About Paul D. Raskin, DDS
I liked to sit at the piano and write music, thumping music, like Igor Stravinsky wrote, music sufficiently wild to create a riot in the concert hall after the first performance, as happened when his 'Rite of Spring.' was first played. Angered by new harmonies and 'suggestive' rhythms they had heard, men and women fought each other with their furled umbrellas on the floor of the hall after the performance. Unfortunately, I never achieved the unorthodoxy necessary to anger anybody at the Conservatory where I declared Music as my major. No one fought over performances of my student efforts. 'I had better get a day job,' my generous father, who was paying the tuition, told me. On his sage advice, I had taken the pre-medical curriculum along with my music courses and graduated in 1959 with degrees, Bachelor of Music, in Theory and Composition and Bachelor of Arts in Biological Science from College of the Pacific (now UOP.) I told my bride of about one year, the best violinist at the COP, who often performed the pieces I composed, that I had taken my father's suggestion, and was going to become, not a musician, any more, and not a medical doctor, as he was; but a dentist, a profession I thought would satisfy my other leaning, the visual arts, drawing, painting, sculpting. Dentistry seemed a solid but creative vocation where these skills could be encouraged in the line of duty, so to speak. 'You're going to become a what?' she asked, gaping at the suddenness of my change of course. We packed everything in a small, foreign car and drove across the continent to Detroit where I received instruction from an internationally respected teacher of denture fitting and fabrication, Dr. Gino Passamonti, at The University of Detroit. He encouraged me to diverge from the usual, and to “make my own teeth,” the very beginning of Neubite Dentures, my original contribution to the art and practice of prosthetic dentistry, more than fifty-five years ago. I am happy to say I have found the same artistic satisfaction in making sculptures of teeth and gums for people to wear (dentures and partials) as I do from all other forms of visual art. The same principles apply. It's all the same art. Over many years, I have filled the walls and available floor-space of both our home and our dental office with oil and enamel paintings, drawing and sculptures that you are welcome to wander around and enjoy when you are here for my special interest, making the most artistically beautiful set of replacement teeth for you, of which I am capable. My wife and I, with our three adult children and three grandchildren, celebrate our 60th wedding anniversary on March 21, 2019.
