“I have a Victorian hair keeper that a very good friend gave me as a gift. It’s a little drum-shaped box, maybe five inches in diameter, and there’s a tiny hole in the top. After you comb your hair, you take your hair off the comb and stick it inside,” says the artist Melanie Bilenker. “Then when I’m ready to work, I go through and sort it.”
“Work,” in this case, means the painstaking labor of arranging individual strands into artful compositions, just like our great, great grandmothers used to do, but Bilenker’s are not your granny’s hairworks. She arranges her hair one by one, gluing each strand onto delicate Japanese tissue paper before the compositions are framed in lockets or miniatures. Her graphic art pieces are contemporary in aesthetic, the strands resembling pencil markings. Bilenker’s striking creations will be on display in a solo exhibition entitled HomeWork, opening this Saturday at the Sienna Patti Contemporary Gallery in Lennox, Massachusetts.
Though uncommon today, hairwork has a lengthy history. While the practice predates the Victorian era by centuries, it hit a fever pitch during Queen Victoria’s England, where mourning required a dedicated wardrobe, including, often, mementos of the deceased constructed from their hair. After the passing of her beloved Prince Albert, the queen famously entered into a state of mourning that lasted the rest of her life, dressing in jet-black and looping around her neck jewelry that contained the late prince’s hair.
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January 10, 2021 at 09:13PM
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Meet Melanie Bilenker, the Artist Who Crafts Victoriana Miniatures Out of Her Own Hair - Vogue
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