Abstract sculptor Jonathan Prince ’80DM draws inspiration from an unlikely muse: his short-lived career as an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. “Being a dentist is very much like being an artist,” says Prince, who like his father, Ivin B. Prince ’48DM, graduated from Columbia’s College of Dental Medicine. “You get to sculpt all the time. Throughout my body of work, there are hints of my love of science and the human form.”
Prince quit dentistry in 1986 and now runs his sculpture practice out of a ten-thousand-square-foot converted dairy farm in the Berkshires. His works include Liquid State, a series of stainless-steel installations reminiscent of teeth, and Flow State, which contrasts smooth and jagged surfaces. A steel sculpture from Flow State titled Fissure recently appeared at the Jewish Museum of Venice as part of The Contours of Otherness, an exhibition exploring migration and identity timed to coincide with the Venice Biennale. “The piece represents a fissure in the earth or a separation between the sides of oneself,” says Prince. “The idea is that beauty is in the imperfections and breaks, not the perfect surfaces.”
This article appears in the Winter 2024-25 print edition of Columbia Magazine with the title "Dental Arts."
