More Than Sparrows

Lately I have been working on a sculpture of two sparrows made out of hair. 

 

The idea came from a sermon on Matthew 10 where it talks about the hairs on your head being counted, the Salvation Army Officer expanded on this surmising  that if God knew how many hairs are on your head he would know how many you left in your hairbrush that morning and how many lay on the hairdresser's floor.  This intrigued me and I began to look into using hair as a modelling material mixing it with glue and forming shapes.  I think this image was also partly inspired by a childhood memory of a poster with two sparrows on that had a paraphrase version of Matthew 10:31 on which I learnt by heart.

My hairdresser thinks I am mad having asked to keep my hair for the last two haircuts.  I was a little worried that I wouldn't have enough to finish both sparrows so had my hair cut a little shorter than I would have otherwise!   I also had a very odd parcel through the post containing some of a friend's black hair, which I used for the eyes.

For a lot of my work I use unusual or 'difficult materials' in a time consuming and intricate way.  I hope that this comes across in the delicacy of the final work.

sticking on legs and wings

testing his legs

 The finished sculpture

 ...and some close-up's