Thrown ceramic vessels printed on using slip and my own hair. Installed with personal artifacts.

The fastest way to bond with another girl is to ask to braid her hair. I love it, the immediate intimacy of it. Trancending cultures and inescapable in girlhood, the ritual of hair braiding connects us to one another and to a long history of women and their hair. To me, braids represent connection, specifically in regard to feminine tradition. I’m fascinated by the ways our hair, and braids specifically, bind us together. In exploring this fascination,I created a series of five ceramic vessels that I call my Braid Bowls. 

I use my own hair to print the surfaces of the vessels. After the clay has dried, I paint my braids with slip or glaze and stamp them onto my bowls by wrapping or pressing them. Though not all of the vessels are technically bowls, they do take circular forms which can hold something closely. I feel that both the nature of bowls as something that holds and the process through which I create my vessels reflects the intimacy of hair braiding. Some of the bowls hold personal artifacts that I feel connect both symbolically and literally to hair braiding and what it means to me.