Creating a Hairbrush Sculpture
Hairbrush Sculpture in Clay and Metal
The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a time for reflection for me. Reflecting on what I’ve accomplished this last year as well as what my goals for the new year will be regarding my studio practice. So, for this post and the two others that follow this week, I thought I’d focus on works of art I’ve completed this year, starting with the Hairbrush sculpture.
The idea for this sculpture was inspired by a series I made several years ago called the Genealogy of Hair. This series explored women’s hair styles through the ages and included 160 black and white silhouettes of women’s hair styles. My plan is to include a small portion of those lithographic prints in an exhibition I will have at Spark gallery in 2022. The Hairbrush sculpture is a three-dimensional companion piece to the prints and it along with the other works in this show focus on the concept of Perception and the things women do to themselves visually to change people’s perception of them. The exhibition will be called Perception: A Retrospective and it will mark the end of my years long exploration of the Objectification of women. The exhibition will consist of mostly new work I’ve created over the last couple of years (it takes me several years to complete a body of work) with a few older works that show this exploration has come full circle.
Like the Pick sculpture I completed in 2020, the Hairbrush is large scale. My inspiration for both sculptures came from studying and researching the soft sculptures and larger installation pieces of Claes Oldenburg. After researching his work, I made sketches of my daughter’s hairbrush, then created small hairbrush maquettes in clay to problem solve before I created it in a larger scale. Once those were complete, I drew a template on paper and began piecing the clay together. I first created the brush part, and the handle followed. Because each section was so large, it took weeks for them to dry before they were ready to fire.
Once fired, I then epoxied the two pieces together. Unfortunately, there was some cracking that took place during the firing, so I used the epoxy to resolve that little problem as well.
The next step was painting. Because glazing can be unpredictable and because I’m more skilled with paint, I opted to spray paint the hairbrush. I used this strategy on the Pick sculpture as well as a large Lipstick sculpture, so I knew this was a solid plan of action. This also ensured that the three sculptures would have a cohesiveness to them when exhibited together.
The next step in the creative process was figuring out what material I was going to use for the bristles. My first idea was to use steel like I did for the Pick but I discovered I didn’t have the tools or strength to cut the steel wire to the size I needed. Then my Ceramics instructor, Dean Goss, suggested piano wire which he kindly provided. This too proved not successful as I couldn’t get enough wires that were the correct diameter to fit into the holes of the brush base. After much more contemplation, I came up with the idea to use finishing nails and spray paint them gold. This was both cost effective and proved to be the perfect fit both in length and diameter!
The last part(s) to be made were the ceramic balls that would sit on top of the nail to complete the brush. Again, using my daughter’s actual hairbrush as my model, I created 79 balls, pierced with a hole so they could be attached to the nail, fired and spray painted them. The final step was to epoxy them onto the nail.
Overall, it was an interesting and challenging creative process. One might think a hairbrush is a relatively uncomplicated utensil. However, when trying to recreate it on an oversized scale using materials that are not typical for a hairbrush, it is anything but uncomplicated! This is what makes creating art so rewarding and is what keeps me passionate about my practice. I will never grow tired of making art.
