By Jenine Shereos, I have seen sculptural artworks created using human hair before, but not quite on the intricate, detailed scale of these amazing leaves. You would be hard pressed to mimic the vein structure of a leaf this well in any other medium, each intersection of the hairs is connected by a tiny knot. All of which have been built up on dissolvable backing material, thus leaving these skeletal structures.
In this series, the intricacies of a leaf’s veining are recreated by wrapping, stitching, and knotting together strands of human hair. Inspired by the delicate and detailed venation of a leaf, I began stitching individual strands of hair by hand into a water- soluble backing material. At each point where one strand of hair intersected another, I stitched a tiny knot, so that when the backing was dissolved, the entire piece was able to hold its form. Creating this work was a very meditative process for me, as I found myself lost in the detail of the small, organic microcosms that began taking shape.
