Tress sense

Sandra Klowak likes playing with hair, though not all of it is hers.

Every day she twists and pulls, deftly twirling and looping strands into intricate shapes.

Petals bloom beneath her fingers, lank locks and wavy curls coil into tightly furled roses and wide-open blossoms with buttons for pistils.

The artist weaves and sculpts body matter into art for clients who want to memorialize loved ones in an intimate and profoundly personal manner.

Using traditional methods like wirework, where looped pieces of longer hair are twisted into shapes around wire, and flatwork, where shorter hair is cut into shapes and glued flat, Klowak’s custom-made pieces are modern interpretations of an art form which can trace its roots as far back as the 17th century.

“It became really popular in Victorian times, it was absolutely normal then, it was fashionable. We don’t quite know how to feel about it in our modern day, this kind of art it lives in a liminal space of sorts, but historically there was value to it,” Klowak shares.

Klowak’s foray into hair art started nine years ago. Her first piece was a small wreath created from her own hair.

Enamoured of the medium, she posted on her Facebook page, requesting friends to send her hair.

“It is odd to ask for these things,” she says, “but there is an element of odd to pretty much everything I do. I had been raving about hair art before so it wasn’t too strange for my friends, but there were some people who said ‘oh, gross,’ which is also fine by me.”

Fortunately her friends were more than happy to oblige, sending her dozens of cuttings. The donations continue to come in and the artist has amassed a healthy amount of hair which she uses to create artwork for her portfolio.

Klowak’s more recent works are a departure from the norm. They have a bit of a bite to them.

Pushing the boundaries of her practice, Klowak has started to incorporate teeth with hair, including human and animal, to form the new and rather more esoteric silhouettes of her four-piece series which sees her investigating conventionally held ideas of femininity.

“I began with the idea of a four-piece series featuring one tooth, almost like a jewel, at the centre of each. I also wanted to explore ideas of femininity, in a way that challenges the common/traditional stereotypes that define the feminine as meek, mild, palatable, unobtrusive, conforming, compliant. I wanted to upend a sense of comfort by using materials of the body which I feel contain a raw power,” she explains.

The four “women” — Sophia, Amphitrite, Annabella and Devana — were developed in a far more intuitive manner than Klowak’s meticulously planned and executed commission work for clients.

The names came to her first, followed by words (as seen on her Instagram account @corporealcurios) to go with each piece. From there she created the physical forms, eschewing her usual methods of working and allowing herself to be led by the concept and “essence” of the four characters, she shares.

The new work has an unnerving quality to it. Each piece is disconcerting on its own, discomfiting when viewed together with the others. The juxtaposition of body matter, both animal and human, twisted and unrecognizable, is alarming at first glance.

Ultimately, the animalistic and alien quality of the sculptures serves to provoke thought. The work is created to be experienced from a place of curiosity rather than judgment.

Working with teeth, especially wisdom teeth, has been an intense experience, evoking emotions Klowak has yet to process fully. It’s forced her to confront the reality of creating art from pieces of people’s bodies.

“It can be overwhelming to engage with unique materials which hold a lot of power,” she says.

“It hit me recently that this is somebody’s tooth. It made me pause and reflect on the intensity of the medium. It can be difficult and it can be uncomfortable, but I think it’s worth it. I like that I’m feeling things with my process and that I am practising something that speaks to me in a way I never could have imagined when I first started doing this.”

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca