Exhausted

I am emotionally exhausted due to recent upheavals in my life. 

The map is staying in its current state until further notice,  so that I do not destroy it in a fit of doubt. 

What makes creation so compelling is that it is so much more difficult and time consuming than destruction.

Thank you all for your patience. My apologies if this is where the project ends. It may be time for something new to happen. 

Update

This post will be brief, as I am emotionally drained.

The map is off of the embroidery frame, and safely stretched over a sheet of plexiglass. I need to make a clear cover for it, and then have it scanned again. The scan will then be posted here.

I have received several donations of hair, but so far no stories or locations to go with them, so I don't know where on the map they are supposed to go. I think I will start with a story of my own, to both share and demonstrate what I am looking for.

Thank you to everyone who has given hair.

Contribute Your Hair!

Anyone who wants to contribute hair:
please enclose some hairs--20-50 is fine; they can be any length.

Include a story: anything that happened to you in the continental USA. I will incorporate your hair into the fabric of the map at the locations or along the routes that you specify.
The hair becomes a physical record of past journeys! With your permission, I will share the stories on the blog, and eventually on a website dedicated to the map. If you'd rather I incorporate the hair but not share the story, just let me know.

For the address to send hair to,
please email me : elayton(at)g(dot)risd(dot)edu

Thanks!

Hair Lace Map !

Here it is.

 The states are done, having been constructed one hair at a time. Now I will do the background and figure out how to stretch it over glass or acrylic, so that I can keep adding people's hair to it, potentially forever! Once I have it safely on the translucent backing, the fun part begins: adding people's hair! 

Feel free to pass this image around--in fact, please do! I'd appreciate some feedback, so questions and comments are most welcome.

Westward Expansion

Almost done. 7.5 more states to go! I will be ready to start adding other people's hair within a week or so.

Had a thought: why is it that more people seem to be grossed out by human hair detached from a human head than are grossed out by fur/skin detached from the animal? (Just for the record, neither of the above particularly bother me, until you get into the ethics of the thing.)

I will be posting some video footage soon, hopefully. A high-resolution scan will be posted after I have the ground done, removed from the embroidery frame, and stretched over a piece of glass or acrylic.

20+ States!

Huzzah! Putting in some serious time and getting some serious results:

There are an assortment of netting stitches in use here: multiple uses of the same stitch, but no repeats in neighboring states.

  The effect is like a crazy quilt of textures. Victorians had the habit of preserving little sentimental remnants of their loved ones and compiling them into carefully crafted arrangements such as wreaths made of hair from everyone in the family, or the aforementioned quilts.

  Perhaps my map can find similar purpose, once the ground is finished and I begin adding people's journeys to the map, using their hair to (re)create their paths. So far, I have received hair from only people I know and people I have met. What would it be like to chart the courses of many strangers, but all together on one map? We create a similar but invisible map everyday, just by moving about in this country.

During the intermittent periods of my life when I have had a regular commute, be it by car, subway, bus, or on foot, I have noticed many others who share the same timing: we see each other each day, but never interact beyond a glance. How many people would it take, moving across a map in records made of hair; how many stories would it take before two people (by accident) realize that they have shared the same path, or commute, or journey, and finally say 'hello'?

3 States

Progress!

I am going to make a concerted effort to finish the states by the end of the summer.
Here's an update:

...and that's a ukulele for scale.

In other news: I got a video camera, and have started "sketching" with it.

Other currant projects and tinkerings include:

shoes made from recycled tire/inner tubes

spinning thread from cat fur