Today we’d like to introduce you to Bil Watson.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
“Smile Design” isn’t exactly a medium people would generally associate with art, but I do feel the drive to make sure every veneer I create should be its own beautiful piece.
And even if what I do is artistic, I don’t know if I’d even call myself an artist. If I am, I certainly didn’t set out to be. I’m just someone with a passion for beautiful smiles, who happened to end up in a situation where my work can touch a lot of lives in a meaningful way.
“Smile Design” isn’t exactly a medium people would associate with art, but I do feel the drive to make sure every veneer I create should be its own beautiful piece.
I got into smile makeovers with a teeth whitening company almost 20 years ago, but I never had a mind to do what we’re doing today. In all honesty, I was sort of dragged into Smile Design, by clients who were just begging me for something – anything – they could use for a job interview, or a presentation, or wedding photos.
I didn’t know anything about creating veneers, but they just needed them so badly that I couldn’t turn them away. I knew I had to figure it out. That was more than ten years ago, and we’ve just been improving our designs ever since.
Please tell us about your art.
I create beautiful smiles.
The only difference between what I do, and what a cosmetic dentist would do, is that nothing I do requires medical knowledge. It’s all aesthetics; it’s all removable. But that doesn’t make it any less powerful.
What a dentist can do for your smile, for $20,000, I can do for about $1,000 – plus it’s reversible, so it’s not a life-long commitment you’re making.
I created this because I want people to know is that they have a choice. When a person wants a better smile, and they’re told their available options are 5, 10, or 20 thousand dollars – or nothing- well that’s not really a choice. Not for our clients. Not for most people.
Given everything that is going on in the world today, do you think the role of artists has changed? How do local, national or international events and issues affect your art?
The biggest change is that art can come from anywhere. With very few exceptions, there’s no such thing as ‘traditional’ art anymore.
In what I do, it’s really a marriage of creativity and technology. We couldn’t do what we do, at the level we do it, without such huge advancements on the digital side, and we see that across the industry as well as art.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
We’ve designed enough lab-direct smiles now, (tens of thousands across the US alone) that you may have already seen our work.
Our work has been featured (by our clients) on runways at fashion week, in magazines, on television, in films, and on pageant stages across the world. But when we do our job well, you’ll never know. That’s the curse of truly great smile design. It looks so natural; no one would assume it’s something that was created.
We also don’t want to give the impression that what we do is made just for supermodels. The vast majority of our clients are everyday people. While you might see our work on-set at a photo shoot, you’re more likely to see it worn by a cashier at the grocery store, your server at a restaurant, or a parent at a PTA meeting. This is a high-end smile created for anyone.
While we’re always working to impress our existing clients, in recent years, we’ve realized that many people have no means to correct their smile. The kind of need that says, “It’s not that my bank account is empty; it’s that I don’t have a bank account.” People getting out of prison, overcoming drug addiction, escaping long-term abuse/neglect. That’s why we created New Life Smile. A non-profit organization that specialized in changing lives, by changing smiles (at little to no cost to the recipient). And that’s where a lot of our passion has come from in recent years. Making sure a bad smile isn’t holding someone back from the life they need to build. It’s something I care about very deeply, and we’re always looking for funding to move that mission forward.
Contact Info:
- Address: 100 Main St, Fort Worth, TX 76102
- Website: brighterimagelab.com
- Phone: 888-257-2455
- Email: clientservices@brighterimagelab.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brighterimagelab/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brighterimagelab/
Image Credit:
All photos are property of Brighter Image Lab
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