Tea Kettle (Brooch)

Pulling from the Victorian tradition of storing hair in lockets or creating miniature portraits with ground hair and pigment, Melanie Bilenker creates jewelry using human hair, as seen in Tea Kettle (Brooch.) She describes, “I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants. I do not reproduce events, but quiet minutes, the mundane, the domestic, the ordinary moments.”