collection box: hair

My partner, Sarah Sudhoff, and I just finished a collaborative work for the Dia de los Muertos fundraising event at Lawndale, in Houston. The exhibition opens October 20 and runs through November 8, 2008. The gala/ fundraising event is October 23 from 6-9pm. Sarah and I were excited, as this was our first collaborative project.

The project began like all of the other participating artists; receiving a sheet of tin from Lawndale and being asked to respond to the traditional tin devotional painting practice in Mexico known as the retablo. Sarah and I love to work with materials. I had the idea that we should use my knowledge as a metalsmith to transform the flat sheet of tin into a three dimensional form. It was Sarah's idea to have the form take on the role as a collection box of sorts. This collection box holds one month of Sarah's hair. In the past year, Sarah has become increasingly more self aware of her thinning hair and she chose this as the focus of mourning in our piece. In keeping with Sarah's love of medical spaces and equipment, I sanded the surface of the tin sheet to give it a more sterile/medical feel. And the slightly elaborate lever and cover fed my mechanical desires as well.

I'm hoping that this is just the beginning of a series of collaborative works with Sarah.