I was at a hen do last year when I discovered I had a hidden skill. We were making breasts out of clay as an exercise, a celebration that all boobs are great. Everyone said my sculpture was really good and that I should make some more, so I took the excess clay home and played around a little. I made some boob-shaped Christmas tree ornaments and tried to make a sculpture of my own breasts, but I didn’t have the time or funds to do much more. I had an active social life and a busy job, and sculpting requires a level of focus I just couldn’t give.
But when lockdown kicked in I suddenly didn’t have anything else to do. My job as a tour guide (unsurprisingly) slowed down, and the money I’d usually spend socialising started adding up. Soon I had £200 to spend on art supplies. The pandemic gave me the headspace I needed to work on my sculptures, celebrating all boobs and bodies for how beautiful they really are.
A few of my friends asked me to make sculptures for them, and I used photos of all the boobs I’d made so far to start up an Instagram: @_thetits. It wasn’t just filled with supermodel bodies, I make sure my feed is as diverse as possible: big tits, small tits, saggy tits, post-surgery tits, tattooed tits. And people have really responded to it.
The sculpting process is pandemic-friendly; it doesn’t require any live modelling. If someone wants their boobs done, they just send me a photo. I bring the picture up on my iPad, mix the clay so it’s the right colour and start sculpting.
At first, I was just using my hands and some pins to shape them, but as I started making a little money I tried out other options. Plastic carving tools weren’t great, but the wax tools I use now really improved the quality of the sculptures.
I make three sizes of sculptures: small (just boobs); medium (boobs and torso); and large (boobs to upper leg). They’re not life-size, like Michelangelo’s David, you can hold them in one hand. Once they’re done, I bake them, varnish them, and mount them in a frame – and then, of course, delete my customer’s nude.
Bigger boobs are easier to do, smaller boobs are more intricate, but the time each one takes changes with each body. I once made seven sculptures in one day, just sitting at my kitchen table. That was a lot of boobs. I can comfortably make three or four, but it depends on how many orders I have.
I started getting orders pretty much as soon as I made my Instagram page. Artists got in touch to say how much they loved them, and I was invited to participate in a lockdown exhibition. That really helped my follower count go up – and people actually wanted to buy my sculptures. I built up a network of other artists who do similar body-positive work; we’ve never met but we chat, support each other and share each other’s work. So my page kept growing, and the orders kept coming in. This was all right in the midst of lockdown, so I had nothing else to do. I didn’t have a social life, so I was just making boobs all the time. In one month, I made £2,000.
With the extra cash, I started upgrading everything. My clay went from any-old-polymer to Fimo Professional. I started importing more reliable varnish from the Netherlands. And I started making my own frames. One of my friends who did an art degree showed me how to make a silicone mould over video chat. Now I make ornate, plaster frames to mount the boobs in.
So far, I’ve made about £8,000 in gross profit. I’m not even a trained artist, I did a history degree and then a PhD. In fact, I was a post-grad student for so long on just a £14,000 scholarship that I racked up a lot of debt. When I moved to London I had a low-paid job at the Imperial War Museum, so I was in about £5,000 of debt before lockdown. But now, thanks to hundreds of boobs, I’ve paid it all off.
When lockdown eased in the autumn, work got busier again and suddenly I didn’t have as much time or headspace to devote to sculpting. I wanted to see people – their whole bodies – so business slowed down a little. This second lockdown is a double-edged sword. The negatives are obvious, but it means I can finally finish developing my Christmas products: I’ve been trying to cast some angelic boobs with wings for ages, but they keep going wrong.
In the future, sculpting boobs could be something I do full time, but I’m not ready to give up my day job just yet. No matter what happens, there will definitely be boobs – of many shapes and sizes – hanging on my tree this year.
As told to Sophia Epstein
This article is part of a new WIRED series exploring how people’s lives have been changed by lockdown. Last time, we heard from Andrew who used extra time in lockdown to build a mighty salmon empire.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
