(static screeching) - [Narrator] If you want to know what's going on... (upbeat music) (water splashes) (upbeat music continues) (birds chirping) (audience applauding) (static screeching) (upbeat music continues) (static screeching) (bright instrumental music) - I am Kaylee Dougherty.

I'm an anaplastologist and ocularist.

(keyboard keys clacking) A lot of what I'm doing is basically hyperrealist sculptures, so I do everything on the face, eyes, ears, noses, orbital, hemifacials.

(bright instrumental music continues) Each piece is custom made for each patient.

It's hand sculpted and designed to fit them and their lifestyle, and hand colored and pigmented to their skin tone.

(bright instrumental music continues) (bright music) It's kind of the extreme commissioned piece (laughs).

A lot of medicine is a combination of art and science, and my field, it really is an intersection of the two.

(bright music continues) I wanted to be a sculptor when I was seven, so that's been all I've ever wanted to do.

(dramatic music) I went to school for sculpture at Boston University, and all of my focus was on portrait work and life size figures.

(dramatic music continues) Now I do the same.

It's just parts of the portrait instead of the entire thing at any given time.

(dramatic music continues) These prosthetics are typically thought of from a outward appearance, and while that is important, all of these body parts have function that people really need beyond just looking natural.

(dramatic music continues) The nose and ears all help in holding up glasses and masks.

The ears are really important for directing sound.

- [Narrator] Ring-like ripples spread in all directions over the surface.

- The eye, when it's removed, that volume is lost, so I'm restoring that shape to make sure that the eye is comfortable, that it has to go into the ducts for the nasal passages.

- [Narrator] Into the nose after flushing and cleaning the entire eye surface.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) - Today I'm seeing a patient, his name is Wilson, and he's here for two different prosthesis, a nasal prosthesis as well as an eye.

(bright music) His story, as it's been relayed to me, is that he worked as a camp counselor in Honduras, and when he was bringing the children to a festival, there was a group that detonated explosives as a form of protest, and he was injured in the process of trying to protect the children.

(bright music continues) So right now I'm mixing some silicones to press into his nasal mold.

So I've mixed the two parts with a Thixo agent to get the right consistency, and then I'll be mixing in the colors to have it match his skin tone.

(bright music continues) So the veins are the only piece that are not just pigments.

I wanna make sure that this anatomy is restored in a way that he feels good about how he looks and how this works in his life.

(bright music continues) He came previously for a fitting appointment and today he's coming back with his mother.

(bright music continues) (silicone squelches) (bright music continues) (filer buzzes) I look at my process as the design process, so when I'm creating these products they are for my patients.

Let's see what Dr. B says.

They need to be something that they can wear, that they can live with, that can meld right into their day-to-day life.

(bright instrumental music) I design prosthetics really to give that control back to my patients.

If you wanna tell your story, you absolutely can and should if you choose to.

- Si.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, so for now...

But just by virtue of existing, and missing an eye or missing a nose, that does not mean that now you need to become this poster person for that existence.

(bright instrumental music continues) I love making individual connections.

So it starts to disappear, whereas that side, you really see...

If I get to sculpt and do something that I love to do and it's helping someone else, then that's wonderful.

(bright instrumental music continues) I prefer that the work that I do is (laughs) not what's front and center.

I want it to just support them to then live their lives the way that they choose to.

(upbeat music) (water splashes) (birds chirping) (audience applauds) (static buzzing) - [Narrator] Watch more "Art Inc," a Rhode Island PBS original series, now streaming at ripbs.org/artinc.