Left this post in my drafts for over two years, but I think it’s time to talk about it:
Part one of Working With Hair as an art medium
Probably get called crazy for this one, but in my long term art goals I'm still trying to do stuff with materials that would be otherwise discarded; such as the End of the Yarn rugs (and their sister thread coasters), the fabric rope projects, the upcycled poppy petal brooches, and of course all my wrapper art.
I've added an obscure one to the list. I've started spinning my own moulted hair. There's a whole Victorian fashion that boomed AND died about using locks of hair in art and some of the pictures if one looks it up are not only gorgeous and highly technically skilled but incredibly personal.
Whilst I won't be creating anything as functionally beautiful as the Victorians, I suppose my current hair colour has informed my choice to feel like I'm "spinning straw into gold". Human hair proteins are durable and do not decay rapidly like some other fibres which means whatever art I make with this will be environmentally friendly and enduring.
My hair is quite long and very thick so I find I shed a fair amount and after one or two brushings I have enough to spin another section on my drop spindle (roughly the length of my hair). There's always bits that have not caught and are poking out at odd angles, but I've decided that eventually I will wind my spinning on and prune those bits, possibly attempting to spin them into a new section.
I am solely using hair and I'm aware it will be the scratchiest thing in the universe but I am also intrigued if I can generate enough to use as weft for a rug maybe, or a doormat, with either a yellow or a white chunky as the warp.
This will be another project spanning years most likely, and I definitely expect my hair colour to change a lot over the duration, so watch this space.
