"Artist Mandey Lund presents new artwork all made out of hair in The Hair Show at the Bellevue Gallery inside the Farmer House Museum through the month of November. 

 

Thousands of strands of hair collected for over seventy years from all over the world have been used as drawing, painting, and sculpting mediums for incredible, abstract art pieces. Each piece emphasizes the natural beauty of hair while allowing the hair to seemingly embody and speak its own timeless, human language. 

 

The Hair Show is the first of its kind for artist Mandey Lund. Often using video or photographs to document her live performance based work, using only hair as a medium is a step in a new direction. Mandey's work often deals with raw human emotions, emphasizing the relationships we build with everyday objects and experiences."

 

 

The Hair Show

 

 

The Hair Show started small with simply collecting my own hair four years ago. I started labeling the hair with dates and what I was doing when that hair was accumulating, collecting my friends hair and displaying the hair in my studio. I was collecting out of love for all things natural and intrigued by the accumulation of everyday human materials. I started speaking with my friends and family about it, and my grandmother told me she had been saving her very first hair cut. She sent me those seventy year old braids in a box with her daughters’ first hair cuts, too. I realized hair spoke about the human experience, not just to me as an artist, but to everyone. It is sacred. It has been treasured and used in expressing the human experience for thousands of years. It has its own language. Cutting hair is an act of letting go, releasing the old, being born into someone fresh and new. Hair collects energy, much like it collects smells from your experiences- like after a night by a campfire. Hair has a lot to say. Visually, and physically, hair is an extension of your thoughts. Everything you have ever thought has been caught in your hair and displayed for everyone to read.

 

 

The Hair Show grown out to be much bigger, and more voluptuous than I ever imagined. The pieces went from being small, eclectic, full of humor, and simplistic to being huge, warm, deeply moving hair “paintings” that take over the space and demand reverence while still offering a familiar, homey comfort.

 

The hair in the large hair “paintings” has all been collected from local hair salons in Bloomington. These pieces are made from the community, for the community.

 

 

I look forward to seeing how The Hair Show will influence my projects to come. I will be exploring movement based live performance art work at an artist residency in Australia in January and February. This new work documented through photographs and videos will be on display at the Farmer House Museum early next year. You can read more about the artist residency on the wall behind you.

 

If you have hair to donate, you can bring your hair to the gallery or reach out to Mandey at MandeyLund@gmail.com.

 

Mandey Lund