don’t cut your hair it’s beautiful (2020)
a Redfield Fellow Parley Project
Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful began as an exhibition in which I explored hair as both a material and a concept through experimental printing processes. The work questions personal rituals surrounding hair, constructs associated with hair in Western culture, and the shift in value when hair is unattached to bodies. In this ongoing inquiry I explore my own experience with femininity, womanhood, my relationship with my own hair and how it conforms to or disrupts constructed norms. In lieu of this personal exploration, I became interested in starting a conversation about body hair to broaden the scope of this project and explore the intersectionality that is inherent in hair on the body.
This work is continued by Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful in an effort to disrupt and explore the relationship between hair that is considered valuable and hair that must be hidden, removed, and made invisible. The book includes contributions from twelve creatives in particular, but not limited to, those working with hair as a subject or material. These individuals were invited to respond to one of several prompts or to generate their own response about hair on the body. They could also choose to include an image, either found or made. These twelve writings provide thoughts and experiences surrounding hair, multiple points of access, and themes connected to hair on the body including: shame, resistance, and identity.
Hair, from head to toe, is a mutable mode of self-expression and identity. Hair on the head and body is intimately woven through feminism, gender, sexuality, spirituality, race, religion, culture, and resistance. It is my hope that more people come to celebrate their hair, empower others’ choice, and that the expression of body hair on female aligned individuals will be just as normal as its removal; free of shame and judgement.
Don’t Cut Your Hair It’s Beautiful is a set of interactive books that asks the reader to fold and unfold pages to construct or reveal images and text. Through the use of fragmented images, readers are encouraged to explore multiple possibilities of sequencing and arrangement where covers pair with center spreads to construct complete images.
Edition size: 50 books
4.6875in x 8in x 0.5in
72 pages
materials
Offset printing on Ultra Green Film (text pages), Bugra Antique Rose (paste downs), hand set lead type (News Gothic Bold & Century Bold Italic), Hollanders starched linen book cloth (Natural/Kennett), photopolymer plates, Rising Museum board, monofilament, Arches Cream (belly band)
photographs by Kellee Morgado
The Parley Project is a biennial interdisciplinary book art project that fosters research and conversation across the University of Nevada, Reno campus and involves Black Rock Press students, staff, and faculty in its production. Working in collaboration with another person or entity on the campus, the fellow designs a project based on this outreach.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Kellee Morgado
Judith Rodby
PHOTOGRAPHER
Frances Melhop is a photographer and visual artist, born in Christchurch, New Zealand, now living in the USA. She has worked globally in the fashion industry as a photographer, constructing imagery; conceptualizing, shooting, and directing stories for publications such as Vogue Italy editions, Vogue Australia, Elle Portugal, and Marie Claire Italy.
In 2009, Melhop was Awarded by Luerzer’s Archive, title World’s 200 Best Advertising Photographers for the images for the campaign of Descamps, France, and in 2014 she was awarded the NNDA Comstock Innovator of the Year Award for her arts and community work at St Mary’s Art Center, in Virginia City, Nevada.
Melhop’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions worldwide. She works in photography, stitching, printmaking, and oil paint, exploring portraiture and ideas of communication, selfhood and control.
Currently Melhop is a Lecturer of Record, who has taught photography, visual foundations and printmaking and completed her MFA at the University of Nevada, Reno, USA.
In 2020 she opened the contemporary art gallery, Melhop Gallery º7077, at Lake Tahoe, Nevada.