crowning glories
this crown uses some western north american endangered species imagery, with the bush wren and skink.
"Andy Mauery’s Crowning Glory 4 explores both perceptions of beauty, as well as issues of power and individuality. Why is it that hair is beautiful when linked to the body, but becomes abject and repulsive once removed? Mauery’s sculpture, made of real hair, is tied together with string that forms line-drawings of extinct and endangered animals. The symbol of the crown thus becomes associated with power, specifically man’s power over nature and the effects our choices can have on others.
The hair is then shaped into a wearable crown. There is a certain absurdity and lunacy to the idea of wearing a crown of hair on top of one’s own hair. But perhaps it is suggestive of the ways in which hair helps create our self-identity? We are attached to our hair both literally and metaphorically, and hair can speak to an individual’s personality as much as clothing or choice of music. Wearing a crown of someone else’s hair is like donning their identity. The use of hair creates a very intimate and quite literal portrait of a person; it is a remnant of their physical body. That person is represented by the presence of their hair and the very absence of their bodies." Dr. Natalie Phillips, catalog for Attraction and Doubt