instead, she believes the art of becoming is a miracle itself. 'We have to learn to slow down and be patient, and know that things are coming in their time. And that's what I was literally just talking about in Seed ,' she said, 'Learning about patience and growing my own seed. I can't rush it.' More Women To Know: Modern Mavericks
