"... Eggs as a seasonal metaphor » Baity is well aware of the symbolic meaning eggs hold year-around, but particularly during the Easter season. The breakfast staple represents creation, incubation, the promise of life to come and hidden potential. What most people are unaware of, he said, is the egg's structural outward tension.
"When you take something as fragile as an eggshell and create something like this, everyone looks at it and wonders how it holds together," Baity said. "The question you hear most often is, 'How do you do that?' "
Not breaking eggs » The answer is, of course, very carefully. Baity sketches pencil patterns on the majority of his eggs, purchased from bird breeders and art supply outlets, before carving. Some of his designs, hinting at geometry or ribbonlike patterns cut out of the shell to wrap empty spaces around the body, are traced with the preservation of the egg's symmetry in mind. Others, which etch elaborate baroque patterns into the shell's body, allow Baity to discover just how much of his talent one egg can hold.
Emu eggs come in different colors; the outside of the egg is brown and the inside of the egg runs blue to slate gray to white. Brian Baity can carve an
Emu eggs come in different colors; the outside of the egg is brown and the inside of the egg runs blue to slate gray to white. Brian Baity can carve an image into just about anything, from wood to gourds to a parakeet egg, but eggs are his specialty and have won him awards. Baity uses a dentist drill to carve and grind out his images on a variety of eggs including Ostrich, Emu, Rhea, Goose, Chicken and Parakeet. West Valley 3/26/10 (Leah Hogsten / The Salt Lake Tribune)
Not all eggs are white. Emu and rhea eggs allow Baity to experiment with color hues, etching below the surface just enough to create varying shades.
Precision and a light touch » Entirely self-taught in this esoteric art tradition, Baity said it's a natural outgrowth of his personal obsession with precision under pressure. After serving eight years in the United States Air Force, he attended art classes at Georgia's Valdosta State College, after which he moved to Utah for a job as a metrologist designing and calibrating precision mechanical instruments..."
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